The social media influencers as a source of marketing promotion

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Background. Recent marketing trends indicate that social media influencers represent a unique and relatively newer version of marketing tactic over the last few years as social media platforms have expanded, which have made it possible for individuals to form a wide public and for brands to reach them.

Aim. To put forward suggestions concerning the possibilities of successful implementing social media influencers in the work on advertising in Russia due to foreign social media platforms’ sanctions.

Methods. The methods of research are literature sources review, descriptive statistics and graphical method of data representative.

Results. The social media influencers are a subset of digital content creators defined in terms of their broad online audience, the distinctiveness of their brand, and relationships to business sponsor, which follows from a study of the scientific literature and the information collected during the research, we found that [1].

Influencer marketing, also known as influencer advertising, is a type of marketing strategy in which brands partner with individuals who have a social media following and use their influence to promote products or services.

Using the books and scientific articles and other various sources on classifications of social media influencers, we developed a single classification of social media influencers’ types (fig. 1).

 

Fig. 1. A classification of social media influencers

 

Undeniably, influencer marketing is lucrative. According to statistics by Influencer Marketing Hub, the Influencer market grew from $1.7 billion (2016) to $9.7 billion (2020). In 2021, it lifted up to $13.8 billion and last year, 2022, the market expanded to $16.4 billion [2].

As waves of wartime sanctions by foreign governments and private companies hit Russia, the country’s creator economy is in flux. The Meta Company was being placed on a list of extremist organisations and banned and YouTube banned Russian state media for receiving monetisation (receiving money from advertisements) have engaged a mass platform migration among Russian social media influencers and their audiences. For example, a lot of social media influencers are switching to alternative, Russian government-approved platforms like Yandex Zen, RuTube, and VKontakte (VK), Yappy, etc.

Conclusions. To remain relevant in the creator economy, brands should treat social media influencers as equal partners in their marketing efforts, rather than as hired guns. Building strong, collaborative relationships with proven influencers allows them to stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly evolving digital ecosystem.

Some tips for working with social media influencers:

1. Work only with social media influencers who have a logged-in status for a sole proprietorship;
2. Check their statistic and audience;
3. Choose the right social media platform;
4. If you are small- to mid-size entrepreneur with limited market budget → nano-influencer;
5. If you start generating more focused leads → micro-influencer;
6. If you want to bring awareness to your brand → macro-influencer;
7. If you work on brand awareness worldwide campaign and have large market budget → mega-influencer.

About the authors

Samara National Research University

Author for correspondence.
Email: suldina_03@inbox.ru

student, group 7240-380304D, Institute of Economics and Management

Russian Federation, Samara

Samara National Research University

Email: chrisanne@mail.ru

PhD (Pedagogical Sciences); Associate professor of the Department of Foreign Languages and Business Communications

Russian Federation, Samara

References

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