Where is Influencer Marketing in the overall marketing strategy?

“So under what channel do we place Influencer Marketing in the overall marketing strategy?”

I asked Oluwatobi Adekunle during one of our random chats centred around Digital Marketing on WhatsApp.

After a long pause, induced by whatever is capable of interfering with feedback in electronic communication, he responded, “Digital PR”.

And he was right. Digital PR it is.

Prior to this discourse, there have been divided opinions among digital marketing colleagues on whether to isolate influencer marketing as an independent channel or appropriate it as a sub-channel under an existing marketing channel?

An article on SocialMediaToday.com sums up Digital PR as thus: “Digital PR is all about combining traditional PR with content marketing, social media and search: transforming static news into conversations and bypassing media to speak directly to your target audience online.”

A further scrutiny of the definition identifies the combination of content marketing (the weapon which influencers use to engage their target audience), and social media (the channels they thrive on) as different components of the same body deployed to extend brand’s share of voice to a specific target audience online, and which by extension, is digital public relations.

An influencer on the other hand according to ArtPlusMarketing, is “a content creator and not the platform (channel) itself’’. From being the focal point of a brand’s narrative to extending market share, all the combined marketing efforts of the influencer are geared toward amplifying the voice of the brand they represent in the digital space.

With Influencer Marketing garnering popularity day by day among marketers and the brands they represent, it is understandable why some marketers assume it is a stand-alone channel whereas it is but a powerful sub-channel of Digital PR.