Influencer Marketing - What and Why

Children and adults are all glued to their screens, either TV or mobile devices. We've all seen so many advertisements where companies and businesses lure other consumers with offers and they are endorsed by celebrities and other well known faces. In this day and age where digital advertising has become the norm, almost everybody is on social media. This has led to a spurt in online stars called influencers.

Who exactly are these influencers you may ask?

Well, back in the days when print media and TV ruled the roost, many companies and brand would employ some film stars, sports figure or other well known celebrities that have a huge fan following to market a product or a service. Influencers do that same work however with a limited audience. You just need to go on social media to see and understand who they are and the kind of work they do. If you regularly use YouTube for instance, you may have heard about PewDiePie and other such online figures who have garnered a huge fan following because of the nature of their work.

They are people who have taken the internet by storm, especially the social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and the likes. Influencer marketing is just a mix of the old and the new. It is the same concept when in the earlier decades companies would hire a celebrity to endorse a product and now it is done digitally to market them. As a digital marketing company we understand how important the concept it to brands to grow.

These mini-celebrities if we can call them come from a wide range of niches and are found globally. If someone starts a Facebook or an Instagram account (let's say travel related) and posts travel related photos, and the page gets a lot of attention and people subscribe to the pages in huge number, it is building a fan following of that page and eventually giving rise to an influencer in the making.

Some of these influencers are from a tech background (such as Marques Brownlee), some of them are chefs in their own right having their own YouTube channel (such as Laura in the Kitchen) while some could be related to comic stuff and pranks (such as Thatwasepic). These influencers constantly create more content for people to consume and due to their huge fan base, become ambassadors for companies to connect with their audiences.

It is much easier for companies to ask influencers to market their products because these influencers generally have a much smaller audience base. An influencer typically has anywhere between 20,000 to 100,000 subscriber. Some of them have humungous fan following too - such as PewDiePie who has over 100 million followers on YouTube alone. However because of their typical small size audience, they are closely and tightly related to the subject of the channel they have subscribed to. Marketing a kitchenware to just 50,000 subscriber via an influencer who is in the cooking niche is much better and has a much better chance of conversion rather than marketing to a million people who may not be interested in cooking at all.

Influencing marketing is thus very powerful and the trend in only set to grow in the future.

My name is Kyle and I'm a content writer working for a website development company in Mumbai. I love my work and love the work that the company does!