What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencers are people who have a sufficient following and who can influence their followers’ behavior as consumers. They make content such as videos or photos that generate views and that their followers like. People tend to generally like to follow influencers that are rich or famous but small influencers have been increasingly popular because they are more relatable. Influencers each specialize in specific niches, cultivating audiences’ trust as experts in fields like beauty, where they review makeup products.

Influencer marketing is when a brand and popular social media users collaborate to promote the brands. Forming relationships with influencers who are already relevant to a brand’s message is vital (“What Is Influencer Marketing?”). This is a marketing strategy in which it has been successfully used by so many brands that helped them continue to grow over the past decade. Social media has such a big impact on what consumers purchase according to a survey done by McKinsey carried out in 2014. Brands also have to include a diverse group of influencers to help them engage with larger audiences. For brands to have positive experiences with influencer marketing, they have to stay on top of the latest trends.

Since each influencer has their own unique audience, followers, and engagement on various social media platforms, their marketing deals are unique as well. Earned Media Value (EMV) is an influencer marketing metric that is used to help measure in dollars the value of social media content (“Guide to Earned Media Value (EMV): What It Is and How to Use It.”). EMV is a way to measure the level of engagement on social media content generated by influencers about particular brands. This engagement encompasses interactions such as likes, comments, and shares on a post that attributes to multiple brands within the content. It is important to note that this content is not directly created by the brand itself sometimes, but rather by influencers. Influencers may create various types of content, such as reviews or recommendations, which can fall under earned media. These influence-generated content pieces have the potential to significantly impact sales conversions for the brand.

Large brands have a budget and very structured approach in using social media and influencer marketing (Barker). They have big teams that are able to look at seasonal sales peaks or learn how to expand into new markets. Small brands “lacking dedicated marketing teams often rely solely on drum beat marketing,” and they typically adhere to a fixed monthly marketing budget (Barker). As Mina mentioned, Rooted usually relies on the algorithm to get views and attract attention. Some small businesses have a fixed monthly budget for marketing and this will ensure that they have continuous presence on social media but not having targeted campaigns. 

We asked Mina about her overall marketing strategy and how she is able to use influencer marketing as part of that overall strategy.

We asked Mina about if she has experienced any challenges using influencer marketing and how she is able to measure the success or effectiveness of her influencer marketing.

We asked Adriana Autie, the Senior PR and Brand Partnerships Manager at Milk Makeup, how she is able to measure the effectiveness of influencer marketing.