Daniela Borrego

Feb 27, 2019

THE INFLUENCER RELATIONS PROGRAM, A GUIDE TO BUSINESS IN THE 21ST

This paper will review the influencer marketing business found in today’s advertising in a world
led by social media and the importance of an integrative negotiation approach in this strategy.

Companies around the world are constantly on the move to adapt to environmental changes; still,
one of the biggest challenges of today’s business world is the constant and long-term engagement with
customers in several B2C businesses.
Several sources are quoted throughout this text, all of them with one main idea in common and that is how
the marketing business around the world has changed for the better since social media has been around.

Social media has existed for over 10 years now, and not only has it brought people closer, but
people around the world have agreed on its power to affect business practices and their results. When
talking about social media, that can be any popular platform such as Facebook (the SM with highest reach),
YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat or any other internet platform that allows social interaction.
(Zeljko, 2018)
The amount of people engaged in social networks nowadays is extremely large across the world,
as a result of large phone manufacturing companies focusing on delivering smartphones to the market that
are each time more affordable than the previous one. The rapid and popular growth of SM has allowed for
several people to become more engaged in this social interaction than others, known as Influencers.

Talking about a more professional approach to the subject of influencers, in terms of Joel Balacker,
published author in the Harvard Business Review, a digital influencer is “a person who influences the
purchasing actions of other people”. Shwanika Narayan, reporter at the Los Angeles Business Journal
described it as “the new mouth-to-mouth practice on a global scale”. “These are people who have a significant
influence on public decisions regarding the products they (their platform of viewers) buy, the services they use
and the initiatives they are supporting.” Says Dominik Zeljko, published author of the main academic source.
Influencers are highly trusted personalities on the internet. Authors agree on the importance of credibility
that each influencer holds to their profile, they are personalities that people not only trust but trust their
judgement as well, this means that people will reach them to answer questions on new products, on
innovation or just for regular insight on products among other things. One Arabian publisher on the Arabian
Business Journal said “Judging by the figures, `legitimate' is certainly one way to describe it (Influencer’s
power). Social influencing is by definition the individual power of affecting consumers' purchasing
decisions due to knowledge, position or relationship. In other words, it is another form of advertising. And
in the UAE, the power of influencers is real”, followed by exposing numbers in the industry. This position
and relationship that is being mentioned is everything holding this influence in a position of power, not
because a company is granting the person such power, but because they have made it themselves by being
not only creative people and investing time and money into their network profiles, but by building
interpersonal relationships with their audience.

Currently, big, medium and small companies around the world are taking advantage of these new
“influencer thing” and their platforms to market their products at a huge scale, never before seen. The
practice basically involves using the influencer’s platform and their voice to sell a product, promote it-
whatever that product is as long as it connects with both the influencer and his/her audience. What makes
this method of advertising so popular, is its effectiveness in terms of reaching the target audience of the
product, the key segments while being able to track customer reach and impact very closely.

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Dominik Zeljko, Bozidar Jakovic & Ivan Strugar (2018) presented “New Methods of Online
Advertising: Social Media Influencers” published by the University of Vienna last year. The paper is made
up of an introduction to the concept of social media, then a second section dedicated to a theoretical content
of advertising on social media and the importance of influencers in this method, followed by a 2018 9-
month research conducted in Croatia wanting to prove how engaged people of young age were in social
media, which platforms, and their reactions to advertising. The research proved successful to the thesis of
how businesses around the world can reach different segments of the market through partnerships with
influencers, based on their business.

A similar study was performed by authors Marjike De Veirmann (PhD in the department of
communications at Ghent University), Veroline Cauberghe (Ghent University, department of
communications,), and Liselot Hudders (Ghent University, department of communications) called
“Marketing through Instagram influencers: The impact of number of followers” (2017), it was published in
the International Journal of Advertising. This time, this research paper not only wanted to prove how
effective it is for businesses to advertise through social media partnering with influencers, but how to choose
the right influencer, this was concluded through a series of studies. This is the first paper to address how an
influencer should be chosen and it came down to the followers ratio. Additionally, it touched on the subject
of new products of unknown brands, and how an influencer’s voice can either positively or negatively affect
a consumer’s choice and thoughts on a new brand/product. “The top criterion for assessing influencers in
network communities and social networks is the level of participation, frequency of activity and importance
on the market or community.”

Joel Backaler published author on The Harvard Business Review touched on the subject as well,
on sept 2018 he wrote an article called “To grow your business abroad, partner with local media
influencers”. He begins by explaining how this partnership can help to grow a brand rapidly in an
international context and accelerate recognition, simply by reaching audiences through social media
influencers through their platforms, mentioning how convenient it can be for a brand to sell customers their
opinion, get high responsiveness almost instantaneously from the audience, monitor their results easily, and
encouraging brands that enter new markets to make this form of advertising their core component of
marketing methods. He talks about 3 approaches:

LOCAL STRATEGY WITH LOCAL The summary of this strategy, like the name
IMPLEMENTATION suggests, is to leave marketing strategies in terms
of the local teams to work hand in hand with the
influencers, and having everybody, locally, run the
strategy.
GLOBAL STRATEGY WITH LOCAL This strategy suggests placing a strategy made by
IMPLEMENTATION the global team with common standards but leaving
it to local teams to have the autonomy to approach
the market and work with the influencer.
GLOBAL STRATEGY WITH GLOBAL A global framework established by the global
IMPLEMENTATION teams with standardized strategies for teams and
influencers, applied consistently in any country.

Likewise, the social media mogul as many like to call her, Kylie Jenner has taken over the internet
becoming a 20-year old billionaire with her cosmetic brand, all through social media advertising, through
her platforms and several others that include the participation of a number of other influencers in the online
beauty community. Shwanika Narayan has reviewed this situation in a column titled “How does a social
media post become a billion-dollar business? It’s all about the influencer behind it” posted in the Los
Angeles Business Journal, exposing numbers in the industry and certain theory behind it; some are the
revenue sales of the first months of 2018, where 20 beauty brands earned proximately $660 million through
Instagram advertising alone, as Influencer DB reported, an online platform that records influencer data and
tracks. It also mentions how much cheaper it is for a brand to market through this method, even though an
influencer can earn as much as the 50% of the revenue off the post, in some cases, or even charge as much
as $100,000usd per post, it is still way cheaper for brands to advertise this way and the ROI are
“outstanding”.

The Arabian Business magazine dedicated a post on the subject, titled “How the multi-billion dollar
social influencer business is likely to evolve”, published on October 2017, exposing other several numbers
of the industry and examples of influencers in the Middle East, like the popular Blogger-turned-
businesswoman Huda Kattan, a beauty influencer with incredible world-wide reach of the segment and
other influencers who have benefited brands and themselves off these collabs. A highlight from the review
said how
“71 percent of UAE residents aged 18 to 40 would take advice from social media influencers before
purchasing products or services online, with beauty, fashion and food being the top areas residents are most
likely to turn to for recommendations.”, and how influencer marketing on Instagram alone is expected to
become a $2billion industry in the following years.

Research has shown that people will mostly buy a product if they see it being advertised by a person
who they are following on their platforms. Creating a platform for connecting companies and influencers is very
useful and is a way to facilitate business and promotion. (Zeljko, 2018)
Using social media influencers to advertise products has proven to be a successful practice for many
brands; regardless of the product, there is always an online community willing to talk about it and someone
who will have a stronger saying on that product that people will trust, whether that is a technology product,
beauty product, something as big as a car, something as intangible as a music event or tourist destination,
a maternity product, there is no limit to influencer reach on various topics around the world, and just like
the business varies, so do the influencers. Because social media is a lifestyle that spreads across the world,
influencers are local to their communities, trends, culture, and other several factors.
Projections estimated a 2017 $11Busd revenue in sales. (Zeljko, 2018)

Internationally recognized youtuber and published author Mariand Castrejón from Mexico, known
as Yuya to the public, is one of the top 10 highest paid social media influencers in the world, with monthly
incomes of up to $100,000usd and she is only 25 years old. She has been interacting in social media
platforms for the last 10 years and has gained exceptional following over all her platforms, not only youtube,
which allows her to reach more than 40million young people in the Latin community with a single post,
and because she has been around for so long, she is a highly trusted internet personality whose opinion
could be translated to millions if it came down to a business collab. (Solá, 2018).
What has made Yuya and other social media influencers so successful in the online community, is
their ability to connect with people, deliver freshness of content and how people can relate to Yuya in very
different ways. This means that people are more likely to listen and follow their advice; this calls for a
mention of the old Hollywood technique to advertise a product on tv or radio using a famous personality,
like for example Michael Jackson drinking Pepsi, although it is an effective marketing strategy that will
probably prevail for a long time, social media engagement calls for an adjustment and adaptation of
businesses strategies in all industries to target different audiences and generations, and do it effectively.

A very popular way of maintaining a happy platform as a youtuber or social media influencer is to call
an advertisement a sponsorship, something Yuya is seen doing quite often; this means a brand will enter a paid
partnership with her, she will fully disclose that is it a paid partnership and that they have “happily decided to
collab on x,y,z sponsorship” because she has “tried the product” and really likes it, or “has been a fan of the
product for the longest time” and wanted to collab with the brand to bring her viewer base a good product,
amongst other explanations. Because she has a majority of Latin American viewer base, most brands that have
businesses in Latin America will target Yuya because of her impressive customer segment reach and credibility
and do a sponsorship.

To wrap the whole idea, it has been a necessity of several industries that work through the B2C method
to have a constant and long-term relationship with customers, investing a lot of money and time in their
marketing strategies to keep themselves relevant in the industry. With the birth of social media and figures like
influencers, the old methods of advertising for companies are no longer needed or even used; e-commerce and
digital marketing have become the accurate methods to reach large masses of consumers around the world simply
through a web platform, not only is this new method more effective in terms of targeting a specific niche of
customers better, but the results of the intervention can be properly measured and more importantly for
companies, it saves them time and money; even though a social media post using an influencer figure can cost
thousands of dollars, the return on this investment has proven to be increasingly effective over any other form
of advertising, removing the need to use intermediaries in the execution of the strategy and avoiding steps in the
B2C Advertising strategies that result in less time and money.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Backaler, J. (2018). To Grow Your Business Abroad, Partner with Local Influencers. Harvard Business
Review Digital Articles, 1–5. Retrieved from
http://search.ebscohost.com.ez.unisabana.edu.co/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=132006544&lang=
es&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Business, A. (2017, October 30). How the multi-billion-dollar social influencer business is likely
to evolve. Retrieved February 25, 2019, from https://www-emis-
com.ez.unisabana.edu.co/php/search/doc?dcid=592967890&ebsco=1

De Veirman, M., Cauberghe, V., & Hudders, L. (2017). Marketing through Instagram influencers: the impact
of number of followers and product divergence on brand attitude. International Journal of Advertising, 36(5),
798–828. https://doi-org.ez.unisabana.edu.co/10.1080/02650487.2017.1348035

How the multi-billion dollar social influencer business is likely to evolve. (2017). Retrieved from
https://login.ez.unisabana.edu.co/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthTyp
e=ip&db=edsens&AN=edsens.592967890&lang=es&site=eds-live&scope=site

Lynch, J. (2018, February 02). These are the 19 most popular YouTube stars in the world - and
some are making millions. Retrieved February 25, 2019, from
https://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-youtubers-with-most-subscribers-2018-2

Tyagi, C. (2018, June 29). SmallBiz-Technology : Influencer marketing: How to get YouTube to
work for your business. Retrieved February 26, 2019, from https://www-emis-
com.ez.unisabana.edu.co/php/search/doc?dcid=619188604&ebsco=1?

Solá-Santiago, F. (2018, September). Meet Yuya, the 25-Year-Old Vlogger Who Makes $100,000
A Month. Retrieved November 25, 2019, from http://remezcla.com/lists/culture/meet-yuya-25-
year-old-blogger-makes-100000-month/

Zeljko, D., Jakovic, B., & Strugar, I. (2018). New Methods of Online Advertising: Social Media
Influencers. Annals of DAAAM & Proceedings, 29, 0041–0050.
https://doi.org/10.2507/29th.daaam.proceedings.006

21ST-CENTURY INFLUENCE: How does a social media post become a billion-dollar business? It’s all
about the influencer behind it. (2018). Los Angeles Business Journal. Retrieved from
https://login.ez.unisabana.edu.co/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthTyp
e=ip&db=edsvlx&AN=edsvlx.737332853&lang=es&site=eds-live&scope=site