In the latest episode of Up to Speed with UBS, Juliette Gimenez, who co-founded fashion e-commerce platform Goxip and influencer agency RewardSnap, explains why influencers are becoming more like entrepreneurs
Influence is a multi-billion dollar industry. But what actually is it? And who determines who has it? From Mr Beast to Seraphine, influencers don’t just help brands sell units through product placement, they can also offer insight into the values and culture of the communities brands want to reach.
With the influencer market for branded and platform deals projected to skyrocket to US$28 billion by 2026, social platforms like Instagram and TikTok are becoming major drivers of success for B2C companies.
So, how do you build an influencer strategy that goes beyond product placement? What’s the secret sauce to creating a two-way conversation in your marketing? And is it time to stop thinking of influencers as Tik Tok dancers that can help sell your product but, but as business partners?
We asked these questions and more to Juliette Gimenez, who's behind fashion e-commerce platform Goxip and influencer agency RewardSnap, in the latest episode of our podcast, Up to Speed with UBS. In conversation with Gen.T’s Lee Williamson, Gimenez shares why influencers are more than good-looking people doing a TikTok dance, why influencing is no longer a one-person job, and how they can enable you to market your product around the world at lightning speed.
Here are a few excerpts from the conversation. Click the audio player below to listen to the full episode.
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ON THE POWER OF SOCIAL SELLING
“Social media platforms have been building a lot more functions to help influencers and content creators monetise their content, like Instagram shop, for example. You can just upload the product and sell within Instagram direct-to-consumer, without even a website.”
ON NOT JUST BEING GOOD LOOKING PEOPLE
“Influencers are not just good looking people running around doing a TikTok dance anymore. They have agents, they have a big business team around it. They have the whole content calendar of the whole year laid out. A few years ago, we would have signed one influencer, which is just one person, a one-man job; and now, she has a team of five people around it.”
ON THE LIGHTNING SPEED OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
“In the old days, ‘marketing 1.0’, you had a billboard with maybe 500 max people walking around it on a Saturday, in a particular timezone. With marketing 2.0, if you have 100 million followers on Instagram, once you post one thing, one product, you reach half of the audience group within the next second. You can go around the world with one post at lightning speed.”
ON THE POTENTIAL FOR INVESTORS AND INFLUENCERS TO UNITE
“Influencers offer a lot of opportunities to investors because they know the needs of their audience – partly because they are the target audience themselves. They're also very good at the marketing side and the sales conversion side. But they need help from investors on product production, inventory management, sales forecast and logistics.”
ON REBRANDING INFLUENCERS AS ENTREPRENEURS
“The influencer economy isn't even about influencers anymore. It's about entrepreneurs. The whole space is so much more professional; like a proper business.”
Quotes are edited for clarity and brevity.
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