The Process of Selecting Influencers for Marketing Purposes in an Organisation

InfluencerInfluencers marketingMarketing practices are growing on social media channelsSocial media channels, while the usage of other mass-media channels is decreasing, prompting organisationsOrganisation to search for new tools with which to communicate efficiently with their target audiences. InfluencersInfluencers can affect purchase intentions if the audience identifies with them. For a successful collaborationCollaboration with an influencerInfluencers, an organisationOrganisation needs to ensure that the brand fitBrand fit is suitable, as the audience will become suspicious if the paid collaborationCollaboration is too apparent. In addition, an organisationOrganisation can ask an influencerInfluencers to perform many roles during the collaborationCollaboration. The objectives of this study, therefore, are to discover how organisationsOrganisation ensure brand fitBrand fit with the influencerInfluencers and to identify the roles fulfilled by the influencerInfluencers in the organisationOrganisation. To gain an understanding of the research topic, this qualitative research uses interviews with organisationsOrganisation, and interviews with media and influencerInfluencers agencies located in Finland. Comparing the findings with previous research, two main implications were found. First, to ensure brand fitBrand fit, the influencer’sInfluencers target audience is carefully checked to see if it matches the organisation’sOrganisation target audience; the values and contentContent of the influencerInfluencers are then checked in order to understand their character. The second implication is that the influencer’s rolesInfluencer roles include (among other roles) those of content creatorContent creator and protagonistProtagonist. The theoretical implications suggested additional steps for the influencer selection processInfluencer selection process in order to ensure the brand fitBrand fit is more accurate; there was also an implication that the extensive use of the influencer’s rolesInfluencer roles would result in more effective outcomes.