To understand Influence Marketing, it is necessary to divide the influencer and the marketing strategy into two components. Marketing Strategy is the tool used to promote your market reach is where more customers become aware of your products.
The tools vary from traditional billboards and TV ads using outbound marketing strategies and modern devices for marketing tools. New technologies and techniques such as inbound marketing but goals are still the same for the public and your target audience to become aware of your product or service.
What are the influence and the influencer?
The goal of marketing is to influence consumers to buy a product or service; this is where influences and people being influenced come into play; a clear example of this is the Super Bowl, where companies try to attract new customers by putting their brands on the sports players and the events.
According to Paco Underhill, the author of Why We Buy The Science of Shopping, he argues that human beings are always looking for status symbols by associating products with success due to people that are successfully using these products.
This means human psychology will influence them to consume these products or services due to the booming influence of influencers in society’s culture.
An example of the culture of the elites of society can be seen in how people dressed in the 1950s compared to present-day people like Elon Musk, the creator of PayPal and King of Tesla, Mark Zuckerberg founder of Facebook and Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, dressed casually in baggy trousers and jumpers.
The way of dressing of the famous, the rich, and the influential effect consumers’ shopping habits and lifestyles; we try to emulate those we admire and want to emulate.
The historian David Starkey author of the book Monarchy uses names like Henry and Edward adopted by English society due to those named being used by the successful would, in turn, leads to people adopting their names and their way of being.
What is an Influencer in the 21st-century?
The modern-day influencer is best understood, at least in the Western world, as figures like Kim Kardashian were influenced by the first prominent socialite Paris Hilton, the proto-form of what Kim Kardashian is today.
Kim Kardashian has 206 million, and Kylie Jenner has 216 million Instagram followers; this following, more importantly to marketers, gives companies wishing to sell their products automatically the potential to sell to over 400 million people that’s more people that live in the whole of the United States and North America.
When looking at these massive numbers and the potential of influencers, you can see the importance of social media in selling products and services.
However, it is essential to remember to match the products and services to a need and audience; for instance, Logan Paul’s 23 million subscribers on YouTube as of January 2022 argue that brands must sell products to the right audience.
Logan Paul uses the example of Instagram models selling female garments as pointless if their audience is male, single, and between the ages of 14 and 25 due to the growing rates of singleness in young adult men. The product doesn’t match the audience.
When selecting a product or service to market or promote, the product must change and adapt to new market trends. The marketer, Seth Godin, argues in his books the Purple Cow and This is Marketing; to be successful in selling products and services, you will need adaptability in your organisation or personal brand.
It this important to understand that your products marketing strategy needs to be adaptable for new products that go with your organisation or personal brand. This is important because if your brand cannot change to match new products and needs, you will go out of business and be outcompeted out of the market.
Have a look at the followers of Kyle Jenna and Kim Kardashian; Kim’s youngest sister is outcompeted in her in the beauty market because she is younger but unfortunately is unlikely Kim Kardashian could adopt a new strategy or a new brand for her business due to the way she has become famous with a sex tape and but implants is not a permanent or long-term strategy.
A simple way to understand inbound marketing
To quickly understand inbound marketing and how this can be used to become an influencer, it is simple enough to look at podcasts by Joe Rogan, Tim Poole, Hotbox by Mike Tyson and a host of other podcasts that use inbound marketing strategies.
Inbound marketing strategy is to create an audience. After you have given a free service, start to monetise the audience due to the trust that has been built; for example, the Trigonometry podcast sells men’s grooming kits due to promoting products by Man Scape and YouTube have a primarily male audience.
They are many different tools that can be used for inbound marketing, for example, podcasts, social media, YouTube, blogs and other forums that can be used to expand your audience; the critical distinction between inbound and outbound marketing is that the customer comes to you rather than you going to the customer.
Conclusion
Overall, from reading this article, you should have understood the difference between inbound and outbound marketing and the importance of understanding your audience and how to sell to different groups.
Case studies like the Kardashians and other influences and societal changes should have provided a comprehensive explanation of why people buy products and services or, more importantly, how you can sell your products and services.