HOW TO MAKE SALES
AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE:
WHAT VALUE IS DRIVEN BY
INFLUENCER MARKETING?
Samual Owen Vaughan Roberts
PEARSON COLLEGE LONDON
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HOW TO MAKE SALES AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE: WHAT VALUE IS DRIVEN BY INFLUENCER MARKETING?
INTRODUCTION
The spotlight has shifted onto influencer marketing over the past few years, with it
becoming an integral pillar in almost all marketing strategies for brands of all sizes, all
over the world. However, influencer marketing didn’t start with the blogger,
Instagram, or the #ad. An influencer is defined as:
“a person or group that has the ability to influence the behaviour or opinions of
others” (Cambridge English Dictionary, 2019)
which expands the group, and thus the history, of influencers significantly. Examples
of early influencer marketing could be Coca-Cola’s incarnation of Santa Claus,
Marlboro’s fictitious ‘Marlboro Man’, or Nike’s use of basketballer Michael Jordan to
sell trainers. More recently however, influencer marketing has become the by-word
for social media campaigns utilising public figures with large online followings to
endorse their products or services. Instagram, which in June 2018 declared it had
reached 1 billion active users (Business Insider, 2018), has undoubtedly been the
catalyst for the meteoric rise in influencer marketing. As popularity of influencer
marketing has risen, so too has the cost. With a sponsored post from Kylie Jenner
reportedly costing $1 million (Evening Standard, 2019) - there is a clear implication
that there is an inherent and substantial value associated with influencer
endorsement. This is supported by research into the topic, with 92% of marketing
professionals reporting they think influencer marketing is a useful tool (Influencer
Marketing Hub, 2018). And whilst it is impossible to deny the reach of these posts
given Kylie Jenner’s 140 million followers, or the significantly higher engagement rate
on Instagram vs other social media such as Facebook (AdWeek, 2017), it is essential
to critically assess the value this strategy generates and to identify the factors that
influence its success.
History of Influence: Coca Cola’s Santa Claus vs. Kylie Jenner (Coca-Cola, 2017 / Kylie Jenner 2018)
This report will seek to address how ‘influence’ is quantified, and moreover, what
value it drives and how that value is defined. The research will seek to prove or
disprove the initial hypothesis that:
“the perceived monetary return from influencer marketing strategies is over-inflated”
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The strategy for testing this hypothesis is threefold:
1. Literature review
Despite the phenomenon of the ‘social media influencer’ being relatively new, there
is already an ever-growing body of research into the field – due in part to its
perceived profitability. This review of existing literature will help define the
parameters and scope of this research to ensure it provides a new insights into the
topic. Furthermore, consultation of existing theory can be put to the industry
professionals in the next stage of the research…
2. Interviews with industry professionals
Influencer marketing, and social media as a whole, can be defined as an
ecosystem (Brown & Hayes, 2008) and (Cavazza, 2012), a fragile yet complex
network of stakeholders whose actions effect all parties involved: from the platform;
to the agency; to the client; to the influencer; and the end user/consumer. The
actions of each party causing reaction from other parties in the system – and
understanding these interactions will be key to determining the value of influencer
marketing. Using the knowledge gained from the literature review, I will question
representatives of three of these parties to find if their lived experience reflects the
findings of the research, or contradicts it. This will provide a wealth of rich qualitative
data from those most closely involved with the industry. There will be three interviews
with three different stakeholders from the process:



The client, in this case L’Oreal, who use influencer marketing as part of their
strategy to promote new products
The agency, who act as intermediaries between the client and influencer to
ensure correct execution of the campaign
The social media manager, manages the relationship with the influencer
3. Data Testing
Using the findings of the two previous research methods, we will run an actual
influencer campaign with L’Oreal Paris’ cosmetics brand. The design of the
campaign will reflect the recommendations from the earlier stages of the research,
and the resulting data should allow conclusions to be drawn on the validity of the
earlier findings in the context applied.
AIMS
The three research methodologies will provide answers to several key questions



How is the success of an influencer campaign defined?
What factors influence the success of a campaign?
What is the most effective strategy for a successful influencer campaign?
Which, in turn, will allow us to prove or disprove the initial hypothesis that “the
perceived monetary return from influencer marketing strategies is over-inflated”.
However, as influencer marketing continues to rise in popularity, a defeatist attitude
is not beneficial. I hope that by finding inefficiencies and shortfalls in influencer
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marketing, this research will highlight areas for improvement and allow
recommendations on developing an effective influencer strategy.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The growth of influencer marketing is aptly shown by the number of influencer
marketing agencies – in 2015, there were just 190 influencer marketing agencies in
the US, by the end of 2018, that figure had risen to 740 (Influencer Marketing Hub,
2019). This saturation of the market is parallel to the rise in popularity, so far in 2019
there have been an average of 2 million advertisers per month (West, 2019),
contributing to a projected market value of $8bn this year (Business Insider, 2019).
The statistics are endless, the point is clear – influencer marketing is a huge market
and it’s rapidly expanding. With this expansion, the need for research into the field
becomes ever greater. Perhaps the earliest research into social media influencer
marketing was the eponymous book ‘Influencer Marketing’ by Duncan Brown and
Nick Hayes from 2008. The book was visionary in some respects, forecasting the
inevitable decline of mass media and the importance of ranking influencers and
choosing the correct influencer for your business. And whilst some of the underlying
psychology beneath influencer marketing highlighted in the book has stood the test
of time and ever-changing platforms – some of its assertions haven not. For example,
the book states that ‘influencers do not do the buying, are not obvious, cannot be
bought, and start off neutral - which is why their potential to affect sales is so great’
(Brown & Hayes, 2008). This certainly was true of the original ‘influencer’, now more
commonly referred to as ‘thought leaders’, who were prominent voices in their
online communities – be it beauty, fashion, food or otherwise. Since Brown & Hayes’
book was published, a dichotomy has formed between influencers in this sense of
the word, and online celebrities who are paid by brands to promote products.
This in turn has led to increased legislation around influencer marketing. In
September 2018, the Advertising Standards Agency released new guidelines
surrounding paid endorsement declaration, which declared that any endorsement
of a brand, product or service for which the promoter has been paid must be
declared on the post (ASA, 2018). Preceding this was Instagram introducing the ‘In
Paid Partnership With’ feature in October 2017, which aimed to make it easier for
influencers to avoid prosecution on the issue and to make it clearer for users what is
an organic endorsement, and what they have been paid to say. This lies at the heart
of the increased red-tape around influencer marketing – distinguishing authenticity.
The academic response to these developments has been research into the impact
of sponsorship declaration and the importance of authenticity. Chen Lou and
Shupei Yuan’s (2019) report in the Journal of Interactive Advertising proposes an
integrated model, the Social Media Influencer Value model, which aims to account
for the roles of advertising value and source credibility. The model attributes
quantitative values to a range of qualitative factors: the informative value of
influencer-generated content, the influencer’s trustworthiness, attractiveness, and
similarity to the followers (Lou & Yuan, 2019). Whilst I would agree it is useful, in terms
of comparison and relativity, to attribute a numeric value to influencer authenticity –
I would argue it is perhaps an oversimplification, and that the myriad factors that
make up an influencers ‘authenticity’ are too varied to be reduced to a single
figure. This point of view is supported in the report ‘Authenticity under threat: When
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social media influencers need to go beyond self-presentation ‘ (Audrezat, et al.,
2018) – where it is argued that evaluating the impact of intrinsic motivation vs.
commercial motivation requires qualitative approach - based on influencer–brand
partnership observations, influencer interviews, and a comparison of these data
sources. This is the approach that will be applied in this research, however the
answer sought in this research concerns value, rather than authenticity.
There are statistics that support the decision to direct the research into this area. In a
2018 survey by leading influencer marketing researchers Influencer Marketing Hub
found that 76% of marketers identified measuring ROI from an influencer campaign
as the main challenge of influencer marketing (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2018). This
is further supported by research conducted by influencer agency Linqia in the
previous year, where 79% identified it as the main challenge. This isn’t a new issue
facing marketers, and certainly isn’t unique to influencer marketing. Defining and
measuring the value of marketing campaigns is a long-debated, and potentially
very lucrative endeavour. Various models and calculators have been proposed to
measure ROI from marketing activity, and Tia Fisher makes a useful comparison
between those developed for social media marketing in her article ‘ROI in Social
Media: a look at the arguments’. The article highlights an interesting shift in the
definition of value for marketers, through as she puts it: “attempting to reinvent the
acronym or the meaning – ROI really means Return on Influence, or Return on
Engagement is the new ROI, and on and on…” (2009) [explain why it’s not relevant
to Instagram]
Whilst Fisher’s reports lays the foundations for debate that continues today, it is
relevance has to be called into question. As is often the case with research
surrounding technology, the findings can very quickly become dated and obsolete
due to the rapid-changing nature of the platforms. For example, Instagram hadn’t
launched at the time of publishing of Fisher’s report. With that said, an interview from
the article with marketing Professor Jacob Morgan raises a point pertinent to this
research:
“If we are going to start looking at social media in terms of quantifiable numbers
then we need to start understanding how much our customers are worth, and this
means looking at more than just how much a customer spends. A customer’s value
is not equal to how much they spend at your store. It’s far more.” (Fisher, 2009)
Whether or not this statement applies to influencer marketing is one of the major
questions for this research, and is laid out in the latter half of the hypothesis.
The other main consideration of this research is how the value, once defined, is
maximised. An article by Elinor Cohen argues that influencers have lost their
influence, discussing a topic touched on earlier of the dichotomy between
influencers and online celebrities. Cohen proposes that the title of influencer has
become so wrongly synonymous and interchangeable with online celebrity that a
new name is required – a ‘thought-leader’ (2018). The report is a thorough
examination of the current landscape, and asks a number of very useful questions
such as – what do follower counts and likes actually mean? And, can you really tell
that new business was generated by a particular collaboration with a specific
influencer? The answers given in her article are more opinion than fact, however this
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research will seek to answer them through the data testing with a real influencer
campaign, at a later stage. The overarching argument of Cohen is that the pivotal
factor for success is picking an influencer (or thought leader) who’s expertise covers
the product or service you are trying to promote – they must care about their niche,
and have an audience that respects their opinions in said field (Cohen, 2018).
Method
Findings Interviews
The purpose of this stage of the research was to find if the experiences of
professionals with first-hand experience of influencer marketing resonated with the
findings of academia, and to lay the foundations for the data-testing in the final
stage of the research. Careful to get a representative sample of the industry I
approached people from different sides of the process to gain a varied perspective.
Those interviewed were:

Alfie: Online Brand Manager for L’Oreal Paris
Alfie’s role as an online brand manager is to ensure the commercial success of the
brand across different online retailers, whilst maintaining an image that resonates
with the brand’s ethos. Part of this includes the use of influencers to drive traffic to ecommerce sites, and ultimately to convert this traffic into sales. The interview with
Alfie provides the unique perspective of the client - someone looking to justify their
investment in influencer marketing by showing it drives value.

Samantha (Sam): Social Media Manager for NYX Professional Makeup
Samantha works directly with influencers to ensure the execution of the campaign
meets the expectation of the client, whilst maintaining a healthy working relationship
with the influencer. This perspective offers insight into the finer details of influencer
marketing, addressing some of the less easily quantified value that the strategy
generates such as consumer response, rather than just engagement.

Charlie: Influencer Agency Owner at The Travel Project
As someone who is paid to deliver influencer campaigns, Charlie has unparalleled
insight into the industry. This insight answers very interesting questions around how
they define value, and how they best utilise influencers to maximise that value. The
insight gained from this interview was instrumental in the design of the final stage of
the research.
Each interview started with a brief overview of how the interviewee used influencer
marketing and what they sought to gain from it. The three set of responses were
entirely different, which was positive as it showed that the reflection of the industry
be a rounded one – consisting of several different viewpoints. Alfie, for example, was
primarily concerned with the financial reward of working with influencers. Sam’s
focus on the other hand was driving awareness, and Charlie’s role as owner of an
influencer marketing agency is to strike a balance between the two.
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Word cloud generated from the transcripts of the interviews
With the findings from the literature review that 79% of marketers identify measuring
ROI as the primary challenge when using influencer marketing (Linqia, 2018) – I put
the same question to my interviewees. The responses from Alfie and Charlie were
relatively similar, the nuanced but profound difference was that whilst Alfie directly
mentioned the monetary ROI, Charlie’s response was:
“Every campaign we run will require different KPI’s, and defining the correct KPI’s is
one of the most difficult challenges.”
His reasoning behind this was that, unlike Alfie, a lot of his clients aren’t looking for
straightforward conversion to sales. Some of his clients are looking to raise
awareness, some to increase engagement – to quote him directly: ‘I’ve actually
never worked on a campaign where it was about selling products’. This is in stark
contrast to Alfie, who told me
“My main interest sales, if influencers are able to do that [sell products] – then I’m
interested in working with them. The main issue I face is discerning what impact a
particular influencer has made to the sales of the product they’re promoting.”
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This provided a fresh insight that had as yet not been considered – the significance
of context. The industry, brand or product will all impact how value is defined for an
influencer campaign. This highlights a potential shortcoming of this research – whilst
it would be beneficial to consider the difference in how value is defined in different
contexts (i.e. the beauty industry versus the technology industry), the scope of this
research allows only for an analysis at a general level of how value is defined.
Sam’s response to this question was equally as interesting. She claimed the biggest
challenge she faced was choosing which influencers to work with. She cited the
recent backlash against L’Oreal for the ‘racist’ views of their first transgender
influencer, Munroe Bergdorf (Time , 2017). This is supported by a contrasting study by
eConsultancy whose survey found that ‘identifying the right influencer’ was the
primary concern of marketers, with it being the choice of 73% of respondents (2016).
Naturally, this prompted the question – how do you go about choosing which
influencers to work with? Sam then went on to explain the model she uses for
categorising influencers – firstly they are categorised by number of followers
(categories illustrated by the model below), then they are assigned into ‘tribes’. The
method for this is, as she put it, ‘more touchy-feely’, and involves working out what
the influencer stands for, what their niche is and who their audience are. Some
examples of these tribes are the Fitness tribe, the Make Up Artist tribe, the Drag tribe.
This then allows them to tailor each influencer campaign along two axes: spend,
which usually dictates number of followers; and intent, which dictates which ‘tribe’.
Influencer tier by number of followers
Conversely, Charlie proposed that simply using number of followers was too much of
a simplification. He went as far to say that simply the rate of engagement, often
used as a more comprehensive metric than follower count, is sometimes itself too
much of a simplification. He drew my attention to a recent campaign his agency
ran for an experiential hotel in Cornwall – the page they used to promote it had <10k
followers, and the post had a comparatively low engagement rate of 0.6%, so if they
were using these metrics to measure the success of the campaign – it would be
considered a failure. However, the engagements the post had were of great quality,
with couples saying they wanted to get married there to young families eager to
book amongst the comments. This was testament to the page’s authoritative voice
in the adventure travel community, which brings us back to the earlier point from
Elinor Cohen that a brand would benefit far more from working with a ‘thought
leader’ rather than an influencer. (Cohen, 2018). In Charlie’s words, ‘not all
engagements are created equal’.
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When choosing influencers, Alfie’s main consideration is the intended purpose. He
described a sales funnel – with action at the bottom and awareness at the top
(illustrated below). He gave two examples to make his point – if he is launching a
CELEBRITY
MACRO INFLUENCER
MICRO INFLUENCER
THOUGHT
LEADER
Alfie’s Sales Funnel/Influencer Decision Model
franchise, his primary concern will be awareness. In doing so, he isn’t concerned
about the authenticity of the campaign – as its value comes from being on its
intended audience’s radar. On the other hand, if he is looking to improve the sales
of an existing product, he would look down the tunnel towards micro influencers or
‘thought leaders’ to recommend the product to their loyal, engaged audience.
The next topic for discussion was what impact authenticity has on the success of an
influencer campaign, as they defined it. In particular – what impact sponsorship
declaration (‘#ad’, ‘#sponsored’ etc…) has in the eyes of the consumer. The
legislation around this, as touched on in the literature review, is that if a post is paid
for it has to be declared clearly on the post (ASA, 2018). Charlie said that he is
reluctant to have to include sponsorship declaration if he can avoid it, as it carries
‘disingenuous connotations’. He likened it to TV advertising – when you’re watching
TV and there’s an advert break, you know you’re watching an advert. Instagram is
not somewhere you are expecting to see an advert, so in some ways you are
‘duping’ your followers. Despite that he went on to say that it differs on a case by
case basis, and that if you have a slightly ‘younger demographic that have grown
up around sponsored social posts, it’s far more likely they’ll just digest it as part of
their daily content intake’. This starkly contrasts some of the research done into Gen
Z on social media. The research challenges what they call a ‘common
misconception’ that young people are easily influenced by celebrity opinions,
stating in the report ‘The Power and Paradox of Gen Z’ – the headline being that
celebrity influencer sway over Gen Z is, in fact, very limited if the celebrity is trying to
flog something outside their realm of expertise, while influencers with mega
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popularity are ‘downright unappealing’ (We Are Social, 2019). The importance of
this can’t be overstated – by 2026 Gen Z are predicted to become the largest
consumer group.
On NYX Professional Makeup, the brand has a policy of not paying influencers for
any promotion. I questioned Sam on why this is, and what it means for the brand.
She responded that in her experience it has resulted in more authentic
endorsements, and that this strategy has been instrumental in them becoming the
brand ranked third in EMV. EMV, or Earned Media Value, incorporates every
communication around a brand. This includes mentions, reposts, shares, and reviews
– and assigns a value to each that allows brands to be relatively compared
(MediaKix, 2018). She did however acknowledge that her brand are in a unique
position, having grown with social media, and that for new brands they may have to
use a combination of both paid and organic media.
Data Testing
The insights from the interview stage of
the research allowed the design of a
fully-informed investigation into the
value of influencer marketing. Working
alongside Alfie from L’Oreal Paris – we
devised an influencer campaign with
the intention of having as pure a
reflection of ROI as possible. The design
of the campaign was as follows: four
influencers would create their own
shade of L’Oreal Paris lipstick, with the
tagline ‘Signed by [influencer]’. The
packaging of the lipstick would have
their signature embossed on the side in
gold (see picture inset). The campaign
was run in partnership with. The Prince’s
Trust, with 20% of all profits going to the
charity, and the influencer’s were not
paid to promote the products. The
significance of this was that they did
not have to declare sponsorship for
posts with the ‘#ad’ –the reasoning
behind this being that both the literature review and interview had revealed
negative consumer connotations around sponsored posts.
One of the most frequently cited issues around influencer marketing is measuring ROI
(Linqia, 2018) & (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2019). To address this, the products were
launched exclusively with one retailer (Amazon) and, as completely new products
to market, the only promotional activity around the products came from the
influencers. This meant that any sales of the lipstick came as a direct result of the
influencer campaign. It was, as Alfie put it, ‘the purest test for ROI on an influencer
campaign L’Oreal have ever performed’.
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There were four influencers chosen for the campaign, each with their own
corresponding shade of lipstick. They ranged in followers from 56.5k to 4.5m, and
they ranged in terms of the communities they belonged to: Iskra (4.5m followers) is a
body positivity model; Kaushal (874k followers) is a beauty blogger and MUA; Emily
Canham (663k followers) is a lifestyle blogger; and AJ Ododu (56.2k followers) is a
television presenter. The reasoning behind the variety in follower count and
communities was to test what effect both had on their ability to sell products – how
much does follower count and relation to the product affect influence?
JULY 11
Instagram from Emily Canham (@emilycanham) promoting the lipstick, with 36k likes
The campaign launched in late mid-June, meaning at the time of writing the
campaign has been running for 6 weeks. The results are included below:
Community
Iskra
Kaushal
Emily Canham
AJ
Body Positivity Blogger
Makeup Blogger
Lifestyle Blogger
Television Presenter
Followers
Unit Sales Since
Launch
Sales as a % of
Followers
4.5m
872k
662k
56.2k
459
3,690
1,261
77
0.01%
0.42%
0.19%
0.14%
What is immediately clear from the results is that follower count does not have any
bearing on an influencer’s ability to sell products. Despite having over four times as
many followers as any of the other influencers in the campaign, Iskra had the
second lowest unit sales of the lipstick, and by far the lowest sales as a % of followers.
This resonates with the findings of both the literature review and the research of Elinor
Cohen, as well as the primary research through the interview stage.
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Further to this, Kaushal – the influencer most heavily involved with the beauty
community – far outperformed any of the other influencers in both unit sales and
sales as a % of followers. This is testament to the importance of authenticity in
influencer marketing. In a discussion after the campaign, Alfie explained why he
thought this was the case:
“People follow Kaushal because they trust her opinion on beauty products. She is an
out-and-out beauty blogger, whereas the other influencers aren’t as heavily
involved in the beauty community. To put it this way – I wouldn’t choose to buy a
pair of football boots if Kylie Jenner told me to, but I just might if Cristiano Ronaldo
did.”
CONCLUSION
The overarching purpose of this research has been to discover what value is driven
by influencer marketing, with three aims laid out at the start to aid in its definition.
What has become clear from the research is that value in influencer marketing can
have several different definitions. To take Alfie’s point from the interview section:
influencers with large online followings can be valuable to your brand if awareness is
the value sought; however the results from the data testing show that if sales are the
desired value, follower count has little to no bearing. In response to the first aim then,
to find out how the success of an influencer campaign is defined, it is essential to
consider what value the campaign seeks to generate during its design and through
its evaluation. The two desired values determined from this research appear to be
sales or awareness, with the two being mutually exclusive if we are to take the
findings of the data testing at face value, this however leaves space for further
research to determine what other types of value can be derived from influencer
marketing.
As the hypothesis of this research has been “the perceived monetary return from
influencer marketing strategies is over-inflated”, there has been a bias towards the
direct ROI from influencer campaign as opposed to merely awareness. As my own
background is in sales, this was professionally more insightful. Upon reflection, one
thing the hypothesis failed to consider was what investment has been made in the
strategy for the return to be ‘over-inflated’. It was formed after headlines such as
that referenced in the introduction of Kylie Jenner’s sponsored posts costing $1
million, but what has become clear is that this is not necessarily the case. For one,
Sam pointed out at the interview phase that the brand she works with don’t pay
influencers for campaigns, meaning all their content is organic. Their investment in
influencers, one can assume, is relatively low – however the brand has the third
highest Earned Media Value (EMV) amongst all cosmetics brands. Further to this, the
influencers involved in the data testing were not paid to promote the products –
partly because doing so would have meant they had to declare sponsorship– but
despite mixed results, the campaign can be defined as a success from an ROI point
of view due to the minimal investment.
There have been several key findings in determining the most effective strategy for
an influencer campaign. As previously mentioned, it is important to first determine
the measures of success (value or awareness), but this research has shown that by
far the most significant factor is choosing the right influencer for the campaign. The
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idea of a ‘thought leader’, or someone with a relevant voice in their field, was
presented during the literature review, with the premise being that users who have
an authoritative voice in their community are far more valuable than someone with
just a large following. This was shown to be true by the results of the data testing –
where Kaushal, the only bonafide beauty influencer, far outperformed any of the
other influencers, even those with a larger following.
Sam Roberts
Word Count: 4,710
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