INFLUENCER MARKETING

INFLUENCE MARKETING Influencer marketing is a form of marketingthat has emerged from a variety of recent practices and studies, in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole.

It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers. Influencers may be potential buyers themselves, or they may be third parties. These third parties exist either in the supply chain (retailers, manufacturers, etc.) or may be so-called value-added influencers (such as journalists, academics, industry analysts, professional advisers, and so on).

The first approach to that theory comes from a communication classic, The People´s Choice (Lazerfeld and Katz), a 1940 study on political communicationthat was also known as Multistep flow model, that claims that the majority of people are influenced by secondhand information and opinion leaders.

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association defines an influencer as "A person who has a greater than average reach or impact through word of mouth in a relevant marketplace. Keller and Berry note that influencers are activists, are well-connected, have impact, have active minds, and are trendsetters,though this set of attributes is aligned specifically to consumer markets.