Influencer marketing: understanding the narrative being constructed by influencers marketing products to the urban Indian population

Abstract

Social Media has become an essential part of our lives today and with the onset of the pandemic in the past 2 years, the use of social media has grown exponentially. At present, there are more than 4.62 billion social media users around the world and every 9 out of 10 internet users are on one or the other social media platform. This roughly equates to an annualized growth of 10 percent or 13 new users every single second. With this comes Social-media marketing that leverages the power of social media networks to achieve the company’s marketing objectives. Influencer marketing is one of the strategies used under the umbrella of digital marketing, by aligning the brands with the influencer to reach the target audience in a non-traditional way. The increased screen time of users has fueled the growth of the influencer community. Social media Influencers are individuals or celebrities who have amassed large numbers of followers on their accounts as they post attractive content, videos, and photos that highlight their lifestyle, preferences, and merchandise preferences. Almost every influencer, after accumulating a certain reach amongst the audience, makes use of their agency to market or promote products or services in collaboration with companies interested in expanding their reach to consumers. The research will help us understand the narrative being constructed by different categories of influencers who are targeting the urban Indian population. The content entailing the promotion of various products being marketed will be analyzed to identify cohorts of influencer personalities and the themes followed by them and match them with the brand personalities of the products. Hence, the research will focus on identifying the products being marketed through the stories being told and the image being portrayed by the influencers. Based on the themes identified, statistical analysis will be used to understand how the influencers' level of amplification or degree of engagement is impacted by the content created and shared by them in terms of a match between the 4 parameters: Brand, content or the narrative, target audience and the influencer. The 4 levels of matches to gauge the nature and level of the match will be between Brand-Influencer, Brand-Content, Influencer-Content and Content-Target Audience. This will help in identifying the variable or the match most important for driving engagement and hence, what the brands must focus on while engaging in influencer marketing.