Influencer Marketing 101

Julie, could you just lay out the basics of influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is a pretty broad term, but it generally defines the marketing strategies in which businesses or brands or any kind of entity works with influencers. That could be YouTubers, bloggers, Instagrammers, content creators, in general, to achieve their marketing goals. That could be through a campaign that they’re working with them on, on creating content and putting it out to their channels. It could be something like a brand ambassadorship, where it’s a closer and more personal relationship with the brand. It takes lots of different forms, so there’s lots of different scope for doing partnerships and sponsorships and things like that.

How have you seen that evolve, since it started, I don’t know how many years ago, compared to how it is today?

Yes, it’s evolved a lot. I started doing this 13 years ago and influencer marketing didn’t exist back then. Nobody even knew what a blog was, when I started A Lady in London. Influencer marketing, kind of started coming into play, probably about 2013, 2014, for most people. Slightly earlier for some, slightly later for others. It depends on the vertical and the geography. It started out, very much, piecemeal. One-off partnerships or a brand would meet someone and they’d trust them, so they would do something with them, but it would just be that.

A few years later, brands started cottoning on to the idea that influencers could be really powerful in the marketing strategies and it became much more mainstream. Now, a lot of brands work with multiple people, they work through agencies, they have huge strategies for influencer marketing. There’s a lot more that they are doing with it now.

What do you think has fueled the growth?

In my opinion, the growth has been fueled by the success of influencer marketing, where brands have really seen their marketing goals achieved, whether that’s sales, community engagement or whatever it is, through using influences, as part of their marketing strategy.

Let’s say that I am a brand owner of a consumer product and I am looking to open up this new channel. What are the different types of relationships that are available, with an influencer?