Who are specialized social media influencers and why they are key to 2022 marketing for brands? | by Athar Suhail | Jun, 2022

WHO ARE SPECIALIST INFLUENCERS?

Specialist influencers are the one, who have authority on a particular domain or field, and their posts are mainly related to that field. They have gathered considerable followers, who are interested in that subject and these followers regard influencer opinion highly.

The product or service recommended by them is regularly being purchased or liked by their audience. They can be in any domain such as electronics, luxury travel, photography, makeup advice or healthcare.

let’s take the example of John Smith. John is a hedge fund manager, who is interested in luxury travel and fine dining, to get an idea of the best hotels or the incredible restaurants for fine dining experience, he regularly watches Jay and Kate’s YouTube channel. The couple, who have command of luxury travel niche and subtly recommends the fine dining restaurants and hotels.

In the last 2 years, John and his family have spent one million dollars staying in luxury properties and eating the finest meals on the recommendation of the Jay and Kate channel.

John is not alone, he is among the millions, whose numbers are increasing every year in double digits, who are making their purchasing decisions on the recommendations of the influencers, these influencers are becoming game changer and their recommendation or downgrading can severely impact revenue and profit of the companies.

The holy grail of sales and marketing is how successfully the brand can resonate with the targeting audience, and since the influencer followers already are the target audience, the partnership with influencers can do wonders.

Let’s consider the case of the small electronics company White Pebble limited, which has launched high-end Bluetooth headphones but doesn’t have a huge marketing budget also as they have added new features they want the target audience to know about it as quickly as possible before their competitors can launch similar features.

After the brainstorming session regarding marketing their product, they approached Mark Adams who runs a YouTube channel. There he provides technical details regarding headphone features and also reviews and recommends them. He has more than 100k subscribers and around 2 million unique views every month. Even if 10% of his viewers, that is around one hundred thousand, buy headphones with an average cost of 100 dollars on his recommendation, then Mark’s channel can be responsible for around ten million sales per month. And indirectly, around 250 million dollars per year as research has shown that people who buy products based on influencer recommendations are more likely to recommend them to their friends and family as compared to buyers purchasing straight from the store.

If White Pebble’s headphones are recommended or positively reviewed by Mark, they can sell thousands of pieces quickly at a very low cost and also immediate brand awareness among the target audience at almost a peanut cost.

Why do people trust specialist recommendations more than celebrity endorsements?

One of the major differences between celebrity endorsements and a product recommended by the influencer is, the audience knows that the influencers have knowledge and expertise which the celebrity lacks, hence they trust the former more, Also the viewers would be watching the influencer’s videos for years and their opinion might be engraved in the long term memory of them, so there is a great chance that they will buy their recommended product

Also, as it is clear to people that celebrities are promoting the product in exchange of money, their endorsement can be effective in brand awareness that might result not in sales.

Take the case of Huda Beauty which has become a billion-dollar company, and whose founder, Huda Kattan is worth at least 500 million dollars. In 2010, she started a beauty blog and a YouTube channel. It didn’t take her long to have millions of followers who listen to her makeup advice and make their buying decision based on it. In 2017, She started selling her company-made eyelashes by taking a 10,000$ loan from her sister and within days, her eyelashes sold out at Sephora, Dubai, and were even selling at a premium on eBay.

The above example showed the power of influencers! Huda beauty became a billion-dollar company started just by one person and without spending any significant money on promotion just based on influencer’s recommendation.

Another example is that of channel Sartorial talks that I have watched grown significantly in the last two years. It is operated by a Charismatic French man, Hugo Giraud. He built his audience by sharing knowledge about history and details regarding men tailored suits, shirts and leather shoes.

Because of the unique content, that wasn’t available before, he has gained a cult following and the luxury men’s fashion brands that he is endorsing are not only getting significant eyeballs but also an exponential increase in sales.

Psychologists have written that people have strong faith in influencers, and one of the key reasons is how people have survived since the Neolithic Age. Before the concept of marriage, people used to live in the packs or groups and have survived based on group leader decision, and this psychology is ingrained at the base level of the human brain. Subconsciously the followers consider influencer as leader in their specialized domain hence they go along with influencer advise and recommendation.

Right now, the influencer marketing model is mastered by the startup and new generation corporations, and it’s time for big companies to join the bandwagon otherwise they will miss the bus.