Naam: Daan Kemner
Studentnummer: 1136068
Naam module + code: Duurzaam Organiseren Engels, HRMHB2-21
Datum van schrijven: 20 Januari 2023
, Influencer marketing, the best strategy
for HappyShoes?
HappyShoes is a shoe brand for all teenagers in the Netherlands. They are a startup
company, which means they still have a lot of difficulties with finding the right marketing
strategy. Social media is flooded with influencers promoting all kinds of items for not only
big brands like Starbucks or Nike, but also small startup companies. Which is why I think that
Influencers are a good marketing communication tool to reach HappyShoes customers.
Let’s begin with the fact that less than 20% of generation Z, which is the generation born
between 1997 and 2012, reads a magazine on a daily base for their own pleasure. While
more than 80% of this generation says they use social media on a daily base (Twenge, 2018).
This low social distance between influencers and teenagers makes it easier for influencers to
concretize product experiences and brand perceptions, which facilitates, for example, the
acquisition of awareness for a particular brand. In addition, Even though the physical
distance is perceived to be very large, this ensures that influencers can pin point the
different characteristics of products or brands (Holvoet, 2018). As you can see this proves
the fact that the target audience for HappyShoes reads less magazines, yet they spent more
and more time swiping and scrolling through social media which is the perfect spot for
influencers to promote products.
Besides the fact that teenagers are a lot on social media. Wang (2022) also stated that
teenagers are easily susceptible for the influencer culture, because they are mostly affected
by peer pressure and influence. This constant fear and desire to fit in helps influencers to
create new trends in which the young audience will continue to contribute. This is a
repeating cycle in which influencers create a trend and the young audience follows. This is a
good factor for HappyShoes as they can get influencer to make a trend with their shoes and
the young generation will follow them and buy their shoes. In the end you then will online
invest in the influencers by sending them the shoes for free and asking them if they will
make a video about your product.
Lastly, is the fact that influencer marketing is a good marketing strategy in the fashion
industry. When you are talking about fashion, people trust each other and not businesses,
which is why influencer marketing is such a great marketing strategy in the fashion sector.
Several studies demonstrate that word-of-mouth marketing produces twice as many sales as
paid advertising. Also, consumer who buy through word-of-mouth have a 37% higher
retention rate. Obi4wan has a special social media monitoring tool, which showed that the
most used hashtag on Instagram is #fasion. Fashion, influencers, and social media therefore
seems to be a perfect combination with each other (Jepma, 2019).
For example, look at the campaign with Dutch hijab model and influencer Ruba Zai and Dolce
& Gabbana. They did not only reach a big audience through their own channels, but this big
campaign also got noticed in worldwide media. The international attention reached media
platforms like Voque, CNN, Emirates woman and many more. You can image that this
influencer campaign made it to an audience of billions of people around the world (Jepma,
2019).
