The Impact of Influencers on Consumers in the 21st Century
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This essay explores the impact of influencer marketing on consumers in the 21st century, with a focus on two UK influencers - Paul Steele and Estee Lalonde. It discusses their product selection and brand analysis, the good, bad, and ugly of influencer marketing, and the future of influencers in the industry.
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Table of Contents INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3 MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3 Introduce the area of influencer marketing..................................................................................3 Influencer one and their analysis on product selection and brands.............................................4 Influencer two and their analysis on product selection and brands.............................................4 The future of influencers.............................................................................................................5 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6 REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION Influencer marketing means marketing on social media in which the influencers on social mediautilizesendorsementsandmentionofproducts&services.Suchinfluencersare considered to be experts in their niche. The following essay thus, will explain the area of influencer marketing and its impact on the consumers in the 21stcentury. Then two influencers namely – Paul Steele and Estee Lalonde who are considered to be the most famous influencers in the travel, tourism and fashion industry in the UK will be introduced and how they use such a profession for earning income is explained. Also, how they analyse and select the products and services which they be collaborating and be in partnership with will be explained. The good, the bad and the ugly of this influencer marketing will also be explained. Finally, the future of influencers will be discussed and analysed in the influencer marketing in the coming years. MAIN BODY Introduce the area of influencer marketing Influencer marketing simply means marketing of a brand, product, service or even a place by the individual influencers especially on social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. People have now started paying attention to what these influencers has to say and recommend (Vrontis and et.al., 2021). Therefore, many big and small brands are collaborating with these influencers to be able to have access to the attention they can get through social media and thus, gains the much required fame. The influencers are benefitted by the increased followers, increased fame and also earning of income through such marketing. For the companies, brands and marketers it is easy to market its products and services through influencers as compared to other ways and more importantly, it is cost – effective to be able to reap the benefits of influencer marketing (Martínez-López and et.al., 2020). So all this ease to access and cost – effectiveness has led to development of this industry to be very profitable for both the brands and the influencers like through selling of accounts on Instagram which are well developed and have significant reach is in trend. There are the niche influencers in this industry who are core to this billion-dollar industry and therefore, numerous companies and brands look forward to appoint them as their company’s or brand’s advocate and face. One industry that has been heavily influenced by the influencer marketing is tourism industry. Such influencing is majorly done through platforms like Instagram, Twitter and YouTube which brings various trends from time to time that motivates the people to follow such
trends and thus, tourism industry is growing immensely through this influencer marketing (Haenlein and et.al., 2020). Most highly required aspect of any influencer is high-resolution appearance which has been duly complied by the features of Instagram like posts, live, stories and reels. Influencer one and their analysis on product selection and brands One of the most famous influencers in the industry of travel and tourism is Paul Steele professionally known as ‘bald hiker’ on all the social media platforms. BaldHiker was founded by Paul Steele in 2010 as blog of personal travel in which he used to share his walks and hikes that he did around the world. This personal blog quickly grew and is now a very vibrant and active community of travellers from around the world who also share their photos, stories and experiences (Taylor, 2020). His websites and his social media accounts showcases his hikes and travels including information about various food and drink delicacies from around the world. He also shares various useful tips for specifically those who want to take their pets outdoor, useful tips on clothing for such travelling and reviews on the hiking kits. The travellers can also book hikes with Paul himself along with his 2 dogs namely – Malc and Pete, can work with him and this community. He and his team of authors & other professionals earn through this business by the way of commissions which they receive based on their reviews and sponsorships. They also earn through the selling of their merchandise from their shop and any recommendations of the equipment and kits which they recommend (Ye and et.al., 2021). He reviews various places to stay, places to eat, clothing, technology, drinks, accessories based on his personal experience from various places around the world like Britain, Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Oceania, etc. who pay him for such promotion on his website and social media accounts. He recommends places to stay from a house in a country side to a 5-star hotel, places to eat from a grill in a forest to a luxurious restaurant. Influencer two and their analysis on product selection and brands Estee Lalonde is another influencer and a blogger who is well – established in the beauty industry and shares her insights and tips based on her very unique perspective on topics like travel, fashion, beauty, etc. through her personal blog and her YouTube channel which has more than 1 million subscribers. Through her blogs and her channel, she features, reviews and
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recommends various shops from around the world which is also a source of income for her i.e., she gets paid for these reviews and features. She also collaborates with various brands like Daisy London and has created her own jewellery brand. She has been a brand ambassador to the brands like Garnier and Adidas and has been featured in publications like Vogue, The Telegraph, etc. Like any other influencers, she has the ability to make a brand appealing to the customers through their content strategies via regular posts, videos, reviews, stories, etc. Now, there are various good, bad and ugly of this influencer marketing. The good involves customers becoming better marketing savvy as they are influenced by the social media promotions of the brands. Also, influencer marketing has solved the problem of awareness and engagement through direct connection with the audience and their alignment with the influencers resulting into healthy influencer – customer relationship. The bad of the influencer marketing involves boosting of the followers illegitimately through social media bots. These bots imitate the behaviour of natural followers to make the user of the account appear to be legitimate. The ugly of the influencer marketing is the fraudulent activities prevalent in the market like showing fake engagements and partnerships to appear influential. Such fake engagements show the failure of social media campaigns. The future of influencers The global pandemic has resulted into influencer marketing to grow immensely and the content creators to acquire the trust of consumers through cementing their position in the industry. Digital marketing is the centre of attraction for the brands (Xiao, Wang and Chan- Olmsted, 2018). Such digital marketing in which the leading medium of influencing is social media that effectively influenced the discovery of brand and the decisions of purchasing. One of the reasons it got mainstream is due to its affordability and a niche option to target GenZies and Millennials. Therefore,itcanbesaidthatthefutureyearstocomearebringingwiththem opportunities for the influencers and content creators both existing as well as aspiring. These opportunities include the long – term partnerships and collaborations with the brands as these brand owners have understood the ability of this marketing to earn the level of ROI which no other marketing measure can earn i.e., it is unparalleled (Influencer Marketing: Trends to watch out for in 2022, 2022). Long – term partnerships help the brands to build trust among its
audience by incorporating sense of advocacy towards them. Another aspect of influencer marketinginvolvesregionalizationof the content which involve incorporationof various regional languages in the countries of their operations like in case of India, supporting multiple regional languages like Punjabi, Marathi, Telugu, etc. Influencer marketing in the future will be seeing a substantial increase in demand for the micro influencers owing to their rate of engagement which is higher and their affordability which led to drastic increase in the share of micro influencers in the industry (Zhou and et.al., 2021). The industry will be following a more data – driven approach which will lead to such increase in demand of micro influencers. Live – eCommerce is also going to be widely used to reach the target audience and convert them into the customers. CONCLUSION Concluding the above essay, it can be said that the influencer marketing effectively and efficiently helps the big brands in attracting more customers and enabling the small businesses in scaling up by being more visible to its target audience which it needs to convert into the consumers and it also provides these businesses with higher ROI than any other marketing channels. Therefore, the above essay introduces the area of influencer marketing and the industry and how it actually operates. Then two influencers of the UK – Paul Steele and Estee Lalonde are discussed along with their activities and ways of how they earn their income through such influencer marketing, collaborations and partnerships. Also, their process of selection of products and brands is analysed and then finally, the future of these influencers of the influencer marketing is discussed as to what the future of this type of marketing has to offer.
REFERENCES Books and Journals Haenlein, M. and et.al., 2020. Navigating the New Era of Influencer Marketing: How to be Successful on Instagram, TikTok, & Co.California management review.63(1). pp.5-25. Martínez-López, F.J. and et.al., 2020. Behind influencer marketing: key marketing decisions and theireffectsonfollowers’responses.JournalofMarketingManagement.36(7-8). pp.579-607. Taylor, C. R., 2020. The urgent need for more research on influencer marketing.International Journal of Advertising.39(7). pp.889-891. Vrontis, D. and et.al., 2021. Social media influencer marketing: A systematic review, integrative framework and future research agenda.International Journal of Consumer Studies.45(4). pp.617-644. Xiao,M.,Wang,R.andChan-Olmsted,S.,2018.FactorsaffectingYouTubeinfluencer marketingcredibility:aheuristic-systematicmodel.Journalofmediabusiness studies.15(3). pp.188-213. Ye, G. and et.al., 2021. The value of influencer marketing for business: A bibliometric analysis and managerial implications.Journal of Advertising.50(2). pp.160-178. Zhou, S. and et.al., 2021. How social media influencers’ narrative strategies benefit cultivating influencer marketing: Tackling issues of cultural barriers, commercialised content, and sponsorship disclosure.Journal of Business Research.134. pp.122-142. Online Influencer Marketing: Trends to watch out for in 2022. 2022.[Online]. Available through: <https://www.businessinsider.in/advertising/brands/article/influencer-marketing-trends- to-watch-out-for-in-2022/articleshow/88071937.cms#:~:text=The%20influencer %20marketing%20industry%20in,their%20higher%20engagement%20rates %20%26%20affordability.> 1