Effectiveness of Instagram marketing

and Social Media Influencers

Authors:
Rohith Fernando
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohithfernando/​ |16me160.fernando@nitk.edu.in

Divya Pentela

Aman Kureel
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aman-kureel​ | ​aman.171mt002@nitk.edu.in

Ayush Arun Singh

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayush-arun-singh-3617aa179/​ | ​ayush.171mn004@nitk.edu.in

Sushruth V
vsushruth.171co148@nitk.edu.com

Vishakh Rao
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vishakh-rao-070133181/​ | ​vishakh.171it150@nitk.edu.in
 Effectiveness of Instagram marketing
and Social Media Influencers

Abstract
The rise of the Social media age has created tremendous opportunities for marketing
strategies that leverage the power of communities, in combination with more traditional
approaches such as celebrity endorsement. 3.2 billion people over the world were active
users of social media in 2018. Among the numerous social networks available, two in
particular stand out. In June 2018, Instagram obtained their 1 billionth user, while Facebook
has 2.27 billion. The audience afforded by the sheer number of users on any form of Social
Media has made it extremely lucrative to tech savvy marketers. With 260 million users as of
2019 and an expected 370 million in 2022, India is a veritable goldmine.

The emergence of Social Media Marketing has coincided with the rise of the Influencer. A
Social Media Influencer is a user on social media who has established credibility in a specific
industry and amassed a large following. They then use their popularity to “influence” their
followers to purchase their preferred products.

In this study, we will attempt to gauge the responsiveness of the common populace to Social
Media Marketing

Keywords: ​Instagram,Social media, Marketing, Influencer, Celebrity Endorser

Introduction

Social Media marketing is a practice and field of research that has developed rapidly in the
21st century. It utilizes the power of social media and has the potential to revolutionize
consumer communication in the emerging digital economy. Sports celebrity endorsement is
one of the oldest marketing strategies for enhancing the image of a brand and heightening
purchase intention and was first recorded roughly 1800 years ago when Roman politicians
sponsored athletes to enhance the army's image and boost recruitment levels. In today’s
digital era, methodologies have developed, but the crux of the idea remains the same.
Companies now sponsor celebrities in return for access to their social media communities,
and those celebrities in turn promote products to transfer their positive image to the
sponsor's brand and to ultimately heighten purchase intention, which is expected to translate
into action (van Gelderen, Kautonen, & Fink, 2015). For this strategy to be effective, the
celebrity endorser must have established credibility among the members of the target group
(Dwivedi, Johnson, & McDonald, 2015), and the products endorsed must be differentiable
from others on the market. When these criteria are met, consumer purchase intention can be
heightened.

The long-term effects of social media marketing strategies and more importantly the
sustainability of those effects and social media based celebrity-endorser strategies are not
very well known. While in 2016, over 12% of total marketing budgets was spent on
social-media channels, only about a half of firms reported an impact on their performance
(Moorman, 2017).

With 59% of internet users between the ages of 18 and 29 and 33% of internet users
between the ages of 30 and 49 on Instagram, it has developed into a major player in the
social media segment. Over 60% of users log in daily, making it the second most engaged
network after Facebook. India has the world’s second largest user base at 71 million, behind
only the United States with 121m and above Brazil who have 64m.

With the numbers of users soaring, businesses from all over the world have eyed the
platform to advertise and endorse their products. As a result, Instagram introduced
advertising for select brands in October 2013 but didn’t open up advertising for all until
September 2015. Instagram now has more than 1 Million monthly advertisers, and 8 Million
business profiles. There are over 25m brand accounts on Instagram, with National
Geographic being the most followed. Among the 100 largest brands in the world, a
staggering 90% have Instagram accounts.

Studies have shown that 60% of Instagram users discover new products on the platform and
78% of Influencers prefer Instagram for brand collaboration. Engagement with brands on
Instagram is ten times higher than Facebook, 54 times higher than Pinterest, and 84 times
higher than Twitter. These stats show the immense potential that a successful advertising
campaign can have on the platform.

The user penetration on the platform will only grow day by day and this being the case there
arises a need to look at the platform through the eyes of a user and the ground reality of its
user penetration. Since there exists a geographical barrier, the following study will work with
the Indian user market and will hope that the results will draw a rough conclusion for other
developing countries in South-East Asia.

Objective
The objective of this study is to assess if whether there are long-term effects of social media
entrepreneurial marketing on purchase intentions. We posit that in online fan communities,
the credibility of celebrity endorsers affects the intention to purchase a product.

We use a survey with respondents from multiple demographics to analyse and display the
responsiveness of members of each social grouping towards Instagram marketing

Analyzing the effects of social media marketing via Instagram adds a contemporary aspect
and, thus, informs the discussion even after 30 years of practice. Further, studying the
correlation between brand image, celebrity endorser credibility, and purchase intention from
a consumers' point of view will lead to a better understanding of the psychological factors
relevant to social-media settings.

Technical Framework

Social Media
Social media are interactive computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and
sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual
communities and networks. The variety of stand-alone and built-in social media services
currently available introduces challenges of definition; however, there are some common
features:

1. Social media are interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications.

2. User-generated content, such as text posts or comments, digital photos or videos,

and data generated through all online interactions, is the lifeblood of social media.
 3. Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and
maintained by the social media organization.

4. Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a

user's profile with those of other individuals or groups.

The first Social Media sites were launched at the turn of the millenium and have since
exploded in popularity, reach and user base. This has led to it becoming a very appealing
playground for marketers.

Social Media marketing

Social media marketing is a form of internet marketing that involves creating and sharing
content on social media networks in order to achieve your marketing and branding goals.
Social media marketing includes activities like posting text and image updates, videos, and
other content that drives audience engagement, as well as Social Media advertisements.
Social Media marketing is heavily dependent on a few factors

Brand awareness
The importance of brand awareness for brand equity is proportional to the level of
awareness that the brand generates (Yasin et al., 2007). The higher the level of awareness,
the higher the brand perception. When consumers are aware of a brand, it is more likely to
be chosen over other brands with lesser awareness. Brand awareness involves two main
elements: recalling and recognizing (Keller, 2008). Brand recall refers to the ability of the
consumers to remember a brand. Brand recognition is when consumers distinguish between
similar brands. Yasin et al.'s (2007) study has shown that when a brand is recalled and
recognized, it has more likelihood of being selected.

Brand image
Brand image refers to the associations within consumers' minds, beliefs built around the
brand, uniqueness that differentiates a brand from others, personal symbolism that buyers
associate with a brand, and general brand impressions about the brand, more than the
product. Keller (1993) proposed three dimensions for brand image: attributes, benefits, and
attitudes. A brand with a strong brand image are better able to differentiate themselves from
competitors and generate higher financial incomes. On the other hand, brands with a weak
image produce the opposite effects.

Brand association
Brand Association is an important ingredient of brand perception and awareness.There is a
strong connection between awareness and association. Keller (1993) states that brand
association refers to all the thoughts in consumers' minds related to a brand and argues that
brand knowledge is like a collection of pieces in the consumers' minds that activate and
generate associations. Brand association also refers to the intangible characteristics of a
product, for instance, its distinctiveness among a variety of brands, innovation, participation
of the brand in the market, and prestige (Yasin et al., 2007). Brand associations arise from
brand knowledge and brand image.

Associations can be divided into three types: associations with emotional attributes,
associations with functional attributes of a product, and attitudinal associations. So,
establishing the brand association and brand relationship quality requires consideration of
brand fondness, which represents feelings that can be associated with the act of liking.

Perceived quality
Another important element of brand perception. It refers to intangible perceptions,
judgments, thoughts, and beliefs about the quality of a product. Brand perception is the
result of the mix of desirability and perceived quality. Perceived quality is linked to price.
When consumers see higher prices for similar products, they perceive the quality of the
higher priced products as being better. Perceived quality influences positive attitudes
towards the brand. The higher the perceived quality and thus positive associations the brand
has, the more likely a customer is to purchase from them.

Consumers tend to choose those products that make them feel secure. To reinforce
perceived quality, it is suggested that warranties, prices, and brand information be used as
tools to attach quality to the brand. Perceptions of brand quality are based on price,
appearance, characteristics, and features.

Product country image

In fast growing global markets, product country of origin plays a key role in brand image
perception. Some consumers make purchasing decisions based on the country the brand
comes from (Yasin et al., 2007). Nebenzahl and Jaffe (1996) suggest that country of origin
should be used as a marketing strategy for creating brand image. Finally, product country
image can create positive beliefs and ideals for a brand.
The 3 largest markets that can be tapped through the power of Social Media are China, India
and the United States.
Instagram
Instagram is a photo and video-sharing social networking service owned by Facebook, Inc. It
was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, and launched in October 2010.
The app allows users to upload photos and videos to the service, which can be edited with
various filters, and organized with tags and location information. An account's posts can be
shared publicly or with pre-approved followers. Users can browse other users' content by
tags and locations, and view trending content. Users can "like" photos, and follow other
users to add their content to a feed.

After its launch in 2010, Instagram rapidly gained popularity, with one million registered
users in two months, 10 million in a year, and 800 million as of September 2017. In April
2012, Facebook acquired the service for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock. As of
October 2015, over 40 billion photos had been uploaded to the service.
 ●

Instagram Marketing
This study examines the Instagram marketing efforts of different luxury brands from five
perspectives; entertainment, interaction, trendiness, customization and word of mouth.
Entertainment is the result of the fun and play emerging from the social media experience.
We find that social media users consume brand related content for enjoyment, relaxation,
and as a pastime. This study uses a survey to assess whether consumers find luxury brands'
social media fun and interesting, and to subsequently measure entertainment.
Analysis
For the purpose of our study, we used a survey of 319 respondents. The survey was
conducted anonymously and contained respondents from a wide variety of demographics.

Findings
From our survey, we found that 89% of people have an Instagram accounts, which goes to
show that it is a very important platform for marketing that advertisers cannot afford to
ignore.

Further, we also found that 70.1% of users who filled the form indicated that they had
substantial understanding of the working of Instagram ads with only 13.4% choosing 1 and
16.5% choosing 2 on the likert scale, with 1 indicating no understanding at all and 5
corresponding to a thorough understanding
Based on the age groups, we found that people below the age of 32 are more likely to be
familiar with the brands that are advertising their products on Instagram, with those below
age 18 being most familiar. One surprising result was that people aged above 40 are more
familiar with the brands rather than relatively younger people in the age range of 33-40.

It would be prudent for advertisers to devise separate strategies to cater to prospective

clients who are older. This can be done by posting relevant content, that is short as well as
catchy, because most of the people in range 33-40 and 40+ don’t use Instagram as heavily
as their younger counterparts do.

If we look at the degree of following major influencers, we can infer that females tend to
follow more influencers on Instagram relatively compared to male users, which can be a
major factor for brands particularly pertained to female customers.
If we are to look at brand image of the product being a matter of the question, youngsters
have a notion of prioritizing it ahead of other parameters such as pricing or quality with
people aged below 18 averaging on 4 on the likert scale in importance of brand image, and
people of age 18-24 and 25-32 averaging near 3.56.

This further shows that to catch a particular age group, parameters that they consider before
buying a product changes and advertisers need to capitalize on those parameters.
Major time of any company goes on building an impressive Instagram profile that is visually
appealing to get more customers. But, according to the survey, it does not really play a very
important or capitalizing role for users to purchase a product.

Considering the factor of pricing capitalizing over brand image, people in age range 25-32
tend to consider it more important.

If we go on to differ this on the basis of income, people having income ranging from 15-30
lakhs tend to consider the pricing factor more than any other income group averaging close
to 3.4, which may get some companies to think over not necessarily generalizing the factor
of pricing only being relevant to people having lower income. While other groups are also
very close to 3.2 and 3.3, it does provide a significant and an interesting insight.
Considering the number of likes as a factor to buy a product, our study reveals that female
users tend to consider the factor of likes more compared to the male users, with 39.13% of
them choosing 4 as a measure of agreeableness.

If we go through the same result based on the residence of the people, we get that people
living in urban areas tend to consider it as an important factor followed by people of
semi-urban areas, while people of rural areas not considering it as much of an important
factor.

Customer retention is an important factor in holding a significant market share. By doing an

age group analysis we get that people aged 40+ are most likely to buy products from a brand
already used. We can also correlate to the analysis we got that they are not familiar with
most of the brands because they tend to buy products from the same brand, which shows
that they don’t spend much of the time seeing new brands as such, thus making it harder for
new brands to reach them.

Social Media influencers are often sought by companies to advertise their product. Our study
revealed that female users are often not tempted by their profile or any general activity, with
most of the male users remaining neutral, despite more number of female users following a
decent number of influencers as shown in the study above, which in turn shows that
following a particular influencer won’t guarantee their ability to sell a product.

On the other hand, people living in rural areas are also are not impacted too much with
whatever social media influencers are upto, and on an average people don’t tend to consider
their recommendations irrespective of the age group, occupation, gender or income.
Male users ignore ads by brands that they are not familiar with more than female users.But
when the graph progresses it is seen that between the region 1-3 male users are more
prone to seeing advertisements by brands that they don’t know when compared to female
users.But in the 3-5 region the graphs for male and females are really close which indicates
that both genders ignore the ads by brands they don’t know almost equally. Hence brand
awareness is a very important factor when it comes to Instagram marketing.

As it can be seen in the chart, male users get more irritated by advertisements on Instagram
than female users. Hence brands should aim at making advertisements more ent and
pleasing to the male audience.

Our study revealed that male users don’t have a good opinion of Instagram marketing.On
the other hand female users think that it is good and have a positive opinion about Instagram
marketing.
Conclusion
We find that right now Instagram marketing is an effective tool to capture a large pool of
users, largely pertaining to age group of 18-24. People having income between 5-15 lakhs
are the target group that can be easily converted from potential buyers to frequent
customers. It was also seen that each age group has different parameters before buying a
product, and based on what the target consumer base is, a company should have a decisive
and a very particular marketing strategy. We also find that need of social media influencers
is not a very important factor as most of the people do not really get convinced with their
recommendations, despite following them. Instead, that amount of money could be spent on
capitalizing on important parameters such as pricing, building brand value and creating
engaging content.

● 89% of the people who took up the survey have an Instagram account.
● Almost 70% of the people understand how Instagram advertising works. Moreover
13.4% of the people are almost oblivious of how advertising on Instagram works.
● Coming to brand awareness, familiarity with brands whose ads people see on
Instagram decrease with increasing age with a sudden jump in familiarity in the age
group 40+. This shows that the age group 33-40 is not much familiar to the brands
whose ads they see on Instagram so brands should focus on increasing brand
awareness in this age group the most.
● Female users follow more influencers on Instagram than male users. So, brands
aiming their products for men should focus on advertising their products
independently rather than taking the help of an influencer. On an average all users
do not follow a lot of influencers on Instagram, so brands taking the help of
influencers to advertise their products can utilise the same revenue for other
important aspects such as pricing or product quality.
● For users under the age of 32, brand image influences their decision to buy a
product. So brands aiming their products towards this age group should first look
towards a strong brand image.
● Major time of any company goes on building an impressive Instagram profile that is
visually appealing to get more customers. But, according to the survey, it does not
really play a very important or capitalizing role for users to purchase a product. For
the age group under 18, Instagram profile might affect their perception of brand
image but for older people it does not matter that much. Hence brands should not
focus much on building an appealing Instagram profile.
● For the age group 18-40, pricing of a product is a more important factor than brand
image. Whereas users under the age of 18 do not care much about the pricing but
they are more focused in the brand image. In terms of pricing, users with family
income from 15-30 lacs tend to consider the pricing factor over the brand image.
 Brands should focus more on pricing rather than brand image irrespective of the
income group they are aiming at.
● If the number of likes on a product’s ad is more. Females tend to buy it more. Male
users do not care much about the number of likes on a product’s advertisement.
Hence brands aiming their products towards the female population should focus on
somehow increasing the number of likes so that it catches the eye of users quickly.
Number of likes on a post affects the decision to buy a product more on people living
in urban and semi urban areas. People living in rural areas are overall neutral about
this.
● Customer retention is an important factor in holding a significant market share. By
doing an age group analysis we get that people aged 40+ are most likely to buy
products from a brand already used. We can also correlate to the analysis we got
that they are not familiar with most of the brands because they tend to buy products
from the same brand, which shows that they don’t spend much of the time seeing
new brands as such, thus making it harder for new brands to reach them. For option
selected 1(least likely), under 18 is the highest which we can relate to their replies in
being attracted to a new brand.
● Social Media influencers are often sought by companies to advertise their product.
Our study revealed that female users are often not tempted by their profile or any
general activity, with most of the male users remaining neutral, despite more number
of female users following a decent number of influencers as shown in the study
above, which in turn shows that following a particular influencer won’t guarantee their
ability to sell a product. But in the most likely options they are the ones with the most
replies. Overall the trend is that mostly people are not affected by their influence,
quite a few might be neutral about it but most are not too much influenced by them.
● It also shows that females see more ads by unfamiliar brands when compared to
male users. This conclusion can be related to the previous one which said female
users accept new brands more than male users.
● It can be seen that males find Instagram advertising more irritating than females.
Advertisements should be made more pleasing to males.
● Overall female users have a better overall opinion of Instagram marketing when
compared to male users. Overall in most replies the neutral section was the highest
hence the users of Instagram are on an average quite neutral about Instagram
marketing and it can the opinion could be improved a lot using the right techniques.
Also Instagram marketing at the moment is aimed at the female population and the
focus on the male population should be increased.

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