Analysing Influencer Marketing: A Key to Understanding Customers

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of influencer marketing, a strategy that leverages collaborations between brands and social media influencers to promote products and services. It highlights the importance of influencer selection, the potential risks involved, and the future trends shaping the landscape of influencer marketing, including the integration of augmented and virtual reality, the rise of micro-influencers, and the increasing use of video content. The essay also analyses two influencers, Emma Watson and Jodie Marsh, contrasting their approaches and the impact of their endorsements. Emma Watson promotes sustainable and ethical brands, while Jodie Marsh faces criticism for promoting potentially harmful products. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of influencer marketing for business growth, the potential for influencers to generate income, and the evolving role of technology in shaping marketing strategies.

UNDERSTANDING
CUSTOMERS

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
INFLUENCER MARKETING........................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Influencer Marketing is a type of online marketing which involves product placements
and endorsements from the people, organisations and influencers. The individuals which have
large fan following are considered as experts in the promotional activities. It involves
campaigning with the collaboration between the social media influencers and brands. It works so
well due to the amount of trust that people have in these influencers. This essay discusses about
the concept of influencer marketing. The two influencers along with their choice of products or
brands are also analysed in the essay. The future of influencers in the society is also discussed in
the essay.
MAIN BODY
INFLUENCER MARKETING
Influencer marketing is a collaboration of brands with the online influencers for the
purpose of advertising. The companies promote its goods and services with the help of social
media influencers. These influencers have a large fan following on the social media platforms
which help the businesses in reaching to a large section of the customers in the society. It has
turned out to be a very popular technique which is used by various brands (Farivar, Wang and
Yuan, 2021). Day by day, the number of brands are increasing which is resulting in rising of the
value of these influencers. The companies working with good influencers can help in reaching to
a significant audience. This develops the trust and credibility among the people by seeing their
favourite influencer promoting the products. It is very essential to collaborate with real
influencers who are experts in convincing and giving speeches. This helps the organisations in
focusing to a particular set of audience which increase attention of the people. The message
which is related to the product which the business wants to convey is easily communicated to the
customers with the help of these social media influencers. They can also produce a lot of great
quality content to the which can increase brand value of the organisations. It is very important to
identify the influencers to be able to select them for promotion of products and services. It also
involves a lot of cost for the businesses which can sometimes impact the overall operations of the
organisation. It is a very lengthy process to first identify the influencer, check the background
and interact with them. There is high risked involved in the influencer marketing campaigns

because it does not guarantees good results in terms of promotion and sales(Kadekova and
Holienčinova, 2018).
The first social media influencer is Emma Watson who is a British actress and activist.
She has been ranked among the world's highest paid actresses by the Forbes magazine. She was
also named in the 100 most influential people in the world in the year 2015 by the Time
magazine. She has more than 65 million followers on Instagram which is a very huge number.
She is very famous in all over the world because of her acting in Harry Porter. She is also an
activist who believes in gender equality. She was also appointed Goodwill Ambassador for U.N.
Women in the year 2014. The brands which are promoted by her are mainly related to the beauty
and clothing. She has a large fan following on social media platforms and she is considered role
model by various girls and women's all over the world(Kim and Kim, 2021). The famous brands
which are promoted by Emma Watson are Burberry, Calvin Klein, Christian Dior and Svilu. She
is considered a good social media influencer as she does not promote any products which are bad
for the society and affects the life of the people. It has been seen that she chooses brands which
are sustainable and are good for the customers such as clothing, beauty products and other
fashion brands. There are various brands which are endorsed by her such as Tome, Teatum
Jones, KITX, Catbird, etc. These are eco-friendly and sustainable brands which does not bother
the people living in the society. She knows her responsibility of being a good social media
influencer and promotes products which does not have any negative effect. She promotes brands
which she think is good and will create a difference among the customers.
The second influencer will be Jodie Marsh who is a British media personality,
bodybuilder and model. She appeared in many TV shows like Celebrity Big Brother. She has
more than 500k followers on social media platforms. She is popular on social media platforms
because of her career in various fields. She is considered a bad influencer because her posts are
highly offensive and bold. She advertises the harmful products which are related to gym and
nutrition. All these can make a negative impact on the health of the customers. She poses with a
gun in her hand on twitter on which she faced criticism (Leung, Gu and Palmatier, 2022). She
chooses those products which gives her attention and develop her image in the public. There are
various brands which are promoted by her which are related to modelling and bodybuilding. She
promotes products which have unauthorised health claims related to the foods and beverages.
This makes an adverse impact on the well-being of the customers who are consuming these

products. She should realise that she is a popular public figure and have certain responsibilities
when it comes to promotion of products. She should not deceive the persons since they trust the
celebrities for actually consuming the products. It has been seen that she mainly advertises health
related products without much detail about the product. She also does various violations on the
post she shares on her social media platforms. She is a bad influencer who does not give
importance to the health and safety of the followers. This creates a negative image of her in the
mind of the people in the society(Srivastava, 2021).
The future of influencers marketing will get brighter with the emerging advancements in
technology. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality will become an essential part of the
bandwagon which drives the influencer marketing. There will be collective networks of
influencers which the business will target to perform advertising. Brands will shift to single-
source operating system. The brands will choose from a wider celeb pool for conveying their
message to the audience. More small companies will focus on micro-influencers for spreading
awareness. The content which is displayed by the influencers in relation to the brands will be
more closely monitored. There will be script or statements which will be provided to the social
media influencers for properly giving messages to the customers in relation to the brand. The
influencers will shift to video content which provides better clarity(Trivedi and Sama, 2020).
The future of influencer marketing will be largely dominated by live content from these social
media influencers. This will improve the relationship between the brand and the customers. The
artificial intelligence will help the brands in choosing the influencers. Proper marketing
strategies will be required in order to select the influencers and describe the role. There will be
more rules and regulations for guiding the social media marketing. The future will serve various
opportunities to the influencers to make their presence in the society. The importance of micro-
influencers will be realised since they work to maintain personal bonds with their target
audience. The growth of this kind of marketing is clearly visible in the society. The influencers
can make a lot of money by doing influencer marketing. It has been seen that most of the people
purchases products through online platforms where the influencers convinces them to buy
products of the brand.

CONCLUSION
It can be concluded that influencer marketing is very essential for the growth and
development of businesses in the market. The scope is very wide as it connects people from all
over the world. Those individuals who have established their name in the society can use this as
an additional source of income. In house influencer will gain a lot of importance in the future due
to the better marketing tactics. The brands have identified that collaboration is very essential in
order to make proper marketing strategies. These help in building long term associations with the
influencers which simplifies the process of influencer marketing. The entry of computer
generated imagery in the marketing industry has changed the way brands view collaboration.
There will be new trends in the marketing in the future which will make the world surprise. The
influencers play a key role in making the brand popular among the masses.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Farivar, S., Wang, F. and Yuan, Y., 2021. Opinion leadership vs. para-social relationship: Key
factors in influencer marketing. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 59,
p.102371.
Kadekova, Z. and Holienčinova, M., 2018. Influencer marketing as a modern phenomenon
creating a new frontier of virtual opportunities. Communication Today, 9(2).
Kim, D.Y. and Kim, H.Y., 2021. Trust me, trust me not: A nuanced view of influencer
marketing on social media. Journal of Business Research, 134, pp.223-232.
Leung, F.F., Gu, F.F. and Palmatier, R.W., 2022. Online influencer marketing. Journal of the
Academy of Marketing Science, 50(2), pp.226-251.
Srivastava, M., 2021. Mapping the influence of influencer marketing: a bibliometric
analysis. Marketing Intelligence & Planning.
Trivedi, J. and Sama, R., 2020. The effect of influencer marketing on consumers’ brand
admiration and online purchase intentions: An emerging market perspective. Journal of
Internet Commerce, 19(1), pp.103-124.