Recently, there has been a trend where influencers are becoming business owners. In a sense, influencers were already entrepreneurs. They were already brands in themselves. They found and grew an audience through their content, and built a business on this audience as potential buyers of whatever products or services other businesses approached them to market. Influencer marketing agencies played an important intermediary role. Influencer marketing agencies integrated the business’s influencer marketing strategy with their overall marketing strategy and matched them with suitable influencers, optimising the collaborations for best sales results.
The power of influencers as a special form of marketers, who have an existing personal connection with their audience prior to the marketing, has enabled some of them to become business owners, where they can use their following to bring in buyers for their own products and services. But this is a limited trend.
Most Influencers Are Not Becoming Business Owners
Influencer marketing agencies keep an eye on trends in the influencer marketing space, both qualitatively and quantitatively. It is only some influencers who are experimenting with this kind of entrepreneurship, and there are some reasons why this might be a fad instead of a more long lasting trend.
Influencer marketing agencies that study the influencer marketing space have considered this development’s impact on influencer marketing in general.
Influencers Specialize in Content Creation
Most successful influencers became influencers because they have a passion for making content in their category and have an aptitude or talent for it. They are experts in making content for their audience on their social media platform. It is a relatively narrow area of expertise, and the aptitude/talent, skills, knowledge and experience involved in making a successful content creator and influencer does not necessarily have a significant overlap with the same things involved in owning and running a successful business.
So within the already limited and relatively minor trend of influencers turning business owners, an influencer marketing agency’s judgement would suggest that the number of influencers who will be able to successfully transition will be still smaller. Though the empowerment this transition may bring to some is welcome and worth celebrating.
For All Intents and Purposes, the Influencer Marketing Landscape Looks the Same
Influencer marketing agencies understand the marketing space through numbers, data, statistics, quantitative analysis in general, at times in real time. They also understand the client brand’s story and their overall marketing strategy that they sometimes conceptualize in collaboration with the brands. On the other hand, they profile influencer and influencer networks, to work out best brand-influencer matches. The value of this eagle eye view is not substantially impacted by this trend. Moreover, the businesses founded and owned by influencers may need a more overall, objective view of the influencer landscape and may need influencer collaborations beyond their particular audience/followers and categories. Influencer marketing agencies are relevant here.