INFLUENCE MARKETING PHENOMENON: ADVANTAGES AND DEVELOPMENT TRENDS

Abstract

The article examines influence marketing as a tool for promoting brand products and services with the participation of opinion leaders. It has been established that influence marketing allows to increase brand recognition among a wide audience and strengthen consumer loyalty to the brand, integrate the brand into social networks or strengthen the brand’s communication interaction with the audience on a certain platform, advertise the brand’s products and reveal its advantages or benefits from purchasing, etc. A current classification of influencers has been developed based on such features as the status and level of expertise of the influencer, his niche expertise and platform for influence creation, the number of followers in social networks, the regularity of cooperation with the brand, the implementation of certain functions during interaction with the brand, the payment format and the creativity of the concept during cooperation with the brand. The advantages of influence marketing are summarized and it is emphasized that influence marketing is universal in terms of popularizing goods and services from different niches, and also has variable formats for cooperation between a brand and opinion leaders, including product or product reviews, bloggers unboxing gifts or press packs from brands, sponsored content or paid advertising, brand ambassadorship, holding contests, raffles, flash mobs or challenges, providing promotional codes for discounts, participating in collaborations. The transformation of influence marketing under the impact of changes in audience behavior and technological development is outlined. The following trends in the development of influence marketing are highlighted: the formation of strategies using artificial intelligence, changes in approaches to brand cooperation with influencers, as well as the emergence of a new type of content from influencers driven by the phenomenon of de-influence. It was found that in order to effectively use influence marketing brands adhere to a certain algorithm of the influence architecture. In particular, they implement influence marketing campaigns through preparatory, creative and analytical stages, and also establish cooperation with the influencer taking into account legal aspects – fixation of ethical requirements, reputational risks and terms of cooperation