Under The Influence
The opportunities and challenges facing ‘influencer marketing’ in a digital society.
The rise of ‘influencer’ presence on social media is one that cannot be ignored. As a key tool in the modern marketing industry, seemingly normal people sell their lifestyles under the guise of products including healthcare, beauty, travel or wellbeing, targeting their audiences and creating a captive market to do what they do best - influence. Opportunities are rife for potential influencers; a recent survey predicting that the industry will become a $10 billion market by 2020. In the last few years alone, influencers have come under crucial praise and criticism to build a platform on; with ex reality stars promoting products for large sums, down to ‘micro-influencers’ beginning a career simply due to a large sum of followers- anybody can become a part of this industry.
Influencer marketing finds a lucrative existence through social media and specifically, sponsored content. Instagram, as one key example, holds every tool an influencer needs to search, evaluate and target an audience through the analytics the platform provides. Instagram’s technology allows any person to access ‘insights’ which are broken down into content, activity and audience. From here the account owner can view their reach, impressions and interactions on individual posts and how successful they have been. These demographic insights tell you everything you need to know about your audience: age range, gender and location. This might be why almost a fourth of social media influencers claim Instagram is the best network for creating influencer strategies.
Not only do these social media toolkits provide everything an influencer needs to understand their audience, they also provide endless opportunities to contact audiences and potential new clients. Most popular social media sites offer the chance to add a ‘geotag’ to a user’s post, marking the location from which the photo or status was posted. This offers up a chance for an influencer to isolate posts in their area or online community to find the best accounts to reach out to- enter the DM. Direct messaging is yet another invaluable form of contact once the marketer has found their target, enabling them to send a personalised message straight to the account they desire, seeming like a friend but in reality all being part of a wider scheme.
Demonstrably there has already been a major growth in influencer advertising expenses, in 2018 it was somewhere between $3.2–6.3 billion, and has only increased since. Arguably, the sector is helped by the positive reputation it is given by its celebrity presence; in particular celebrities with swarms of followers who do not think twice when they are being sold a product. One recent example would be reality star turned model Kendall Jenner’s ongoing collaboration with L.A. based teeth whitening company Moon. Her products are sold with tag-lines such as “who doesn’t want teeth like Kendall Jenner’s?” ; cleverly using her media presence and reputable beauty (which most likely costs far more in upkeep than a £20 product) as a way to coerce potential customers into buying in order to resemble Kendall.
However, influencer marketing does not come without its controversies. Kendall Jenner also faced backlash after her sponsored advertising of Proactiv skincare, having teased the sponsorship as her “most raw story”, which turned out to be her teenage struggle with acne in the form of a highly paid sponsorship deal. Fans and critics alike doubted whether the star actually used the product, having access to the best and most expensive treatments available and her own dermatologist. Demonstrably, this shows how celebrity influencers can either be a company’s best profitable weapon or a damning indictment to the worthlessness of a product. Media presence can be a challenging line to walk, and if an influencer does not engage their audience the right way, they could potentially lose the empire they have curated.
A large challenge against the opportunities presented for influencer marketing are anti-influencer movements, which aim to expose the ethics of online marketing and the reality of the products being sold.
Led by activist and actress Jameela Jamil, campaign I Weigh began as an Instagram page devoted to sharing diversity and banishing beauty standards. As it grew, the page and subsequent podcast slandered the paid promotion of products such as flat tummy tea or appetite suppressant lollipops and instead celebrates all that makes up an ordinary person, which makes them extraordinary. Although companies such as Flat Tummy co. began their businesses with influencer marketing, with a ‘rating system’ on each of their influencers, they can’t escape the opposition on social media and the growth of the body positivity movement.
An enormous 86% of marketers have used influencer marketing in the past year. This seems like a fantastic figure for a person with growing online presence to tap into, however it poses a realistic challenge in the sector: oversaturation. In our digital society, technology has never been more accessible, which makes it so much easier to begin a platform- but technology has never been more accessible, which means there has never been so much competition. As more people seek to become an influencer, the rates of pay go down and both the demand for content and harsh competition go up “This oversaturated market, combined with the incessant demand for content, has forced some influencers to ask if the hustle is worth the limited payoff.”
Another challenge that faces the marketing industry is the credibility of the people that they employ; a survey revealed 61% of marketers find it difficult to identify the right influencers for their campaigns. This is due to the growing public knowledge of how lucrative this industry is. Any person is able to purchase followers online for their profiles, making them seem more reputable and valuable, therefore landing paid brand deals without having any real people to plug them to; putting the brands at a loss. A brand can reach millions of people they never previously would have with a strategic influencer, but if none of the followers are real their entire strategy is defunct.
Research shows that 74% of consumers claim to trust the opinions they see on social media when deciding whether to purchase a product. The Advertising Standards Agency ruled that it is now illegal for a social media influencer to promote a product without disclosing that it is an advertisement. It is not unusual to see a celebrity endorsed post captioned with ‘#ad’ or ‘#spon’, the easiest way to promote in detail- without making it heavily apparent that this is affiliate content. Many may argue that this brings a much needed transparency to posts, so viewers are not misled into thinking an influencer endorses these products from their own lifestyle. However, it may also be argued that this renewed transparency can hurt the marketing industry as it detracts from any kind of authenticity that the influencers once held.
If 74% of consumers trust the opinions of what they see on social media, then influencer marketing is clearly doing its job. With technology at the Western world’s fingertips and the ever-present desire to look, feel and be the best, influencers are presented with rife opportunities and companies more than willing to splurge on celebrity endorsements. However, with success comes failure, and no doubt the challenges in a now oversaturated market will only be met with more criticism. The cult of influencers will only expand as digital media expands, but at the end of the day- the audience will always reign supreme.
