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Conceptualising Influencer Marketing
Diederich BAKKER
Hanze University of Applied Sciences
[email protected]
Abstract
Social media has become a prolific tool for companies to build their brands. An effective way to interact with
stakeholders on social media has been the relatively new discipline of ‘influencer marketing’. Here, companies
engage social media stars to use their large fan-base to promote products and services on their brand’s behalf.
While related to the promotional tactic of word-of-mouth marketing, influencer marketing lacks a theoretical
foundation in the academic discourse. This paper aims to fill this gap by offering a conceptualisation to
operationalize the new discipline in practice. The conceptualisation proposes brand owners a methodology to
choose the right influencers for their brands and guides influencers to perform optimally with their fan base.
Lastly, a consumer perspective is taken to the discussion to emphasize the relevance of influencer marketing in
the consumer purchase decision-making process.
Keywords: Influencer marketing, social media, brand communication.
JEL classification: M37.
1. Introduction
Companies continuously are in pursuit of reaching their customers by using different and
diverse means of communication. Consumers on the other hand are overwhelmed with too
many commercial messages and try to avoid what they consider “unwanted communication”
as much as possible (Ries and Trout, 2001). At the same time, new forms of communication
are developed and applied which adds more and more to the everyday clutter. Especially digital
technologies promise brand communicators a more direct and effective way to reach and
communicate with customers. While traditional forms of communication are characterised by
a ‘one-to-many’ flow of information, the interactive nature of the internet allows better for a
dialogue with and among consumers. More recently, social media have become popular and
widespread with organisations and in their communication mixes. “Social media is the
umbrella term for web-based software and services that allow users to come together and
exchange, discuss, communicate and participate in any form of social interaction” (Ryan, 2014,
p. 151). Such social interaction takes place in many virtual places whereas social media sites
like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram have become synonymous with the category. Brands alike
have discovered these social platforms as effective ways to connect and interact with their
stakeholders (Tuten and Solomon, 2013). It is social media where one of the newest phenomena
in brand communication takes place: ‘influencer marketing’.
This paper will take a triangular view on influencer marketing by examining it from a brand,
influencer, and user perspective. It will foremost attempt to position this new digital marketing
discipline into a theoretical framework serving primarily marketers to implement influencer
marketing in their brand communications mix. To the author’s best knowledge, no systematic
conceptual framework that encompasses the three perspectives exists in the extant literature.
2. Influencer Marketing – Theoretical Foundations
Influencer marketing is not yet academically defined in literature. So far mainly online
encyclopaedias and business magazines have covered the topic at length. Influencer marketing
shows similarities to word-of-mouth marketing and can be considered as a digital form of
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word-of-mouth marketing. Kotler et al. (2002) define ‘word-of-mouth influence’ as a form of
personal communication about a product that reaches buyers through channels not directly
controlled by the company. Such channels are independent experts, consumer advocates,
consumer buying guides or personal acquaintances like neighbours, friends, or family members
(ibid.). In influencer marketing, these channels are social media platforms where consumers
inform their opinions and purchase decisions by following fellow consumers or internet
personalities. In commercial terms, influencer marketing is a form of advertising. While
traditional ‘word-of-mouth’ can be either a free form of communication or paid, modern word-
of-mouth in the internet age involves brand owners who engage people that have a large
followership on social media platforms to speak - for payment - on their brand’s behalf.
Additionally, paid influencer posts have to be marked as advertising by the posting influencer
so that users can fully identify paid from voluntary (genuine) endorsements. For this paper,
influencer marketing is defined as a process in digital marketing where opinion leaders
(influencers) are identified and then integrated into a brand’s brand communication on social
media platforms.
In the overall context it is important to understand the concept of brand purchase decision
making and to look at the roles people play in the decision process leading to a purchase.
According to Percy and Elliott (2016) there are five decision participants that are involved in
the lead-up of a purchase decision and the use of the product or service. The initiator suggests
the purchase; the influencer recommends or discourages; the decider makes the choice; the
purchaser does the actual purchasing and the user finally consumes or uses the product or
service. It is not obligatory that all roles are taken by different participants in the decision
process. For example with low-involvement product decisions, usually less people are involved
in the shaping of the decision. On the other hand, high-involvement product categories often
require an initiation and influence from outside the purchaser’s or user’s personal scope (ibid.).
Brand managers are required to understand the roles in the decision process and that marketing
communication is aimed not only at individuals but foremost at individuals in a role (ibid.).
Attached to these roles are the communication objectives that they can achieve on the brand’s
behalf. According to Percy and Elliott (2016) influencers can mainly accomplish
communication goals that are related to changing behaviour and in particular increasing brand
attitude. This understanding is important as brand managers need to instrumentalize the
individuals in their roles in order to effectively communicate. For instance, if a popular
influencer promotes a product on his or her Instagram page, then this product receives a positive
endorsement by the influencer and this in turn can positively affect the attitude towards this
product by the respective followership. The influencer’s post should therefore build on existing
brand awareness and should ideally lead to brand purchase intention among the intended target.
Therefore, an influencer can play a critical role in the brand purchase decision making process
and this critical role constitutes the main purpose of influencer marketing.
In summary, influencer marketing is a digital and paid form of word-of-mouth marketing where
communication takes place on social media channels. Influencers are part of the purchase
decision process where they can take on an important role on the brand’s behalf. The next
section will discuss the marketing relevance of influencer marketing from three perspectives,
i.e. the brand owner’s, the influencer’s and the consumer’s direction.
3. The Marketing Relevance of Influencer Marketing
3.1 The Brand Owner Perspective
Influencer marketing is a new form of digital communication that should primarily help brand
owners to accomplish communication goals (Brown and Hayes, 2008). Although affecting
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brand attitude can be considered as the overall communication goal, more defined and
operational goals need to be established.
In general, brands benefit when they participate in the social media space. Tuten and Solomon
(2014) point out that with social media, brands can engage consumers, enhance brand
reputation and image, build positive brand attitudes, improve organic search rankings, and
drive traffic to online and offline brand locations among others. The same metrics in social
media can be applied as in traditional online media to that effect. Advertisers can measure reach
and frequency, clickthroughs and sales conversions to name a few (ibid.). However, social
media offers more specific metrics that also better reflect the interactiveness of the channel.
The following example will illustrate how social media metrics can be applied to influencer
marketing.
Caro Daur is a fashion, lifestyle, and travel blogger mainly active on the social media platform
Instagram where she can account for 1.5 million followers (Lang, 2017, Instagram, 2018). In a
recent Instagram post that was marked as an advertisement (a legal requirement), Daur
uploaded a picture where she wears a hand bag with the following message attached to the post:
“Comeback the iconic @dior saddle bag is finally back #DiorSaddle” (Daur, 2018). Six days
after the initial posting, the post had received 38.620 likes and 380 comments. Likes and
comments are the obvious metrics visible to any user. The likes are a measurement related to
reach and also engagement. Likes will be visible on the follower’s personal pages which may
drive traffic to the original post by the influencer. The comments can be further analysed
quantitatively and qualitatively. Firstly, comment volumes and reply comments are measured.
Comment ratios and response numbers give a first hint at the popularity of a particular post.
Comparing these metrics to other posts by the same influencer or comparable influencers can
bring meaning. Sentiment is another interaction category for measurement. In a content
analysis for example, the nature of the comments (e.g. likeability) and expressed attitudes can
be examined. The quality of the comments is also relevant. A comment that only consists of a
symbol like a heart or a smiley icon shows less quality and sentiment than a written comment
in which the follower admires the product at length. Performance metrics such as lead
conversion, cost efficiencies, share of voice, or return on investment are very relevant but can
only be measured from the site owners with relevant access. However, qualitative performance
measures and in particular measures such as brand attitude can be taken into account. This
should be accomplished from a longitudinal perspective. Here, measuring and comparing brand
attitudinal developments among followers overtime and by evaluating brand sentiments is
mainly called for.
As shown above by the example, a single paid post by an influencer for a brand, can lead to
numerous measureable brand metrics both in quantitative and qualitative terms. Technically an
advertisement, such a post by influencers is content generated by users for fellow users. This
also makes them less intrusive as regular advertisements or endorsements by celebrity
spokespersons (Gründel, 2018). Not the corporation or a well-paid celebrity is communicating;
instead a fellow user speaks with the same language of the target audience. The word-of-mouth
marketing by users to users has become a true alternative to traditional celebrity sponsorships
especially for the ‘digital natives’ and has evolved into a multi-million dollar business
(Wakabayashi, 2018). Given the effect on brands and the financial dimensions of influencer
marketing, this marketing discipline requires thorough planning and justification. Influencers
bear brand responsibilities that need to be accounted for. Therefore picking the right influencer
for a brand becomes an important task for brand managers who have to assure a ‘brand-fit’ and
a ‘target audience-fit’ of the influencer with the brand in question.
When selecting a spokesperson, it is key to determine what it is about the person who presents
a message (the source) that effects the way how well the message is received (Percy and Elliott,
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2009). Or in other words, what characteristics does an influencer need to have in order to best
appeal and deliver a message to the intended target audience. A model that can assist marketers
to choose the most appropriate presenter (influencer) can be found in the VisCAP model of
source effectiveness that was introduced by Percy and Rossiter in 1980 (ebid, Percy and
Rossiter, 1980). The VisCAP model, summarized in table 1, provides a mechanism to
determine the visibility of a message endorser together with credibility, attractiveness, power,
and the main source characteristics in communication (Rossiter and Percy, 1997, Rossiter and
Smidts, 2001). The four components of the model are defined as follows (Percy and Elliott,
2016):
Visibility is how well-known or recognizable the source is from public exposure.
Credibility is divided into two components: expertise, which is the perceived knowledge of the
source concerning what is being advertised, and objectivity, the perceived sincerity or
trustworthiness in communicating what the source speaks for.
Attractiveness also has two components: likeability of the source and the perceived similarity
of the source with the target audience.
Power is the source’s perceived ability to “instil compliance on the part of the target audience”
(ibid.).
In influencer marketing, the four components of the model can easily be applied to evaluate
the appropriateness of the influencer (source) for the target audience and the intended brand
communication objectives. Visibility of the influencer is important to facilitate brand
awareness. A well-known influencer will help the brand to be more visible and gain awareness.
Credibility is similarly important in influencer marketing. The influencer should be an expert
in the product category advertised and especially for high involvement products,
trustworthiness of the influencer will reinforce brand attitude. In influencer marketing,
especially lifestyle, beauty/fashion, and travel related product categories are popular among
consumers (Connolly, 2017). Therefore, to be credible in these product types, influencers
should have gained expert status for example as bloggers or leading participants in the
respective online communities.
Table 1. VisCAP model of characteristics to look for in selecting influencers to match communication
objectives
Communication Objective Characteristic Description
Brand Awareness Visibility How recognizable is the influencer?
Brand Attitude Credibility
Expertise Influencer’s perceived knowledge of the product
category
Objectivity Sincerity or trustworthiness of the influencer in
talking about the product category
Attractiveness
Likeability Influencer is seen as personable or attractive
Similarity Follower consider influencer as personable and
similar to them
Brand Purchase Intention Power Perceived ability of the influencer to instill
compliance with the message
Source: adapted from Percy and Elliott, 2016
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The attractiveness component is particularly relevant in influencer marketing, where a
perceived similarity of the source with the target audience can be much easier achieved. It is
the strength of the discipline that emphasizes the peer-to-peer aspect in communication. In
general, influencers are “just” normal people and do not yet have gained celebrity status.
Attractiveness also counts for emotional advertising appeals (Percy and Elliott, 2016). Brand
attitudes can be enhanced when the influencer is a likeable and appealing personality.
Lastly, power can facilitate brand purchase intention (ibid.). Especially in an over-
communicated world where the effectiveness of traditional advertising is constantly under
question, influencer marketing is bound to be an alternative tactic in brand communication. It
is the ability of constant measurement and accountability that characterizes digital marketing
tools (Ryan, 2014). With social media, and therefore influencer marketing, sales conversions
can easily be traced from origin to final purchase (Tuten and Solomon, 2013). In a recent
consumer study on influencer marketing, 31% of the respondents claimed to have purchased a
product/service after seeing the product/service in an influencer’s post (Connolly, 2017).
Complementary to the brand owner’s perspective, it is imminent to understand, what aspects
are distinctive for an influencer to be successful and how these aspects correspond with the
brand’s perspective. The following section will examine such characteristics of influencers.
3.2 The Influencer Perspective
It was established above, that influencers make product and service related posts to their
followership on social media channels. Quantitatively, influencers gain prominence by the
amount of followers they have. The more followers the better, as posts receive a higher reach
and have more potential for further engagement (e.g. likes, retweets, comments). Although
there are no set criteria on the amount of followership, 50.000 followers on one channel (e.g.
Instagram) can be seen as a minimum. Prominent social media platform influencers have over
20 million followers such as makeup artist and beauty blogger Huda Kattan (24.3 million
followers on Instagram) (CBS, 2018). However such ‘macro-influencers’ are not necessarily
as effective as the so-called ‘micro-influencers’ who have a smaller fan-base but are able to
connect with target audiences more precisely (Neuendorf, 2018).
Other criteria can be taken to determine the quality of the influencer’s followership. Among
them is the ‘growth rate’ (monthly gain in followers) and the ‘qualityscore’ (Rondinella, 2018).
The former is valuable as long as the influencer’s followership grows on a monthly basis. The
qualityscore on the other hand measures how active the followers are (engagement) and this
metric also aims at determining overlaps in followership with other social media platforms.
Followers from different channels cannot simply be added to calculate reach (overlap).
Qualitative measurements are further important to determine the effectiveness of influencers.
For the influencer herself, both quantitative and qualitative metrics are important for her own
market value. In recent literature, both quantitative and qualitative criteria have been subsumed
into the ‘4 R’s’ of reach, relevance, resonance, and reputation (Deges, 2018, Nirschl and
Steinberg, 2018).
Reach is the main quantitative metric that has been discussed above. The amount of followers
is key for this metric. For relevance, the influencer has to ‘fit’ to several components, such as
personality, brand, content, and target audience. This highly relates to the criteria that are
important from the brand owner’s perspective. Resonance corresponds with several more
general and qualitative social media metrics that were introduced in chapter 2 of this paper.
Therefore, resonance is mainly concerned with the average interaction that an influencer is able
to elicit among her followership. Criteria such as ‘like follower rate’, ‘comments per post’
(sentiment rate), ‘topic distribution’, and ‘topic engagement rate’ are metrics that the influencer
can put forward in her favour (Deges, 2018). Lastly, reputation is closely connected to the
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influencer’s standing among her own followership and more importantly the intended target
audience. How can the influencer’s personality be characterized and in the brand’s interest, are
the personalities of the brand and the influencer congruent? The reputation can further be
projected towards the target audience as well. Is the influencer an expert in her field and can
she be trusted? This relates back to the credibility component of the VisCAP model where
expertise and objectivity are paramount in selecting a brand’s spokesperson. Sincerity and
trustworthiness are similarly important in the reputation metric (ibid.).
In summary, both quantitative and qualitative aspects play a role in the “market value” of an
influencer. On the one hand, influencers have to obey to the measurability of accessible digital
marketing metrics but at the same time, they also have to choose the right brands and companies
to not sell out too easily risking their own credibility and trustworthiness.
3.3 Consumer perspective
As discussed above, consumer decision making is dependent on the product category.
Furthermore, five decision participants take on roles in the decision making and use of the
product or service. Influencers are part of this decision making process and their main role is
to encourage a purchase. Consumers are particularly bound to follow influencers in product
categories that deal with fashion and beauty, lifestyle products, and travel related products and
services (Connolly, 2017). But consumers are continuously interested in other domains such as
finance, automobiles, and photography to name a few (Neuendorf, 2018).
Followers can be found predominantly in the young age groups. 19-24 year olds are more likely
to follow an influencer than older generations (G+J, 2017). The age and gender also predefines
the social media channel that followers use. Overall, Instagram is preferred by the younger age
groups (19-24) whereas Facebook is more popular among 25-34 year-olds (Connolly, 2017).
Men choose YouTube most whereas woman prefer Instagram (Connolly, 2017, Janotta, 2018).
Overall, YouTube and Instagram are the biggest social influencer platforms. Influencers
generate more than half of their incomes through these channels followed by Facebook,
individual blogs, Snapchat, and Twitter (Rondinella, 2018).
Users tend to acknowledge the fact that influencer marketing is paid advertising (G+J, 2017).
However, credibility and trust in the influencer are important factors for consumers. When
influencer posts look like advertising, digital natives have learned to turn away from ads or
skip them altogether (Wakabayashi, 2018). Consumers expect genuine and creative posts from
their influencers. Posts should be authentic and remain spontaneous (Ceyp and Kurbjewei,
2017). In a multi-national study with a sample of 4000 active social media users in the USA,
UK, France, and Germany, ‘authenticity’ was the main reason those surveyed chose when
trusting influencers online (Connolly, 2017). In the same study, ‘relevancy’ of an influencer’s
content was cited by 66% of the respondents as critical (ibid.).
4. Summary, Conclusion, Limitations and Further Research
Influencer marketing is growing globally and receives much attention in the marketing
community. In an over-communicated world, authentic content from influencers can break
through the clutter and help brands to build meaningful relationships with their target
audiences. The academic literature is scarce in this domain especially in finding suitable
theoretical foundations for relevant aspects of influencer marketing. Especially the brand
perspective requires a structural approach to professionalise the application of influencer
marketing. Brand managers need to understand consumer decision making and how influencer
marketing is located in this construct. A critical role plays the influencer who should speak
freely on a brand’s behalf. The VisCAP model is proposed as suitable for brand managers when
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selecting an influencer to ensure foremost a brand- and target audience-fit. Figure 1
summarizes the conceptualisation of influencer marketing as proposed in this paper.
Figure 1. Conceptualisation of influencer marketing
Source: own
Overall the taken perspectives in this paper from the brand-, influencer-, and consumer’s point
of view show coherence in several aspects. For brands, influencer marketing depicts parallels
to traditional branding tactics. Brands continuously need to build trust among their
stakeholders. When done right, influencers can help in building this trust for the endorsed
brands. Brand communication can better break through when it does not look and feel like
advertising. Influencers are most popular and successful, when they stay authentic and
spontaneous. And authenticity and trust in the influencer are the key aspects that consumers
see in their favourite influencers they like to follow. Figure 2 illustrates the dependencies from
brand to consumer that follow suit the brand to fit with the influencer’s characteristics and user
needs.
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Figure 2. Brand-resonance- and audience fit
Source: own
Influencer marketing is projected to grow to a multi-million dollar business. The managerial
implications are manifold. A macro-perspective will likely divert to a likely micro-perspective
in the years to come. Managers will have to engage influencers that will help them to reach
more fragmented markets. With social media being a medium predominantly used by young
users, it can be predicted that also older generations will be turning towards influencer informed
decision making in the future. Furthermore, the video trend on social media will continue.
Already, the social media channels Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram account for nearly 20
billion video views per day (Karhoff, 2017) and the video sharing site YouTube is already the
favourite social media channel for men. Brand managers will need to take into account that
their audiences will expect them to offer more video content (ibid.). This trend will likely
transfer as well to influencer marketing. The challenge in video will lie in finding the right
balance between a professional production of content and keeping it authentic – the very nature
of influencer marketing. At the same time, the risks in influencer marketing should not be
underestimated by decision makers. Just like any celebrity spokesperson, influencers bear
responsibilities on the brand’s behalf. But the companies are unable to control how influencers
behave and especially what they post online. Influencer marketing relies on this very
spontaneity of its protagonists. Yet brand managers are advised to take control measures that
may regulate the influencer’s behaviour online in order to protect their brands. ‘Morality
clauses’ in advertising deals with influencers show that the industry is moving in this direction
(Wakabayashi, 2018).
This paper bears several limitations. First of all, much of the cited literature derives from the
popular business press. Academic studies in this domain are still rare and data sources therefore
have to be checked diligently. Furthermore, the proposed theoretical foundations will have to
stand the test in the professional field. Especially the VisCAP model derives from the pre-
internet age and will have to be tested for its suitability in today’s practice. This offers an
opportunity for future research.
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