Bachelor’s thesis

International Business

2020

Agafa Daniel

INFLUENCER MARKETING AND

THE PERCEPTION OF
CONSUMERS
BACHELOR’S THESIS | ABSTRACT

TURKU UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES

Bachelor of Business Administration, International Business

2020 | pages: 74, number of pages in appendices: 7

Agafa Daniel

INFLUENCER MARKETING AND THE

PERCEPTION OF CONSUMERS
During the recent years, companies of different sizes have started to allocate more resources
towards digital marketing. The digital marketing space is growing at a fast rate year by year.

There are many forms of digital marketing ranging from e-mail marketing to search engine
marketing. One marketing form which has also been on the rise is influencer marketing, which
this thesis is based on.

The researcher studied the topic of influencer marketing with the intent of focusing on mainly
micro-influencers.

The first objective of the research was to find reasons behind the efficiency of micro-influencers,
these influencers have a smaller following compared to their counterparts, macro and mega-
influencers. The second objective was to define the most important social media platforms used
by influencers. Lastly, the third goal was to study the perception of consumers towards
influencer marketing, whether they feel this form of marketing to be aggressive or invasive or do
they see influencer marketing in a neutral or even in a positive light.

The thesis was constructed using both primary and secondary data. The researcher first used
secondary data in the form of literature such as books, magazines, existing studies and online
sources, to form a solid base for the construction of the primary data. The created primary data
was in the form of surveys targeted to consumers and an interview conducted with a Finnish
YouTuber/ social media influencer.

Both forms of data provided similar results. The main reason behind micro-influencer efficiency
in influencer marketing being their ability to more effortlessly interact with their followers,
resulting in creating a very relatable, trustworthy and approachable image, either by purposely
trying to create that kind of image or by organically creating it as a ‘by-product’.

Results also revealed that Instagram and YouTube are the most used social media platforms by
consumers, therefore they hold the most potential value for influencers and influencer
marketing.

Lastly, results revealed the consumer’s perspective towards influencers and influencer
marketing is quite positive, even individuals who do not follow influencers on social media, do
not see paid posts as a negative element, in addition to a majority of respondents would at least
consider buying a product or service through an micro-influencer.

KEYWORDS:

Marketing, Social Media, Influencers, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Influencer Marketing

Contents
1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Background of Thesis 1
1.2 Thesis Structure 2
1.3 Research Questions and Objectives 3

2 LITERATURE REVIEW 4
2.1 Marketing 4
2.1.1 From Marketing 1.0 to Marketing 4.0 5
2.1.2 Digital Marketing 6
2.1.3 The AIDA Model 9
2.1.4 The AIDA Model in Digital Marketing 9
2.1.5 The 5 A’s Model 10
2.1.6 Digital VS Traditional Marketing 11
2.2 Social Media Platforms 14
2.2.1 Instagram 15
2.2.2 YouTube 17
2.2.3 Facebook 19
2.2.4 Reviewing the Platforms 20
2.3 Influencer Marketing 23
2.3.1 Case ‘Urban Fit Streetwear’ 25
2.3.2 Finnish Social Media Influencers 27
2.3.3 The Consumer’s Perception of Influencer Marketing 30

3 METHODOLOGY 33
3.1 Data Collection 33
3.2 Quantitative data collection 34
3.3 Qualitative data collection 34

4 RESULTS 36
4.1 Survey 36
4.1.1 Demographics 36
4.1.2 Social Media 38
4.1.3 Influencer Marketing 39
4.2 Interview 44
 4.2.1 Introduction/ Working in Social Media 44
4.2.2 Working in the Social Media Influencer Space 47
4.2.3 Consumers/ Followers 50

5 CONCLUSIONS 53
5.1 Limitations and Further Research Suggestions 55

6 REFERENCES 57

7 APPENDICIES 63
7.1 Appendix 1: Survey 63
7.2 Appendix 2: Interview 67

CLICK HERE TO ENTER TEXT. .................................................................................. 7

FIGURES

Figure 1 - An example of SEO. Source: Google search results ..................................... 7

Figure 2 - An example of SEM. Source: Google search results, 2020 ........................... 8
Figure 3 - An example of SMM. Source: ASOS YouTube channel ................................ 8
Figure 4 - The New Customer Path: The 5 A’s. Source: Daniel, 2020 ......................... 10
Figure 5 - Facebook Ad Manager. Source: Daniel, 2020............................................. 13
Figure 6 - Facebook Ads Insights: Results of an ad campaign. Source: Daniel, 2020 . 14
Figure 7 - An example of a paid post from an influencer. Source: www.instagram.com,
2020 ........................................................................................................................... 17
Figure 8 - An example of a sponsored video from a YouTuber. Source:
www.youtube.com, 2020............................................................................................. 18
Figure 9 - An example of a sponsored Facebook Live stream from an influencer.
Source: www.oberlo.com, 2020 .................................................................................. 20
Figure 10 - An example of a ghost follower. Source: Kicksta, 2016 ............................. 21
Figure 11 - @mmiisas on Instagram. Source: www.instagram.com ............................ 27
Figure 12 - @lindajuhola on Instagram. Source: www.instagram.com ........................ 28
Figure 13 - @mikkoputtonen on Instagram. Source: www.instagram.com .................. 29
Figure 14 - Bar graph of survey respondent gender. Source: Daniel, 2020 ................. 36
Figure 15 - Pie chart of survey respondent current status. Source: Daniel, 2020 ........ 37
Figure 16 - Respondent's ability to identify a paid post. Source: Daniel, 2020 ............ 40
Figure 17 - Respondent's opinion on different types of influencers. Source: Daniel,
2020 ........................................................................................................................... 42
List of Abbreviations (or) Symbols

CPM = Cost Per 1,000 Impressions or Cost Per Mille

SEM = Search Engine Marketing
SEO = Search Engine Optimization
SMM = Social Media Marketing
PPC = Pay Per Click
SME = Small and Medium Enterprise
WOMM = Word Of Mouth Marketing
WOM = Word Of Mouth
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1 Introduction

This chapter gives an overview of the motivation and background behind the chosen
topic in addition to the structure of the thesis. The chapter is concluded with the
research questions and objectives.

1.1 Background of Thesis

As an International Business student who is interested in entrepreneurship, marketing

and business in general, one of the researcher’s strongest point of personal motivation
towards the subject is the fact that influencer marketing is a rather new way of
marketing, which seems to be evolving and growing larger year by year. The
researcher was intrigued to see the constant progression in creativity regarding the
topic.

The researcher’s internship (mid 2019) at a marketing agency called Mainostoimisto

Tuhti sparked the interest towards influencer marketing. The marketing agency had
weekly presentations from guests ranging from business owners and representatives to
influencers and other content creators. The guests discussed their line of work while
giving some interesting insights. Eevi Teittinen, a Finnish fitness influencer had a small
portion of the office space for herself to work on her growing influencer brand/
business, thus it was obvious for her to be presenting on one of the presentation days.
She presented the ins and outs of her work, how she got started, what kind of brands
does she work with and more. The presentation was eye-opening experience and the
researcher had a lot of questions regarding the work Eevi did, specifically regarding the
consumer side of this new way of marketing.

As an occasional social media user, the researcher had seen influencer/ influencer
marketing related content on various platforms but has never truly known what it
actually consists of. Influencers can be seen frequently on YouTube, Instagram and
Facebook. Some influencers perform their marketing very subtle, which often blends
well with the overall theme/ genre of their social media pages, without the audience
fully realizing that the post is an actual advertisement. With a little bit of background of
studying influencer’s, the researcher can now much easily spot a ‘sponsored’ or ‘paid’
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Instagram post, which led to the initial motivation and question regarding influencer
marketing; ‘what does the average consumer think about this type of marketing?’.

1.2 Thesis Structure

This thesis consists of four main chapters;

- Literature Review

- Research Methodology

- Data Analysis

- Research Conclusion

- Limitations and Future Suggestions

After the initial introduction phase, the researcher will present his literature review
which will explain social media influencers/ influencer marketing as a whole, in addition
to presenting relevant models and frameworks related to traditional marketing as well
as digital marketing.

The researcher will then proceed to present relevant social media platforms used by
influencers, supported with secondary data in the form of existing surveys, reports and
other literature to define the most important platforms. The platforms will be compared
with each other in terms of popularity among consumers, marketers and influencers.

After this section, the researcher will present the research methodology that was used
for the thesis as well as the data collection methods. Then the researcher will further
attempt to answer the research questions, with the aid of the data collected from
surveys targeted to consumers, the interview with a YouTuber/ social media influencer
and the already existing data.

The researcher will then proceed to analyze the data gathered from interviews and
surveys, which will be compared to the existing data gathered from existing surveys,
reports and literature.

To conclude the thesis, the researcher will analyze and compare all of the data, in
order to find support towards the researcher’s claims, views and conclusions.
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Finally, the researcher will present limitations of the research, which affected the
reliability of the study in addition to providing future research suggestions which can be
considered to be used for similar studies.

1.3 Research Questions and Objectives

The objective of the research is to study different aspects of influencer marketing;

The researcher is eager to find out which social media platform is the best for
influencers/ influencer marketing.

The researcher will then proceed to find out why are ‘micro-influencers’ an effective
group of influencers. The intent will be to research influencers operating in Finland and
find out the reasoning behind the phenomenon.

Lastly, the researcher will study the impact on consumers; how do consumers perceive
influencer marketing/ influencers? Do they see it as an aggressive and/ or invasive
style of marketing or is the perception relatively similar to traditional television
marketing for example. This will be studied by conducting a survey targeted to
consumers and an interview with an influencer.

Question 1:

Which social media platform is the most suitable for influencers?

• Identifying the most suitable platform to use as an influencer.

Question 2:

Why are micro-influencers an effective group for influencer marketing?

• Reasons behind the effectiveness of micro-influencers.

Question 3:

What is the impact on consumers? (Consumers living in Finland)

• How do consumers perceive influencer marketing/ influencers?

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2 Literature Review

This section will present relevant theories and models of the subject to support the
process of answering the research questions. To fully understand the forces involved in
influencer marketing, it is important to understand marketing in general as a whole.
Therefore, the literature review will first focus on defining marketing and different types
of models marketing before moving on to the specific category of influencer marketing.

2.1 Marketing

The ‘bare bones’ of marketing “Seeks to take a product or service, identify its ideal
customers, and draw the customers’ attention to the product or service available”
(Investopedia, 2019).

One of the core definitions of marketing refers to “A social and managerial process by
which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want though creating and
exchanging products and value with each other.” (Kotler et al., 2008, p. 7).

After reading these definitions, one might think of marketing as simply ‘advertising’ and
advertisements for example on the internet, television and billboards. This conception
of marketing is not quite the truth, marketing is a complex whole, which consists of a
mix of different components and elements that makes it marketing.

As time has went on and technology has evolved, new marketing forms have
appeared. One of these new marketing forms is ‘influencer marketing’, a marketing
form in which most cases involves a marketer, influencer and a company/ brand with a
product or service.

It is believed that consumers do not like to be advertised to, therefore marketing

messages are potentially becoming less valuable over time (Forbes, 2017). At this
point, influencer marketing’s value comes in place, as during a brand partnership with
an influencer, the influencer is very much in charge of the company’s/ brand’s message
and this is believed to create authenticity in addition of the ability of reaching specific
target groups (Forbes, 2018).
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Influencer marketing should not be confused with celebrity brand endorsements, both
marketing forms do have similarities, but they differ from each other. A celebrity brand
endorsement can be seen as a celebrity’s personal testimonial, in which an actor,
athlete, artist or similar personality promotes a company’s/ brand’s products and/ or
services. Influencer marketing similarly uses popular, well known personalities to drive
interest and engagement towards a company/ brand, but the difference is that the said
personality is usually a blogger, videoblogger, Instagrammer or similar. (Mediakix,
2020)

2.1.1 From Marketing 1.0 to Marketing 4.0

While advertising is one component of marketing, the term ‘marketing’ as a whole, is a

complex mix of various components. Marketing has evolved throughout the years and
can be split in 4 different phases which represent different era’s in a sense (Kotler et
al., 2017) from;

Marketing 1.0; Being the first marketing phase which was very tightly focused on the
product and selling a product with a key marketing concept of product development
and functional value propositions.

Marketing 2.0; The second phase which was more evolved around the consumer,
focusing on satisfying and retaining customers with a key marketing concept of
differentiation and functional and emotional value propositions.

Marketing 3.0; The third phase was more focused on values, with the intent of making
the world a better place with a key marketing concept of values and functional,
emotional and spiritual proposition values.

Marketing 4.0; The present digital age in which connectivity is very high, is focused on
building consumer trust and loyalty. The key marketing concept is to predict what
consumers want, with the aid of new technologies such as ‘Big Data’. In this phase the
consumer is more in charge than ever.

When inspecting the phases that have been formed throughout history, it is important
to inspect the value propositions of each phase. A value proposition is a key aspect in
marketing and it has two primary goals; forming a connection with the consumer and
driving towards a purchase (Aaker, 1995).
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Since marketing 1.0 is more focused on the product and the actual attributes related to
the product, such as the speed and power specifications of a car, it does fit the
elements related to influencer marketing but it fits loosely. One example of influencer
marketing during this era is Coca-Cola, the company created the Christmas figure
‘Santa Claus’, which has been used to influence consumer’s buying decisions by many
companies and brands on a global scale. (InfluencerDB, 2017)

Although, there are some examples of great brand partnerships from this era, which
have used a celebrity to transform a brand and influence consumers to purchase, such
as Michael Jordan’s endorsements with Nike in the 1980’s (Semerádová & Weinlich,
2019), but this partnership can be seen more as a celebrity endorsement, rather than
an influencer marketing partnership we know today, as previously mentioned (section
2.1), these two definitions must not be confused with each other.

However, some elements from marketing 2.0 and 3.0 such as emotional value
propositions do fit into influencer marketing, since influencers can possibly connect with
a consumer on an emotional level, building trust and resulting into the consumer
listening to an influencer whom they can connect to through storytelling (Forbes,
2019).

The marketing 4.0 phase is the best fit when thinking of influencer marketing, since it
revolves around the digital age of connectivity and connecting on an emotional level
with the consumer.

2.1.2 Digital Marketing

“Digital marketing encompasses all marketing efforts that use an electronic device or
the internet. Businesses leverage digital channels such as search engines, social
media, email, and other websites to connect with current and prospective customers.”
(HubSpot, 2019).

‘Digital marketing’ or ‘online marketing’ is all over the internet and can be seen on
blogs, social media platforms, in e-mails and more. As long as the internet is around
and functioning, this form of marketing will be important for small and large businesses
and everything in between.

There are several forms of digital marketing, some of the most known being:
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is a process of highlighting certain keywords

and/or phrases within the content of a website for example. The goal of SEO is to
highlight those keywords/ phrases that one might think the consumer will use while
searching on Google or other search engines (Lyfe Marketing, 2019).

The more precisely the keywords or phrases match what the consumer is searching,
the more likely it is for the search engine optimized website to show up in the results.
SEO is used to generate ‘organic’ traffic to a website.

Figure 1 - An example of SEO. Source: Google search results

Search Engine Marketing (SEM), is a paid form of digital marketing and it has similar
goals as SEO, the difference being that SEM traffic is not considered to be organic.

One popular form of SEM is Google Ads, which operates on a ‘Pay Per Click’ (PPC)
model. A PPC model requires the marketer to pay on every click of the ad, the average
price being around $1 – 2 per click up to $50 or more. The marketer can set a budget
for the ad campaign, so that the costs will be kept within a reasonable limit, but even
when setting a budget, guaranteed conversions cannot be expected.

Google Ads advertisements are located on the top of the Google search results and
they always over-shadow the top organic results (Google, 2020). Although there is a
benefit of having the advertisement on the top for easy access and visibility, a major
downsides of the Google Ads PPC model is the fact that the marketer has to pay for
every single click, whether or not it converts to a sale, also the keywords in saturated
industries have very high competition, resulting in high prices per click. (Hallam
Internet, 2020)
 8

Figure 2 - An example of SEM. Source: Google search results, 2020

Social Media Marketing (SMM), can be any type of marketing done on a social media
platform.

YouTube for instance, has an advertisement program called ‘AdSense’ in which a

content creator has to fit in the minimum requirements to join, including a certain
amount of hours watched on their videos, at least 1,000 subscribers and living in a
country or region where the program is available (Google, 2020).

Another form of SMM is partnerships with companies in which content creators or

influencers promote a company’s products or services.

Figure 3 - An example of SMM. Source: ASOS YouTube channel

Companies all over the world are increasingly spending more money for digital
marketing. As of 2018, the global digital marketing spending was 253.85 billion Euros,
this amount is expected to further continue to rise, potentially reaching 463.38 billion
Euros by 2023 (Statista, 2019). As long as the consumer has a phone or computer with
internet connectivity, marketing can be conducted from the other side of the world and
still be able to reach a potential customer.
 9

Current statistics of ad spending in the digital marketing space in Finland, amounted to

843€ million in 2019 and is projected to increase to 906€ million in 2020. The largest
segment being ‘Search Engine Marketing’ also known as ‘SEM’ (Statista, 2019).

2.1.3 The AIDA Model

The AIDA Model describes the path a consumer takes while making a purchase. AIDA
stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. (Kotler et al., 2017, p. 60)

Attention; Being the step in which the advertiser considers how to attract a
consumer’s attention towards the product/ service.

Interest; Once the consumer’s initial interest is sparked, the company/ brand must
attempt to continue building up interest.

Desire; The second last step in which the company/ brand must attempt to persuade
the consumer to buy the product/ service, shifting their mindset from “I like it” to “I want
it”.

Action; The end goal for a company/ brand to successfully get the consumer to pull
the trigger and buy the product/ service.

The AIDA model has been and is still used as a guide/ checklist used by branding and
advertising experts when developing branding and advertising strategies. It can be
used to build and distribute marketing messages to a target audience at all stages of
the buyer’s journey. (Kotler et al., 2017)

2.1.4 The AIDA Model in Digital Marketing

Even though the AIDA Model is more focused and developed for traditional marketing
such as radio, flyers and television advertisements, it can also be implemented into
digital marketing.

An award winning digital marketing agency suggests the AIDA model to be applied in
digital marketing as following (Hallam Internet, 2019):

In the Attention step, a business or brand can focus their efforts into Search Engine
Optimization or SEO activities, to gain a better visibility for potential customers
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searching for the business/ brand. Other efforts such as Search Engine Marketing or
SEM can be used to gain exposure.

Interest, can be implemented by being transparent and answering possible questions

the consumer has. At this step it is all about further creating trust and clearly defining
how the company’s/ brand’s product or service can be beneficial for the consumer.

The third step, Desire, the company could for example direct the consumer to their
social media page where they can see the product/ service in real use or display
reviews and testimonials, which could possibly strengthen the consumer’s trust level.

The final step Action, is where the company/ brand can be very direct since they are
trying to get the consumer to make a purchase. Some companies might use Call-to-
Action’s or CTA’s, which are simple and direct ways to push the consumer towards the
purchase. For example, a CTA could be a ’Join Now!’ or ’Buy Now’ button on a
website. (HubSpot, 2018)

2.1.5 The 5 A’s Model

Kotler suggests a new model as an update to AIDA, called ‘The 5 A’s”. This model
suites the modern age of connectivity much better, thus providing a new valid checklist
for branding and advertising experts to follow (Kotler et al., 2017). ‘The 5 A’ goes as
following:

Figure 4 - The New Customer Path: The 5 A’s. Source: Daniel, 2020

The 5 A model consists of 5 stages;

1. Aware (“I Know”)

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In the first stage, the consumer is exposed to a long list of competing brands
through advertisements across various channels. This is the initial contact point
from the company/ brand to the consumer where the consumer learns about the
new product or service.
2. Appeal (“I Like”)
In this second stage, consumers process the previous exposure and becomes
attached to a short list of brands.
3. Ask (“I’m Convinced”)
A spark of curiosity has been initiated and the consumer starts to research the
product or service through the media, friends and family and directly from the
brand.
4. Act (“I’m Buying”)
After getting more information from the brand, media and recommendations
from friends and family, the consumer decides to buy the product/ service. This
stage is not limited to the purchase only, it also includes post-purchase services
and product/ service usage.
5. Advocate (“I Recommend”)
The end goal for the marketer, brand, company; The consumer develops
loyalty, which in turn results in more purchases in addition to recommending the
product/ service to friends, family and other individuals.

(Kotler et al., 2017, pg. 62-64)

2.1.6 Digital VS Traditional Marketing

So called traditional marketing is the ‘old way’ of marketing, think television, radio,
billboard and print advertisements for example. This kind of marketing is regarded to be
‘offline’ marketing. Traditional marketing has most definitely evolved through-out the
years but it’s fundamentals have remained the same. Traditional marketing can be
divided into five categories:

1. Print (magazines, newspapers)

2. Broadcast (television, radio)
3. Direct Mail (catalogues, postcards)
4. Telephone (telemarketing, SMS marketing)
5. Outdoor (billboards, flyers)
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(Lyfe Marketing, 2019)

Generally, in marketing the market is divided into groups based on geographic,

demographic, psychographic and behavioral profiles, this is called ‘segmentation’.
Segmentation is usually followed by ‘targeting’; the company/ brand selects one or
multiple segments to target their marketing efforts, based on the attractiveness and
general fit for the brand. In the digital age we now live in, consumers are so connected
with each other on the internet that communities are the new ‘segments’. Segments are
formed by the company itself, but communities are naturally formed by the consumers
within the boundaries they define. (Kotler et al., 2017)

When comparing the main differences between traditional and digital marketing, there
are several, Facebook Ads examples will be presented to further compare the
differences between traditional and digital marketing;

Interaction; Traditional marketing has little to no interaction between consumer and

the company. The company simply broadcasts the message while hoping for the target
customer to be exposed to the message. When comparing to digital marketing, a
consumer can interact with a company/ brand and vice versa, through Instagram posts,
Facebook posts and different forms of chats on social media platforms. (Lyfe
Marketing, 2019)

Timing; Traditional marketing also does not have control over timing. For example,
once a billboard advertisement is set up and executed, it cannot be easily updated if
needed. (Lyfe Marketing, 2019)

Cost; A study made by Lyfe Marketing suggests that the cost per thousand
impressions (CPM) for traditional marketing, depending on the marketing channel, is
roughly 2 to 20 times more expensive compared to social media. Billboards being the
least expensive and direct mail the most expensive among traditional channels. (Lyfe
Marketing, 2019)

Using Facebook Ads, one can set a specific budget for an ad campaign and perform
‘A/B testing’ of an ad campaign. A/B testing enables the marketer to change variables
such as the ad audience or placement, to develop and test different strategies,
ultimately finding the best performing strategy. (Facebook, 2020)
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The ad campaign can be duplicated then be edited in terms of audience for example, to
compare both ads side-by-side. A/B testing can potentially result in a better performing
ad, in terms of reach as well as cost for instance.

Targeting; Traditional marketing, when thinking of a TV or radio advertisement for

example, has some limitations to the possibility to target specific groups. Digital
marketing on the other hand offers very precise targeting possibilities, giving you
options to even tailor an advertisement for an individual consumer. (Lyfe Marketing,
2019)

Figure 5 - Facebook Ad Manager. Source: Daniel, 2020

An example of this kind of tailoring is Facebook Ads, a marketer can efficiently target a
consumer based on many factors, including their age, location demographics and
interests. One can target a consumer even based on what kind of food they like.

Measurement; It is not easy to measure the performance of a traditional marketing

campaign. Measurability is important for a company to know how their marketing
budget is spent and is it spent effectively. Digital marketing campaigns can be tracked
with a lot of details, such as the device the person is using to see the advertisement,
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location, did the consumer interact with the advertisement and more. With the analytics
provided by tools made for digital marketing, a company can further test, customize
and optimize different advertisements to find the one that works best. (Lyfe Marketing,
2019)

Figure 6 - Facebook Ads Insights: Results of an ad campaign. Source: Daniel, 2020

As seen above, within Facebook’s Ad Manager, a marketer can see valuable data for
further analyzing the performance of an advertisement. The data that it includes are
such as gender, age, location and which device was used. After inspecting the
available data, the marketer can potentially see a clearer picture of the potential
customers. The advertisements can then be further optimized to fit the age range,
device and location of the consumer, thus more precisely defining the target group.

2.2 Social Media Platforms

’Social Media’ is a computer-based technology that allows the sharing of ideas,

thoughts and information through vast virtual networks and communities. Various types
of content can be shared on social media, ranging from personal information to videos
and photos. The users of social media can engage in these types of content sharing via
mobile devices, tablets and computers. (Dollarhide, 2019)

Social media platforms are gathering more and more users from different countries,
Facebook being the social media king, as the platform has been dominating the space
for over a decade. As of 2018, Facebook had accumulated 2.26 billion users, YouTube
1.9 billion and Instagram 1 billion users, respectively. (Our World in Data, 2019)
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Today, social media platforms can be used for personal use, for example sharing
stories, events, pictures and videos with friends and family or for business use
including sharing reports, promotional content and other marketing content with
consumers and businesses.

According to a survey by Statista (Statista, 2019) for small and medium-sized Finnish
enterprises (SME’s), suggests that social media is the most important digital marketing
tool for businesses. The survey had 1 091 respondents, all of them being SME owners.

Social media was used by 47% of respondents systematically and 30% sporadically
throughout their digital marketing efforts.

Keyword optimized websites and keyword advertising took the 2nd and 3rd spot on the
list. Keyword optimized websites were said to be used systematically by 44% and
sporadically by 26% of respondents. Keyword advertising was said to be used
systematically by 31% and sporadically by 30% of the respondents. (Statista, 2019)

As of 2020, there is a long list of available social media websites/ platforms ranging
from ones used for browsing content which can be seen as pure entertainment, to
websites/ platforms focused on work and career related content (Influencer Marketing
Hub, 2020).

As recent data has shown (Statista, 2020) Instagram, YouTube and Facebook to be
the top three largest social media networks (excluding platforms built purely for text
messaging), the research will continue to focus on these three platforms.

2.2.1 Instagram

Instagram (www.instagram.com) is a photo and video sharing platform which is

available on Apple iOS, Android and Windows. Instagram was founded by Kevin
Systrom and Michel Krieg in 2010 (CNN Business, 2018). After seeing a huge success
since the launch, Instagram was acquired by the social media giant, Facebook, for $1
billion in 2012 (CNBC, 2019).

The number of active users per month on Instagram has been growing steadly. Since
2013, the amount of users has been increasing each year by roughly 100 million users
per year. In January 2013, the user count was less than 100 million users and by the
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end of 2016 the platform had already accumulated 600 million users and further
continued to grow, achieving 1 billion users by June of 2018. (Statista, 2019)

An Instagram username handle refers to a user’s unique username, the social media
platform uses the ‘@’ sign in front of the username. For instance, users can mention
other users in their posts and comments by adding the sign before their username, for
example @username (Karle, 2020).

Instagram also uses hashtags ‘#’, which refers to a keyword or phrase that can also be
added to a post or comment, for example, #puppies. Hashtags help people find certain
posts. If a person has an activity history of browsing through posts hashtagged with
#puppies, Instagram’s algorithm will more likely show the individual similar posts
(Karle, 2020).

As of 2020, the top three most followed Instagram users (excluding Instagram’s own
account) are:

1. Football player, Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano) with roughly 200 million

followers
2. Actor, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (@therock) with roughly 170 million
followers
3. Singer/ actress, Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) with roughly 167 million
followers

(Social Blade, 2020)

Social media influencers are very active and prominent on Instagram, a recent study in
2019 suggested that the top social media platform in terms of influencers and
influencer marketing is Instagram, 89% of the survey respondents chose Instagram as
the top platform. (Bailis, 2019)

Marketers also acknowledge this fact, as the same study showed that 69% of
marketers chose Instagram as the platform to spend most budget on.
 17

Figure 7 - An example of a paid post from an influencer. Source: www.instagram.com,

2020

2.2.2 YouTube

YouTube (www.youtube.com) is a popular video platform in which content creators can

upload videos to the platform for other users to watch. YouTube was founded by former
PayPal employees, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim in 2005 (Business
Insider, 2013). Google saw potential in the platform and acquire it in 2006 for $1.65
billion. At the time Google called it “The next step in the revolution of the internet.”
(Business Insider, 2013).

YouTube started as a platform for amateurs to upload videos and has grown to be a
very lucrative platform; loaded with content from professional videographers to massive
brands (Business Insider, 2020).

YouTube content creators have ‘channels’ for which users can ‘subscribe’, the concept
is similar to Instagram, the difference being that instead of channels and subscribers,
Instagram uses ‘profile pages’ and ‘followers’.

As of 2020, the top three most subscribed YouTube channels (excluding YouTube’s
own channels) are:
 18

1. Indian music label & movie studio, T-Series with roughly 127 million subscribers
2. Swedish gamer, PewDiePie with roughly 103 million subscribers
3. Children’s educational channel, Cocomelon – Nursery Rhymes with roughly 72
million subscribers

(Social Blade, 2020)

YouTube was a popular choice of a 2019 survey of most used social media platforms
for influencers conducted by influencer marketing agency, Mediakix. The platform was
chosen by 70% of respondents, placing YouTube as a strong alternative for
influencers. Although a huge number of influencers chose the platform to be a viable
one, the same company stated that out of marketers, only 11% said to be spending
most of their budget on YouTube (Bailis, 2019).

Influencers are quite active on YouTube, as of 2019 the top 25 YouTube personalities
accumulated three times more video views than traditional celebrities and large brands
such as Nike, uses influencers to endorse their products on the platform (Zine, 2019).
Many influencers on the platform promote different products and services within a very
wide range of industries although most of the influencer marketing happening on
YouTube is from actual YouTuber’s who might also be doing some type of influencer
marketing work on other platforms also, such as Instagram (Hämäläinen, 2020).

Figure 8 - An example of a sponsored video from a YouTuber. Source:

www.youtube.com, 2020
 19

2.2.3 Facebook

Facebook (www.facebook.com) is a social media giant and one among the first movers
in the social media space, Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004
(Business Insider, 2010).

Facebook is a vast social media network, where one can follow public figures just like
on Instagram, join different user created groups, post pictures and videos, build a
‘friend list’ and more.

Over the years, Facebook has acquired a lot of its competition, 72 companies to be
precise. Some of them have been potential threats to Facebook such as WhatsApp,
Instagram. (TechWyse, 2019)

As of 2020, the top three most followed/ liked users on Facebook (excluding
Facebook’s own users) are:

1. The football club, Real Madrid C.F. with roughly 214 million likes
2. Singer/ actress, Katy Perry with roughly 66 million likes
3. South Korean company, Vonvon US with roughly 61 million likes

(Social Blade, 2020)

Out of Instagram, YouTube and Facebook, the latter was the last one to make moves
in terms of influencer marketing, as Facebook released their tool ‘Brand Collabs
Manager’ in mid-2018. Although Facebook was late to the scene, it provides the most
diverse ways of publishing content, since YouTube and Instagram both require some
type of visual content such as a picture or video, Facebook posts can be created with
text only in addition to visuals. (Oberlo, 2019)

Although Facebook has the upper hand in content diversity, it lacks the support of
marketers and influencers, as a recent survey conducted by influencer marketing
agency, Mediakix, revealed that only 45% of influencers chose Facebook as their most
used platform and only 5% of marketers chose Facebook as a target of marketing
budget spending (Bailis, 2019).
 20

Figure 9 - An example of a sponsored Facebook Live stream from an influencer.

Source: www.oberlo.com, 2020

2.2.4 Reviewing the Platforms

When reviewing all three platforms, it can be seen that Instagram is a platform which
has a huge reach by looking at the numbers of followers which individuals have been
able to obtain on Instagram. When comparing those numbers to the ones on YouTube
and Facebook, a single individual has more followers than a major Indian company on
YouTube and comes very close to a globally known football club on Facebook. While
on each platform an individual can reach millions upon millions of consumers, the clear
winner here is Instagram.

Instagram’s most followed individual has a potential reach of 200 million people
(Cristiano Ronaldo) compared to YouTube’s 103 million (PewDiePie) and Facebook’s
66 million (Katy Perry) (Social Blade, 2020).

However, keep in mind that when analyzing follower counts, social media platforms can
be affected by different factors, such as manipulation, which may affect the actual
value of a follower.

Instagram has ‘ghost followers’, they are essentially inactive users who follow a profile
page but do not engage with the followed or in other terms, do not like or comment on
pictures or videos. For an everyday Instagram user, this might not be a problem as
some people just want as many followers as they can get regardless of the quality. For
marketers however, it can result as an unwanted and negative factor, as these types of
followers do not have much value nor can they be leveraged for engagement between
the consumer, influencer and company/ brand. (Crowdbabble, 2018)
 21

Figure 10 - An example of a ghost follower. Source: Kicksta, 2016

As seen in the Figure 10, the ghost follower is following over 70 thousand profile pages
on Instagram but does not seem to have any kind of activity on its own page. This type
of follower does not add any kind of value for a profile page in terms of marketing.

The main reason being, that while ghost followers boost the follower count, they do not
boost engagement rate and engagement rate is the most important metric when
looking at Instagram as a platform for marketing. The engagement rate is determined
by the ratio of followers versus comments/ likes and Instagram has said that fake
interactions ‘do not count’ when measuring engagement rates. (Warren, 2020)

Instagram is said to rely on machine learning which is based on the user’s previous
activity and behavior on the platform (Tech Crunch, 2018). The algorithm will then
determine what type of content to show on the users ‘feed’. An Instagram feed is the
platform’s interface in which users can share their own content or discover content
shared by other users (Instagram, 2020).

Instagram constantly changes their algorithm and no one precisely knows how it works,
but Instagram has stated the affecting factors how certain posts appear to certain users
to be Relationship, Recency, Interest, Frequency and Usage (Tech Crunch, 2018).

For clarification, the terms ‘uploader’ for someone who posts content, such as
an influencer, and ‘receiver’ as someone who consumes the content such as a
potential consumer, will be used;
 22

Relationship: If an uploader posts content on the platform, the chance of a receiver

seeing it depends on how close the receiver is with the uploader, the more interaction
between the two, the more chance there is for the receiver to see it in their feed.
(Advertisemint, 2018)

Recency: The more recently the content was shared, the more likely it will appear on a
receiver’s feed. Instagram’s algorithm tends to prioritize recently shared content over
content, which was shared weeks ago, for example. (Advertisemint, 2018)

Interest: Instagram tries to predict the likeliness of receivers sharing an interest

towards the uploader’s shared content. The algorithm looks at factors such as, have
receivers previously interacted (commented, liked) similar content in addition to looking
if receivers follow similar profiles, to ultimately determine the worth of the shared
content. (Advertisemint, 2018)

Frequency: For this factor, the algorithm simply looks at how often does the receiver
open their Instagram application, then it attempts to show the best posts since the last
time the receiver had visited the application (Tech Crunch, 2018).

Usage: The more time the receiver spends on the platform, the more the algorithm will
try to find relevant content. The algorithm attempts to find the most suitable content for
short sessions, long sessions and everything in between. (Tech Crunch, 2018)

Simply put, if two different individuals follow the same accounts, their feed can
potentially be very different, assuming that there are differences in the previous factors
between the two individuals.

In addition to ghost followers and the platform’s sophisticated algorithm, the platform
has ‘social media bots’ which are more or less autonomous users, they are usually
used to “amplify the popularity of a person or movement” (Cloudfare, 2018).

Facebook has a problem of fake profiles, similarly, one can buy boosts in terms of
likes and shares for a Facebook post from automated profiles which mimic real users.
Over the years, even though Facebook has constantly been battling against the
problem, the company has disclosed to investors that there might be up to 60 million
fake profiles on the platform. (New York Times, 2018)

YouTube has a similar type of problem, which is un-authentic views. There are
companies that sell un-authentic views, which look like authentic views, but they hold
minimal value. Interestingly enough, Google, the parent company of YouTube has
 23

been battling the fake view problem for years, but fake view companies still appear on
Google’s search results rather easily. (Keller, 2018)

When taking into consideration these types of ‘foul play’, there is a possibility that while
inspecting whichever platform’s most followed/ liked individual and their followers, 1
follower does not always equal to 1 actual person. For instance, when comparing an
Instagram profile with 10,000 followers, which are all authentic followers versus a page
with 5,000 authentic and 5,000 ghost followers. On paper both seem like rather large
profiles but the one with 50% of ghost followers will most likely have a smaller
engagement rate, thus in a marketing perspective, will not be as beneficial compared to
the profile with 100% authentic followers (Keller, 2018).

According to a 2019 survey by Mediakix, the top three most used social media
platforms for influencers were Instagram (89%), YouTube (70%) and Facebook (45%),
respectively (Bailis, 2019). This finding further supports that influencers see Instagram
as the most important social media platform to be on, while YouTube comes in as a
strong 2nd place. One of the reasoning behind the popularity of Instagram for
influencers is the sheer ease of uploading a picture and making a post. An Instagram
post can be made and shared very quickly and on-the-go.

According to the same survey, marketers are also choosing Instagram over other social
media platforms and marketing channels. A whopping 69% of marketers said that they
will spend the most budget on Instagram influencer marketing in 2019. For perspective,
11% said that they will spend the most on YouTube and only 5% said they will spend
the most on Facebook and LinkedIn, respectively. (Bailis, 2019)

2.3 Influencer Marketing

A social media influencer is not simply a person who has a large following on social
media. Well known movie stars, singers and athletes might have a large social media
following but they might not participate in influencer marketing at all. A social media
influencer can be defined as a content creator, who develops a following by sharing
entertaining, informing and inspiring content, while connecting with their followers.
These type of individuals can set trends and drive engagement, positioning themselves
to work with companies and brands, by sharing sponsored or paid content (Harvard
Business Review, 2018).
 24

In a sense, the power of influencers has been first introduced dating in 1944 by a
sociologist named Paul Lazarsfeld, the effect is known as ‘the two-step flow of
communication model’ which is a model that suggests that ideas flow from the mass
media, to individuals such as opinion leaders and from the opinion leaders to the public
(Weimann, 2015).

Influencers can be divided into 4 different categories based on their followings, but
opinions do vary on how many followers does an individual has to have to be put into a
certain category, also the opinions vary by region.

Generally, the opinion of the categories is as the following (CMS Wire, 2018);

Mega-influencers; They are thought to be influencers who have at least 1 million

followers or subscribers on a single social media platform. Think huge movie stars or
celebrities such as Kim Kardashian.

Macro-influencers; They are influencers who have a following ranging from 100
thousand to 1 million followers or subscribers on a platform. Think well-known local
artists such as the Finnish rap artist, Cheek.

Micro-influencers; They are influencers with a following ranging from 10 thousand to

100 thousand followers or subscribers on a platform. Think local rather well-known
local personalities such as UFC fighter Teemu Packalen.

Nano-influencers; They are everyday consumers with a following of less than 10

thousand followers or subscribers on a platform. Nano-influencers are becoming more
and more popular due to the potential level of engagement they have with consumers.

(CMS Wire, 2018)

The director of social and PR of the first global marketing services group in the digital
space, Ruotsalainen (2019), suggests the corresponding figures for Finland to be:

Mega-influencers; 100 thousand followers and up

Macro-influencers; Around 100 thousand followers

Micro-influencer; Around 10 thousand followers

Nano-influencers; Around 1 thousand followers

 25

(Ruotsalainen, 2019)

Thinking of influencers from a marketing perspective, we can go back to the Marketing

4.0 and the upgraded AIDA Model, the 5 A’s (discussed in sections 2.1.1, 2.1.3, 2.1.4
and 2.1.5);

Regarding the four phases in marketing, influencers sit in the ‘Marketing 4.0’ phase, the
digital age we live in right now. With high connectivity among people, consumers today
seem to lack trust towards companies, brands and corporations (Venture Beat, 2018).
This is a major hurdle for all kinds of marketers around the world. Consumers will
rather hear recommendations from family and friends; therefore, influencers must also
seek to place consumer loyalty and trust on a very high pedestal.

After inspecting Kotler’s 5 A’s Model, it is noticed that influencers also fit in it very well,
especially in the early stages of “Aware”, “Appeal” and “Ask”. Influencers using their
reach and credibility in addition to follower loyalty, can hugely affect the consumer’s
buying decision at these stages.

2.3.1 Case ‘Urban Fit Streetwear’

A hypothetical scenario on how Kotler’s 5 A’s model supports the process of influencer
marketing:

Let us take as an example, a fictitious small online clothing store called “Urban Fit
Streetwear” is promoting themselves on social media and decide to contact Instagram
personalities within the niche of fashion or clothing. They find a suitable micro-
influencer to conduct a partnership. The influencer is instructed to post 3 pictures within
a week, wearing the clothing store’s clothes and hashtagging the posts with
“#urbanfitstreetwear” in addition to handing out -15% discount codes to followers who
likes the posts.

In the “Aware” or “I Know” stage, an influencer who has followers and has the
credibility, can easily expose a product or service to hundreds/ thousands/ millions of
potential customers. An influencer with a very loyal fan base could potentially make a
long lasting ‘good first impression’ towards the product or service promoted which
could trickle into the “Appeal” or “I Like” stage. At this point the potential customer
 26

knows the product and has been mentally attached to a brand, in this case “Urban Fit
Streetwear”.

In the third stage “Ask” or “I’m Convinced” the potential customer has a strong level
of curiosity towards the product or service and starts to do research on it. Even at this
stage, the influencer can still persuade the consumer by posting a review video of
some type for example, yet again further building trust towards the brand.

Since the “Act” or “I’m Buying” phase is more related to the relationship between the
brand/ company and the consumer, the influencer does not have much power here.
The fifth phase “Advocate” or “I Recommend” is also more of a personal choice to
actually further recommend the brand/ company and its product/ service, in the
researcher’s opinion there is not much power for the influencer here. (Kotler et al.,
2017)

According to a survey conducted by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA,

2019), a company’s/ brand’s main objective using influencer marketing is to gain
general brand awareness (86%), content creation and distribution (69%) and to
improve brand perception and drive sales (56%) (ANA, 2018).

Considering these results, the ‘Aware’, ‘Appeal’ and ‘Ask’ stages could potentially be
three of the most important steps in Kotler’s 5 A’s in conjunction with influencer
marketing as in these stages, the influencer has many opportunities to use their
influence in order to paint a trustworthy picture of the brand promoted.

Most likely one of the biggest impact that influencers might have is getting consumers
to talk about a product or service to their family and friends. This can be categorized as
‘word of mouth marketing’ or ‘WOMM’ (BigCommerce, 2020). Whether the influencer is
a micro-influencer or a macro-influencer, WOMM is a form of marketing which can
potentially multiply very rapidly. An influencer with a level of credibility, authenticity and
a loyal following seems to be key factors for consumers feeling relatable towards to the
influencer (Hughes et al., 2019).

“These [influencers] are generally posting as themselves. They share

personal thoughts and what sometimes feel like intimate details of their
lives. The presentation is casual and often appears very authentic. It is, in
essence, how we would expect a (very polished) friend might share
something with us on social media,”. (Psychology Today, 2016)
 27

In this case, WOM could be executed by launching some kind referral program, in
which after a purchase the consumer will receive a referral link with instructions how to
benefit by sharing the link, thus creating some kind of incentive to actually share the
link. The Incentive could be in the form of a gift card or further discounts from next
orders for example (BigCommerce, 2020).

2.3.2 Finnish Social Media Influencers

Finland’s population is approximately 5.5 million people (Tilastokeskus, 2020),

therefore a Finnish influencer will not be able to have millions and millions of followers.
The most popular and followed influencer as of 2019 is a ‘lifestyle’ influencer called
Miisa Rotola-Pukkila (@mmiisas). Her following is so huge, it even trumps some
popular Finnish artist’s social media followings. Miisa is active on YouTube, where she
has roughly 388 thousand followers and has uploaded 495 videos (Instagram, 2020).
She is also active on Instagram where she has an even larger following of 433
thousand. @mmiisas can be considered a macro-influencer in Finland.

Figure 11 - @mmiisas on Instagram. Source: www.instagram.com

Miisa has a total of 1,234 posts on Instagram. She also has a lot of paid posts ranging
from hotels, different kinds of apps, energy company Fortum, beauty products and
more (Instagram, 2020). Since she is a lifestyle influencer, the partnerships she does
 28

are companies from various industries, each very relatable to a normal consumer’s
everyday life. (Instagram, 2020)

When inspecting the fashion niche of Finnish Instagram influencers, popular names like
Linda Juhola (@lindajuhola) and Mikko Puttonen (@mikkoputtonen) appear. Both of
them have over 50 thousand followers on Instagram, thus according to a suggestion of
the influencer types (Ruotsalainen, 2019), they are on the borderline of whether to be
called micro or macro-influencers in Finland’s terms.

Figure 12 - @lindajuhola on Instagram. Source: www.instagram.com

Linda Juhola (@lindajuhola), a Finnish blogger & entrepreneur from Finland, currently
based in Stockholm. Linda has a following of 43.4 thousand and she has 1,937
Instagram posts. She has paid posts with the likes of high-end clothing brand Manolo
Blahnik, high-end clothing brand Dior and beauty product brands such as HairLust
which is hashtagged as seen in Figure 12. (Instagram, 2020)
 29

Figure 13 - @mikkoputtonen on Instagram. Source: www.instagram.com

Mikko Puttonen (@mikkoputtonen), is a fashion blogger from Finland based in London.

Mikko has a following of 57.8 thousand and he has 2,230 Instagram posts. He has paid
posts with mainly high-end fashion brands such as Hugo Boss, Gucci and Dior.
(Instagram, 2020)

When inspecting the posts in Figures 11, 12 and 13, they all have a similar
atmosphere; all are quite casual, which usually is common for micro-influencers. Even
though @mmiisas could be considered to be a macro-influencer, her posts have the
same style of a micro-influencer.

Micro-influencers usually seek to be or can organically obtain a more approachable

and trustworthy image which enables them to connect with their followers. Some micro-
influencers attempt to respond on comments and slowly but surely build a strong
friend-like relationship with their following.

Even though everything in Finland is rather small when comparing to giants such as
the Unites States, it seems like companies/ brands all over the world are seeking
micro-influencers to promote their products/ service due to the fact that they are
potentially able to initiate more engagement and interaction among consumers. Micro-
influencer’s authenticity and appearance of a ‘normie’ seems to make consumers feel
much more relatable. (Hosie, 2019)
 30

Markerly, an award-winning influencer marketing company, studied the engagement of

followers when comparing users with thousands of followers versus users with millions.
Surprisingly, there was a quite dramatic drop in engagement when the follower count
rose. “The key finding of our data is that as an influencer’s follower total rises, the rate
of engagement (likes and comments) with followers decreases.”. (Markerly, 2020)

2.3.3 The Consumer’s Perception of Influencer Marketing

A consumer’s perception towards a group of individuals, such as influencers, revolves

around trustworthiness, in other words, how transparent, reliable and dependable
appears to be (Jin et al., 2018). Influencers in that sense, can be appealing to
consumers due to the likeliness of them being appearing to be ‘normal people’ who are
also more likely to interact with fans and are more relatable compared to traditional
celebrities. Consumers know that celebrities are involved in various promotions,
sponsorships and partnerships, thus it can be assumed that consumers attach any type
of celebrity whom is associated with a brand/ company to be a part of a some kind of
commercial campaign (Silvera & Austad, 2004).

According to previous studies, including those conducted by an American marketing

company, Rakuten (2019) and also a Finnish marketing company Annalect (2019),
many people actually see a benefit of following an influencer on social media, either in
the form of additional benefits of entertainment or discovering new brands and products
which might come in hand in the future.

“Of those who provided insights, 49% said they enjoy an influencer
providing entertainment of some kind, such as a product unboxing or
watching them play a game while providing commentary over the
gameplay. Another 49% said they discovered a new brand or product that
they may be able to utilize in the future, thanks to a recommendation from
an influencer they follow.”. (Rakuten Marketing, 2019)

It seems that the perception towards influencers is generally positive, compared to

traditional celebrities for instance, a reason for this most likely is that influencers seem
like normal, everyday people, therefore they are more real and approachable to
consumers (Jin et al., 2018).
 31

The Finnish Company, Annalect, which provides their customers “data driven
marketing strategies, powered by a connected system of technology, analytics and
consultants” (www.annalect.com/what-we-do), conducted a survey in 2017 and studied
the impacts of influencer marketing on consumers.

The target group was 15-65 years old Finnish Instagram users, they had 1,884
respondents from which 492 were Instagram users. The survey indicated that 83% of
respondents were aware that well-known Instagram users participate in influencer
marketing activities. (Annalect, 2017)

An interesting element was how many found benefits in the exposure of products that
influencers were promoting; 7% of respondents found the exposure to be ‘very
beneficial’ for them, 42% found it to be ‘some-what beneficial’, 39% found it to be ‘not
so beneficial’ and 12% ‘not beneficial at all’ (Annalect, 2017). Furthermore, the
perception in the study were divided among factors of gender and age. Out of the
respondents, women and people below the age of 34 years old had the most positive
perception towards influencer marketing. They felt Instagram advertising to be ‘less
annoying’ compared to TV and radio advertisements. 1 out of 2 people find influencer
marketing to be acceptable if the influencer is open about the partnership (Annalect,
2017).

A recent survey by PING, in 2018 supports the trust consumers have towards
influencers. The survey had 1,125 respondents, the respondents were Finnish men
and women between the age of 15-65 years old. PING’s results suggest that only 1 out
of 6 people found paid or sponsored posts to decrease the personalities
trustworthiness. (PING Helsinki, 2018)

The survey further supports the finding that women trust influencers the most. The
results suggest that women between the age 15 and 29 years, 20% trust
advertisements to support their buying decision compared to 44% trust a blogger’s or
influencer’s recommendations to support their buying decision. Also, a stunning 50% of
this group had at least considered buying a product/ service due to influencer
marketing. (PING Helsinki, 2018)

After inspecting various surveys and reports regarding the perception towards
influencers, it is quite surprising that consumers are very accepting towards this form of
marketing. One factor that might affect the perception, at least in Finland, is the fact
 32

that most influencers are micro-influencers, which discussed earlier, could mean that
generally consumers see these type of influencers as easy to approach, trustworthy
and easy to engage with compared to macro or mega-influencers. Micro-influencers
have a unique connection towards consumers, the connection is much deeper when
comparing to traditional celebrities who appear on television shows or movies for
instance (Kowalzcyk & Pounders, 2016).

Furthermore, since micro-influencers are perceived to be more approachable, more

interactive and generally more like an ‘everyday people’, it can be assumed that the
level of trust is much higher when comparing the trust levels towards traditional
celebrities (Thomson, 2006).
 33

3 Methodology

This section will present the chosen data collection methods, provide an overview of
the survey for consumers and the interview of a YouTuber.

The research process will be started by the researcher defining a set of research
problems/ questions which are presented in the ’Introduction’ chapter.

3.1 Data Collection

There are two types of data, primary data and secondary data, the former being ‘new’
data which can be created by the researcher in the form of interviews or surveys for
instance. Secondary data on the other hand can be collected by reviewing and
analyzing existing data such as publishes summaries. (Saunders et al., 2012, p. 304)

A mixed method of data collection was employed in order to get various perspectives
on the subject of influencer marketing. While reviewing the secondary data, the
researcher gained knowledge to analyze the data and add his own perspective to
support on the matter discussed.

The research used quantitative data in the form of surveys for consumers. Quantitative
data can be referred to all kind of numerical primary and secondary, such as a survey
or questionnaire, which serves a purpose of supporting the researcher in answering the
research questions (Saunders et.al., 2012). The surveys that were conducted gave yet
another perspective, in this instance from the consumer’s side.

Qualitative data was used in the form of a questionnaire. Qualitative data can be
referred to an interpretation of participants of the research, it can include an interview,
in which the interview is recorded and afterwards reproduced in the written form
(Saunders et.al., 2012). The interview was conducted with the YouTuber/ social media
influencer and during the process, the researcher gained a valuable hands-on insight
on the influencer’s opinions of the subject.
 34

3.2 Quantitative data collection

The survey was first tested with a private pilot test which was conducted on
17.03.2020, using a small group of testers in order to locate possible errors in overall
design, questions and to ensure that the survey functions on different devices.

The first public version was distributed on 18.03.2020 and a second version on
21.03.2020, the second final version did not consist of major changes, only small
tweaks, mainly related to functionality and ease of use.

The survey was created using Webropol 3.0 and it was distributed on social media and
on a small blog site. The survey was closed on 06.04.2020.

The survey’s target group of individuals was male and female social media users
ranging from the age of 18 to 40+ years old.

The blog site did not have a large amount of overall traffic, but it was chosen as one
distribution platform because it had a demographic which was relatively close to the
range of the researcher’s selected target group and age. Social media was used in an
attempt to reach a large scale of potential respondents as well as both the low and high
end of the researcher’s target age.

The sampling method used for the survey was random, as random sampling can
provide the best probability of unbiased respondents and opinions (Curtice, 2015).

The reasoning of using this target group is to seek individuals that are independent and
somewhat financially stable, thus assumably possess some level of purchasing power.
In addition, 20 to 40 year olds are considered to be the most active on social media
platforms, which is backed by reliable survey reports (Statista, 2017).

3.3 Qualitative data collection

A research interview is a conversation between two or more people including

requirements from the interviewer to ask compact questions, establish rapport and to
listen carefully (Saunders et al., 2012, p. 372).

The interview was conducted with a Finnish YouTuber/ social media influencer living in
South-Korea named Sonja Hämäläinen, also known as @soikkuyo on Instagram and
 35

Soikkuu on YouTube. Since the interviewee was living in Korea at the time, the
interview was conducted using an online video conference tool.

The interview was qualitative of nature and it was be themed based on different
categories which determine the interview questions. The interview was semi-structured,
the interviewer (the researcher) had a list of themes and key questions while leaving
some free play allowing the interviewer to explore possibilities of additional questions
based on the interviewee’s responses.

The interviewer took notes in addition to asking permission for an audio or video
recording of the interview process, which was granted, to ensure that the data can be
reliably and easily analyzed later on. The interview questions were delivered to the
interviewee before conducting the interview in order for her to prepare.
 36

4 Results

4.1 Survey

The final public versions of the survey were distributed on 18.03.2020 and 21.03.2020,
using an online survey tool Webropol 3.0, only 13 Finnish respondents completed the
survey. The survey was closed on 06.04.2020 The survey was divided into the
following themes: ‘Demographics’, ‘Social Media’ and ‘Influencer Marketing’.

4.1.1 Demographics

The main purpose of this theme was to identify the characteristics of the respondents.

Q1: Gender

and

Q2: Age

Out of the 13 respondents roughly 61% were male, 23% were female and 15% did not
prefer to reveal their gender.

Figure 14 - Bar graph of survey respondent gender. Source: Daniel, 2020

 37

The age distribution of the respondents was heavily concentrated in the region of 25 –
32 years old. A grand total of 77% were in this age range while only 15% were in the
age range of 33 - 40 years old and 8% in the range of 18 – 24 years old. The age
range is ideal, since according to a previous study made by PING Helsinki, the benefits
of influencer marketing on affecting the consumer purchasing decisions are highlighted
the most among young Finnish adults under 30 years old (M&M, 2018).

Q3: Current situation

Figure 15 - Pie chart of survey respondent current status. Source: Daniel, 2020

In addition of the respondents to fitting into the beneficial age range, the majority of the
respondents were employed, thus the group can potentially possess the necessary
purchasing power which can further be proven to be beneficial for an influencer
marketer.
 38

4.1.2 Social Media

The purpose of this theme was to identify the most popular niches favored by
consumers and the most popular social media platforms used by consumers, thus the
most important platforms for influencers to find an audience on.

Q4: Which one/s of these platforms do you use? (multichoice)

If any of the platforms were chosen, more questions were displayed (questions Q5 –
Q10). These additional questions were related to the respondent’s favorite page/
channel/ profile and the reason why they use the platform.

Regarding the platforms, respondents were given a choice to choose all of the three
provided platforms which they currently use in a multi-choice question. The most
favored platforms among all respondents were roughly YouTube at 77%, Instagram at
69 %, and Facebook at 39%.

Q5/Q6/Q7: Name your favorite page/ channel/ profile

The respondents mainly followed very large brands, companies and personalities. The
range of niches within these followings was quite broad, ranging from video bloggers
and comedian to artists and actors. Names such as Rihanna, Kim Kardashian were
mentioned as well as brands such as Nike.

Q8/Q9/Q10: For what do you use Instagram/ Facebook/ YouTube for?

Out of all the respondents, the most prominent reasons of using social media are to
pass time, get information and to socialize with family and friends, as one respondent
stated:

“I mainly look for ideas regarding wood working & art, and to learn from
more experienced practitioners. Occasionally I also use just for fun / to kill
time.”

Another respondent stated:

“Just to communicate with family and some old friends occasionally”

These statements are very much in line with a previous study on influencer marketing
in Finland conducted by Annalect, which stated “The most important reason using
 39

Instagram is to catch up with friends and pass time. Instagram is also used to get
information about interesting things and keep up with trends.” (Annalect, 2017).

Q11: How actively do you use social media?

A vast majority of the respondents, close to 70%, used social media platforms more
than 4 hours per week. Keeping in mind the previously discussed positive affect on the
purchasing decision in under 30 years old Finnish adults, since the majority of the
respondents were in fact within the age range of 25 – 32 years old, it is a good
indicator for influencers to consider YouTube and Instagram as their main platforms to
participate in influencer marketing.

In addition of this group spending a lot of time on social media platforms, they also
possess potential purchasing power which further supports considering the platforms
as viable influencer marketing platforms.

Q12: Which type of pages/ profiles do you follow? (multichoice)

When inspecting the niches, based on the researcher’s survey, the most popular
niches among men seems to be sports and gaming related content while women
preferred fitness, fashion and beauty related content.

4.1.3 Influencer Marketing

The purpose of this theme was to gain an insight of the consumers perception towards
influencers and influencer marketing.

Q13: Are you able to spot if a post is an ad or paid post?

 40

Figure 16 - Respondent's ability to identify a paid post. Source: Daniel, 2020

Over 60% of respondents claimed that they are able to spot a paid post and that they
feel the most trustworthy and approachable influencers to be the ones with a following
up to 50,000 followers, thus the nano and micro range. A study made by PING Helsinki
revealed that a paid partnership does not decrease the trust level among consumers,
as long as the involved brand fits the influencer’s values and the influencer themselves
are transparent and authentic (M&M, 2018).

Q14: Do you follow any brands or products on social media?

If Yes was chosen, the participant was asked to mention 1 to 4 brands or

products they follow.

Out of all the respondents, 77% said that they follow a brand or product on social
media. A lot of these brands were huge globally known brands such as Kevin Hart,
L’Oréal and Patagonia. The reason the respondents were asked this question was to
detect whether there was any correlation with following these kinds of huge brands and
the choice of which type of influencer the respondents see as the most trustworthy.

Q15: Do you follow influencers on social media?

 41

and

Q16: How well do you connect with the influencers? (do they feel relatable to
you)

Even though under half of the respondents actually followed influencers on social
media, most of the influencers that they did follow and actively seeked their content,
were mostly in the nano and micro range.

Out of the respondents who followed influencers, the majority felt that they can connect
with influencers and feel that they are somewhat relatable or even very relatable.
These were the first signs of the consumer’s viewpoint of smaller influencers and the
positive level of connection which has been established with these consumers by the
influencers. This again supports the idea of smaller influencers being more trustworthy
and approachable.

Q17: How would you feel if your favorite brand was endorsed by an influencer?

Surprisingly, not even one of the respondents reported their feelings regarding an
influencer promoting their favorite brand to be a negative aspect. The majority of the
respondents either claimed to have neutral or positive feelings on that regard.

4 out of 13 respondents stated that their feelings will be leaning on the positive side if
an influencer endorsed their favorite brand’s product. The rest, 9 out of 13 respondents
felt neutral of the endorsement situation.

Q18: Have you ever bought anything through an influencer’s ad post?

and

Q19: What was the product and brand?

Although a very neutral and even positive perception towards influencers/ influencer
marketing was starting to form, only 2 out of 13 respondents had actually never bought
a product or service through an influencer. The products that were bought were a
Patagonia jacket and a NordVPN subscription, unfortunately neither respondent could
not recall the influencers promoting these products.

Q20: Have you considered buying a product based on a social media post?

and

Q21: What was the product and brand?

 42

On the other hand, almost 70% of the respondents had at least considered to buy a
product or service through an influencer. This is in line with another study previously
mentioned, made by Mediakix in 2019, which revealed that 69% of respondents had
considered buying a product or service through an influencer (Bailis, 2019). Brands
which respondents considered buying were again, large globally known brands.

Q22: Do you find paid posts to be

and

Q23: How do you generally feel about paid influencer posts and advertisements?

Most respondents could spot paid posts but they don’t consider paid posts to be a
negative aspect, in fact, most of the respondents claim influencer marketing to be
somewhat useful in their daily lives and they have an overall positive view on
influencers and influencer marketing in addition to feeling neutral or even slightly
positive regarding an influencer promoting their favorite brand.

Q24: Which type of influencer do you find the most approachable/ relatable/
trustworthy?

Figure 17 - Respondent's opinion on different types of influencers. Source: Daniel,

2020
 43

Out of all the respondents, as seen in Figure 16, a majority of respondents chose the
two smallest groups (nano and micro) to be the most approachable and trustworthy
groups of influencers. Therefore, these results suggest that the respondent’s trust lies
heavily in the nano and micro range of influencers. A very small minority chose the
macro and mega-influencers to be the most trustworthy.

Q25: From which type of the above would you most likely purchase a product or
service?

The trust towards smaller influencers which was seen in the early stages of the survey
clearly carried over to the consumer’s purchasing probability from an influencer within
the nano and micro categories, as again over 60% of the researcher’s survey
respondents stated to most likely buy a product or service from either category.

Interestedly enough, although the majority of the respondents did not seem to trust
influencers with over 100,000 followers, nor would they be likely to purchase a product
or service through them, most of the respondents still followed mega celebrities and
superstars such as Kim Kardashian and Kevin Hart. Similar findings of the popularity of
celebrity brands was found in a study made by Dentsu Aegis Network Oy, a Finnish
marketing company, which stated that out of 5,300 Finnish respondents 19% followed
celebrities on social media (M&M, 2018).

To conclude, the results have shown that while influencers with hundreds of thousands
upon millions of followers definitely have the potential to reach more people but the
benefits of a micro-influencer comes in place when building tight-knit relationships with
their audience, something that mega influencers rarely do (Forbes, 2018).

The researcher’s study results were very much in line with previous studies carried out
by major marketing agencies and influencer marketing entities. The consumer’s trust
towards influencers seem to generally be quite high, especially in the nano and micro-
influencer groups. Consumers feel that they can connect with the influencers in these
groups, they also feel that these influencers are easily approachable and they would at
least consider buying a product or service through them.

Even though the researcher’s study did not necessarily reveal high results of
consumers going through the purchase process regarding influencer marketing, the
affect on the consumer’s purchase decision and potential of a future purchase is
definitely in place.
 44

4.2 Interview

The interview was conducted on 3.4.2020 using an online video conference tool, Zoom.
The chosen interviewee was a Finnish YouTuber/ social media influencer. The
interviewee was asked permission to record the interview, which was granted. The
researcher could then reliably transform the video interview into a written form. This
ensured that all of the data was properly documented word to word, which eliminated
possible errors in the process of analyzing the data.

The interview was divided into the following themes: ‘Introduction/ Working in Social
Media’, ‘Working in the Social Media Influencer Space’, ‘Consumers/ Followers’.

4.2.1 Introduction/ Working in Social Media

Q1: Please stat your name, age and artist name,

Q2: Where are you from?

and

Q3: Tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do

The interview started with basic information of the interviewee, the interviewee was
Sonja Hämäläinen, a 28-year old from Helsinki, also known as @soikkuyo on
Instagram and Soikkuu on YouTube.

She has been working in the social media space since 2012, mainly focusing on
YouTube and she describes herself as a video blogger or vlogger. Hämäläinen has 215
thousand followers on Instagram and 188 thousand subscribers on YouTube, her niche
is ’lifestyle’, filming everyday normal activities of her life.

Q4: Do you work in social media full-time?,

Q5: How did you get started in the space?

and

Q6: When did you start?

 45

Hämäläinen works in social media part-time at the moment, since she is now focusing
on other career opportunities. Obviously, earlier during her YouTube career, she was
working full-time on social media, both on creating content on YouTube and
participating in brand partnerships on YouTube and Instagram.

Hämäläinen has been in the Finnish YouTube scene for a long time and stated that she
was among one of the first big social media personalities in Finland. According to
Hämäläinen, when she started, there was not much activity in the Finnish scene in
2012, it was not until 2013, the Finnish media started picking up on the scene.

Q7: Why did you start?

The reason Hämäläinen started making YouTube videos, was out of pure passion
towards creating and editing content. She has always been interested in content
creation, so it was a straightforward decision to try out the platform. When she started,
she did not start with stardom and success in mind and even later in her career she
was not necessarily interested in the fame that comes with a YouTube career. As
something which started as a hobby, turned into a successful career and her popularity
grew very organically.

She stated when starting YouTube that,

“I never imagined that it could be a career, the reason I started was out of
pure interest towards videography, video editing and content creation.”.
(Hämäläinen, 2020)

Q8: At what point did you realize the accumulation of followers and what were
the next steps after the realization?,

Q9: Do you think other content creators have followed similar protocols/ steps?

and

Q10: What has been the most challenging aspect regarding this career path?

The moment she realized that she can build a career out of YouTube/ social media
happened around 2013, when the Finnish newspaper, ’Helsingin Sanomat’, conducted
an interview with her and placed her on the cover of their ’Nyt-liite’, which is an
additional newspaper magazine that comes with the actual Helsingin Sanomat
 46

newspaper. At this point she already had a following around tens of thousands, but she
had not realized that her activity and content had any value.

“I was very much in the dark about the subject before the interview, I did
not realize my followers had any kind of ”market value” per se, after (I got
on the cover of Nyt-liite), I realized that a lot of media outlets were
interested about me and people outside of my young audience started
recognizing YouTubers. It was a very fast process in my case.”.
(Hämäläinen, 2020)

Hämäläinen admitted that she did not purposely or actively try to boost her visibility or
career, it was a more organic process which was in place. The next steps for here after
the realization of being able to build a career out of something she enjoys doing, was to
focus on expressing herself as well as possible in addition to uploading quality content.

At the time, ’YouTube networks’ were on the rise in the YouTube space. These
networks are companies which manage YouTube personalities, they are essentially the
’people behind the scenes’.

Hämäläinen stated that she does not like to constantly be following different metrics
and numbers, which in her case, is the moment YouTube networks come into play.
They are responsible for analyzing the YouTuber’s different metrics and performance
as well as processing offers regarding potential paid partnerships.

Hämäläinen joined a network called Splay, a Swedish company which eventually

launched their Finnish counterpart. Splay was the first of its kind in Finland, therefore
had an early starter advantage in the market.

”I haven’t done that much work in terms of getting paid partnerships,

Splay has helped me a lot throughout my career, they are the ones
responsible of creating opportunities regarding paid partnerships. I am the
one who then creates the relevant content for the partnership, so they
basically are my manager.”. (Hämäläinen, 2020)

Hämäläinen stated that although a lot of YouTubers she knows have chosen the
approach to join a network rather than doing it all independently, she also knows
YouTubers who does everything independently. The reason for most joining a network
is straightforward, it simply requires less work, it eliminates the required effort in terms
 47

of contacting companies to work with and allows more time to focus on the actual
content, potentially resulting in an overall higher quality level of the content.

”It really depends on a lot of factors whether to do it independently or with

a network, it depends overall on what type of person you are, the level of
ambition you have, and your personality.”. (Hämäläinen, 2020)

Some of Hämäläinen’s challenges regarding her career choice has been the attention
she gets which can be sometimes negative. Other challenges have been finding
inspiration, motivation and justifying whether if it is right or wrong not to post a video if
she has a publicly announced an upload schedule of 1 video per week for example.

”I did not fully comprehend the amount of publicity and attention I would get out of
this type of work. Also, sometimes the inspiration or motivation might be lacking, in
these situations it is very hard for me to forcefully make a video if I don’t want to, it
really eliminates my core purpose of making videos.”. (Hämäläinen, 2020)

4.2.2 Working in the Social Media Influencer Space

Q1: What is your definition of an influencer?

and

Q2: In which category would you place yourself in?

”I feel that nowadays it is easier to become a ’social media influencer’ due

to the multiple channels to pursue the title and the amount of competition.
Therefore, I think a lot of people can be considered to be a social media
influencer, but the core definition I would say is an individual who creates
interest among other people, whether the amount of people is thousands
or hundreds of thousands and who is actively followed.”. (Hämäläinen,
2020)

The researcher then provided the definitions of different influencer categories; nano,
micro, macro and mega, and then asked in which category would she place herself in.

”At the moment I am not considered to be in the top roster of Finnish

YouTubers as I am not that active on social media compared to before.
 48

Based on the definitions I would probably place myself somewhere above

the average.”. (Hämäläinen, 2020)

Q3: Which platforms do you work on?

and

Q4: Which platform is the most important for you?

The YouTuber also stated that YouTube and Instagram are definitely the two most
important platforms for her. This information strongly supports the researcher’s
suggestions for influencers to mainly focus on these two platforms, as the researcher’s
own survey revealed a similar preference of platforms among consumers as well as
previous studies revealed these two platforms to be the most used by consumers.

Although her career is built on YouTube and she mentioned both YouTube and
Instagram as the two most important platforms for her. Amongst two platforms the most
important was Instagram. This supports other findings that state the two platforms,
especially Instagram, to be the most suitable for influencers performance wise.

Q5: Do you participate in brand partnerships?,

Q6: Do you have a criterion when considering to work with a brand/ company?

and

Q7: Do you contact the brands/ companies, vice-versa or both?

Currently, she is tries not to participate in paid partnerships as much as before, as she
is slowly focusing on a shift in her career towards video/ movie production, potentially
leaving YouTube and social media as a kind of hobby.

”At the moment I am not doing any paid partnerships due to my focus on
other opportunities in life. In the past I have done a lot of partnerships, it
is very challenging to pursue a career in YouTube with an income, without
participating in paid partnerships.”. (Hämäläinen, 2020)

Hämäläinen was then asked to provide some insight on how she chooses to work with
a company/ brand.

“I always try to analyze the company/ brand whether it fit my values and if
I can proudly stand behind the company/ brand I am promoting. Over the
years I have had situations where I have chosen to do a partnership with
 49

a company I was not 100% confident to work with, due to thinking about
aspects such as not knowing when will my next payday be. After doing a
partnership like this, I have been thinking to myself “Why did I choose this
company?”. It is pressuring sometimes.”. (Hämäläinen, 2020)

Hämäläinen receives direct partnership offers but she does not process them at all, she
sends them directly to the Splay network to let them process the offer and decide if the
offer is something to take into consideration.

Q8: What brand are you most interested in working with

And

Q9: Give me an example of a partnership, that you are most proud of

When going deeper into her partnerships, Hämäläinen was asked to tell her most
interesting partnership, she mentioned that a partnership with Akava, a trade union
confederation with university, professional or other high-level education, was her
favorite partnership. In this partnership she got an opportunity to work with the Finnish
Police University College.

“It was my favorite because I felt that every party benefitted out of the
partnership, my viewers responded with very positive feedback, the
partnership company was very pleased and I really enjoyed the
partnership myself.”. (Hämäläinen, 2020)

The partnership she was the proudest of, was with Libresse, a company that produces
tampons and other menstruation related products. In this partnership she talked about
menstruation with the main point of talking openly about her different experiences
related to menstruation. She felt that the partnership was very important for especially
younger girls/ women who can be generally embarrassed to talk about difficulties
during menstruation. She wanted to make a point that there is nothing embarrassing
about the topic and it is perfectly fine to talk about it.

This again supports previous findings of creating engaging content which builds a
connection with the consumer on an emotional level, which further builds trust within
the influencer – follower/ consumer relationship.

Since Hämäläinen does not follow her metrics nor is she interested in the analytics of
her social media, the researcher was unable to get answers to the following questions:
 50

Q10: What are the most important metrics of measurement in a successful

campaign? Elaborate
Q11: If any, what are the steps and actions performed if a campaign does not
reach the desired performance?
Q12: If any, what are the steps and actions if a campaign does reach the desired
performance?

4.2.3 Consumers/ Followers

Q2: While gaining followers, have you noticed any kind of shift regarding
consumer/ follower trustworthiness towards you?,

Q1: How well do you know about your audience?

and

Q3: How close are you with your followers? Do they have an affect on the type of
content you publish?

Hämäläinen’s following has previously been distributed more among young females
than anything. During recent years this has changed.

”At the moment I am not very familiar about the demographics of my

followers, it seems to vary a lot, ranging from men to women and a wide
range of ages. On Instagram the gender distribution is almost 50% men
and 50% women, it is hard for me to determine my typical follower
nowadays. Especially now that I am living in Korea, my content is related
to Korea. I should interact more with my followers to reveal
(demographics etc) it more.”. (Hämäläinen, 2020)

Earlier in her career, Hämäläinen used to interact a lot with her following, therefore she
had a more detailed vision about them. Since in her recent years she has not been
very actively uploading content in addition to slowly shifting her focus on other
opportunities, she is not very familiar with her typical follower.

Hämäläinen stated that her followers have a quite large impact on her content even
though she would not necessarily want it to be so. She also mentioned that by
accepting her followers to somewhat determine the type of content she creates, it has
 51

brought her and her followers closer, creating a very trustworthy and approachable
image in the process. Although while she has this image, she said that in reality, her
social media and real-life persona’s differ quite a bit, since the image that was created
was mainly created by her followers and not herself actively pursuing a certain image.

The type of content she publishes has also changed during her career, in the beginning
she did not think much about what type of content she uploads or whether it had curse
words in it and such but now she is much more careful about what to and what not to
upload. In the researcher’s opinion this could have had an affect on the evolvement of
her general image, especially as her audience for a long time had remained as fairly
young girls, careful planning of published content could have yielded the trustworthy
image.

Q4: What do you think is the most important element when connecting with your
audience?,

and

Q5: What are some of the major step stones when attempting to engage your
followers?

Hämäläinen was asked about the most important elements in creating a connection
with followers.

“I think trust is important, if I tell my followers that I will upload a video

every Monday, I will also make sure to follow up and upload a video every
Monday. Another important element is to upload content that has some
kind of progression. Overall, to gain and maintain followers and to be
liked on social media, you have to have some kind of strategy in place.”.
(Hämäläinen, 2020)

Hämäläinen states that the main challenge of creating or maintaining a connection with
followers is interest, she gave an example of uploading a video for which her own
interest would later become non-existing, while her followers would be very interested
in the topic and wanting to hear more. She stated that

“It is very challenging to process a video or topic again with my followers

if I myself do not have interest in the topic anymore.”. (Hämäläinen, 2020)
 52

In conclusion, even though Hämäläinen could, in the researcher’s opinion, be

categorized as a macro or even mega-influencer, she has the characteristics of a
micro-influencer. She strongly makes her decisions of paid partnerships based on her
values and whether she can truly stand behind the company or. As previously
discussed, this is one of the most important elements regarding creating a strong
connection with consumers, a connection which is based on trust.

She also has been very active with her followers and subscribers, replying to a lot of
comments at her best ability, further strengthening the relationship between the social
media personality and the followers which has created a transparent, trustworthy and
approachable image seen by her audience. Considering these factors, it can be argued
that being a micro-influencer or even presenting an image similar to one that a micro-
influencer possess, can be hugely beneficial in the influencer marketing space.
 53

5 Conclusions

Question 1:

Which social media platform is the most suitable for influencers?

Already in the early stages of the research, the researcher noticed a trend regarding
social media platforms, three platforms were repeatedly mentioned throughout the
research process, these three being YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. Thus, early
on, the researcher decided to focus on these three platforms. After inspecting the
survey results, the consumer’s social media usage seems to be very heavily
concentrated on Instagram and YouTube.

The data also revealed that a majority of consumers use social media platforms for
more than 4 hours per week, this is an indicator that the consumers are already on the
platforms browsing different content, therefore influencers should capitalize on this fact
and seek out partnerships with brands and companies with the intent to do work on
Instagram and YouTube. Some influencer marketing tactics can rely on providing
information about a brand’s/ company’s products or services in an attempt to familiarize
the consumer with the brand/ company as a part of influencing the buyer’s journey.
From an influencer’s standpoint, this is a perfect opportunity, since the data revealed
that one of the most prominent reasons of social media usage was in fact, to get
information.

Out of the three platforms, Instagram scored the highest in terms of consumer usage,
YouTube coming in at a strong second place. Consumers as well as influencers use
both of these platforms actively and marketers see both platforms as viable choices for
social media marketing budget spending,

In conclusion, Instagram is the most suitable platform for influencers, but an influencer
should also consider to explore opportunities on YouTube.

Question 2:

Why are micro-influencers an effective group for influencer marketing?

 54

Based on the results from the primary data collected from both the survey for
consumers as well as the interview conducted with a YouTuber/ social media
influencer, it is clear that generally the consumer’s trust towards micro-influencers is
much greater compared to the larger groups such as macro and mega-influencers. The
research revealed that micro-influencers are a very strong group in the regards of
influencer marketing, when comparing them to the larger influencer groups. Micro-
influencers are believed to be so strong due to the ability to connect with potential
consumers on an emotional level due to being seen as an everyday consumer
themselves, thus creating a relatable, trustworthy and approachable image of
themselves.

While as an influencer gaining more followers in itself might not be the reason of
consumers losing trust towards larger influencers, the fact that the effort one has to put
towards interacting with their following as an individual with over 100,000 followers, is
far greater than the effort required for an individual with for example 10,000 followers.
For this reason, it can be hard for an larger influencer to create or even maintain the
image of trustworthiness, relatability and approachability, due to the simple reason of
not being able to interact with followers as efficiently due to the large amount of time
involved in replying to comments. The research revealed that to be able to create this
kind of an image, interaction with followers is a very important element when trying to
obtain a truly meaningful connection with a following, which involves high levels of
trust, relatability and approachability.

In conclusion, macro and mega-influencers might have an advantage regarding the

number of people they can reach but it seems that the more followers the influencer
has, the more harder it is to create or maintain a certain image which would assist with
influencing or persuading an audience into potential customers. Micro-influencers have
more potential to create this image and therefore can create influential connections
with an audience. Although consumers do follow larger influencers on social media,
they are more willing to purchase or consider purchasing products or services from a
micro-influencer, which further supports the group’s winning characteristics and the
consumer’s trust towards this group.

Question 3:

What is the impact on consumers? (Consumers living in Finland)

 55

The researcher’s findings suggest that consumers generally have a neutral to quite
positive perspective regarding influencers and influencer marketing.

Even respondents who did not follow influencers on social media, did not view them in
a negative light either. Consumers do not seem to have any negative feelings on the
idea of an influencer endorsing their favorite brands and do not see the marketing form
to be invasive or negative in any way.

In conclusion, the consumer’s view on influencers/ influencer marketing is between

neutral and positive. Most consumers followed influencers ranging from micro to mega
but did not see influencers/ influencer marketing to be a negative aspect. Many of the
survey’s respondents actually mentioned that influencer marketing is some-what useful
or very useful for them and they were also willing to consider buying something from an
influencer, which can be argued to require a positive view.

5.1 Limitations and Further Research Suggestions

The researcher would have wanted to get more responses to the survey in addition to
interviewing multiple influencers. Therefore, the sample size of the survey can be seen
as a major limitation, since it was quite small. With a larger sample size, the survey
results could be much more reliable.

By reviewing data from a sample size of at least 50 survey respondents, the researcher
feels like the answers would have had a much broader spectrum of opinions in addition
to a broader vision of the age groups using social media platforms. The researcher’s
survey respondents happened to be concentrated in one major age group, which might
also had an affect on the survey’s reliability.

Also, respondents were not given any kind of incentive to answer the survey honestly,
with maximum effort and focus. An incentive could have potentially strengthened the
reliability of the results.

Regarding interviewing multiple influencers, in the end, every influencer is a human

being, therefore every influencer has a different personality and opinion on matters,
which can reflect on how they deal with aspects such as connecting with followers,
different strategies in terms of deciding which company/ brand to work with and other
 56

elements related to their work. A second view from an influencer could have been
beneficial in order to find similarities and differences in results of the two interviews.

In addition, the interviewed influencer can be, in the researcher’s opinion, categorized
as a macro or mega-influencer in terms of Finnish influencer groups. Even though the
influencer has of course been a micro-influencer at some point, the age of the whole
influencer marketing scene was very young when she was a micro-influencer and the
influencer marketing scene has matured and evolved after that time. Therefore, the
results cannot be directly compared to recent studies focused on micro-influencers.

In conclusion, further research suggestions for a similar study would be to increase the
sample size of surveys to gain a much broader insight of the characteristics of
consumers as well as a clearer overview of the consumer’s perspective towards
influencer marketing.

Regarding research suggestions in terms of interviews with influencers would be to

choose multiple influencers, preferably from multiple niches and most importantly,
influencers from each category of nano, micro, macro and mega.
 57

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 63

7 Appendicies

7.1 Appendix 1: Survey

o Survey targeted to consumers who use social media

o Survey distributed on social media and a blog site
o Survey platform Webropol 3.0
o Pilot test conducted on 17.03.2020
o First version distributed online on 18.3.2020
o Updated version distributed on 21.3.2020
o Closed on 06.04.2020
o Total participants: 13

Final version of survey:

Theme 1: Demographics

Q1: Gender *

o Male
o Female
o Prefer not to say

Q2: Age *

o 18 - 24 years old
o 25 - 32 years old
o 33 - 40 years old
o 40+ years old

Q3: Current situation *

o Employed
o Student
o Working student
o Unemployed
o Other (Please specify)

Theme 2: Social Media

 64

Q4: Which one/s of these platforms do you use? *

o Instagram
o Facebook
o YouTube

If one of these are chosen, for e.g Instagram, questions Q5 and Q7 will be shown,
YouTube, questions Q5 and Q9 will be shown.

Q5: Name your favorite page *

Facebook

Q6: Name your favorite channel *

YouTube

Q7: Name your favorite page/ profile *

Instagram

Q8: For what do you use Instagram for? *

o Posting content
o Browsing content
o Researching products/ brands
o Relevant advertisements
o Other (Please specify!)

Q9: What do you use Facebook for? *

o Posting content
o Browsing content
o Checking reviews on products/ brands
o Social contacting
o Relevant advertisements
o Other (Please specify!)

Q10: What do you use YouTube for? *

o Posting content
o Browsing content
o Product reviews
 65

o Relevant advertisements
o Other (Please specify!)

Q11: How actively do you use social media? *

o 1 - 2 hours a week
o 2 - 4 hours a week
o 4+ hours a week

Q12: Which type of pages/ profile do you follow? * (multichoice)

o Fashion
o Food
o Fitness
o Design
o Travel
o Nature
o Art
o Inspiration
o Other (Please specify!)

Theme 3: Influencer Marketing

Q13: Are you able to spot if a post is an ad or paid post? *

o Yes
o No
o Not sure

Q14: Do you follow any brands or products on social media? *

o Yes
o No

If Yes was chosen, the participant was asked to mention 1 to 4 brands or products they
follow.

Q15: Do you follow influencers on social media? *

 66

o Yes
o No

If Yes is chosen, participant is asked to mention 1 to 4 influencers they follow

Q16: How well do you connect with the influencers? (do they feel relatable to you) *

Slider 0 to 10,

0 = Not relatable at all

10 = Very relatable

Q17: How would you feel if your favorite brand was endorsed by an influencer? *

Slider 0 to 10,

0 = Negative

5 = Neutral

10 = Positive

Q18: Have you ever bought anything through an influencer’s ad post? *

o Yes
o No

If Yes is chosen, participant will be asked to mention the product and brand (Q18)

Q19: What was the product and brand? *

Q20: Have you considered buying a product based on a social media post? *

o Yes
o No

If Yes is chosen, participant will be asked to mention the product and brand (Q21)

Q21: What was the product and brand?

Q22: Do you find paid posts to be *

o Useful
o Somewhat useful
o Not useful at all
o Other (please specify)
 67

Q23: How do you generally feel about paid influencer posts and advertisements? *

Slider from 0 to 10,

o 0 = I really enjoy them

o 5 = Neutral
o 10 = They are very annoying

Q24: Which type of influencer do you find the most approachable/ relatable/
trustworthy? *

o A: An influencer with up to 10,000 followers

o B: An influence with up to 50,000 followers
o C: An influencer with up to 100,000 followers
o D: An influencer with over 100,000 followers

Q25: From which type of the above would you most likely purchase a product or
service? *

o A
o B
o C
o D

7.2 Appendix 2: Interview

Zoom interview with YouTuber Sonja Hämäläinen

Date: 3 April 2020

Interviewer: Agafa Daniel

Interviewee: Sonja Hämäläinen

Duration: 44 minutes, 34 seconds

Theme 1: Introduction/ Working in social media

 68

Q1: Please state your name, age, artist name

Q2: Where are you from?
Q3: Tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do
Q4: Do you work in social media full-time?
Q5: How did you get started in the space?
Q6: When did you start?
Q7: Why did you start?
Q8: At what point did you realize the accumulation of followers and what were the next
steps after the realization?
Q9: Do you think other content creators have followed similar protocols/ steps?
Q10: What has been the most challenging aspect regarding this career path?

Theme 2: Working in the social media influencer space

Q1: What is your definition of an influencer?
Q2: In which category would you place yourself in?
Q3 Which platforms do you work on?
Q4: Which platform is the most important for you?
Q5: Do you participate in brand partnerships?
Q6: Do you have a criteria when considering to work with a brand/ company?
Q7: Do you contact the brands/ companies, vice-versa or both?
Q8: What brand are you most interested in working with
Q9: Give me an example of a partnership, that you are most proud of
Q10: What are the most important metrics of measurement in a successful campaign?
Elaborate
Q11: If any, what are the steps and actions performed if a campaign does not reach
the desired performance?
Q12: If any, what are the steps and actions if a campaign does reach the desired
performance?

Theme 3: Consumers/ Followers

Q1: How well do you know about your audience?
Q2: While gaining followers, have you noticed any kind of shift regarding consumer/
follower trustworthiness towards you?
Q3: How close are you with your followers? Do they have an affect on the type of
content you publish?
 69

Q4: What do you think is the most important element when connecting with your
audience?
Q5: What are some of the major stepstones when attempting to engage your
followers?