Features of Marketing Communication with the Participation of Influencers in Social Media

This study is devoted to influence-marketing, its key features and characteristics. The purpose of the study is to determine the performance criteria that can be used by large brands to launch a marketing campaign with the participation of an influencer. To achieve this goal, a number of tasks were completed, namely: 1. Studying the concept of influence-marketing and its main tools; 2. Studying of the concept of Social Media Marketing and its role in the strategy of brand promotion; 3. Studying Instagram as a platform for business; 4. Analysis of the Instagram audience and the market for Instagram bloggers; 5. Analysis of real cases of interaction between bloggers and brands on Instagram; 6. Revealing tendencies of such interaction; 7. Description of the stages of selecting an Instagram influencer for the campaign. The object of the research is a complex of marketing communications carried out by large brands in social media. The subject is the effectiveness of marketing communications carried out by large brands in the Russian segment of Instagram with the participation of influencers. The theoretical part of the research is based on modern concepts of marketing communications, the Theory of Opinion Leaders P. Lazarsfeld and R. Merton, as well as the concept of Two-Stage Communication, the Theory of Public Opinion by W. Lippmann and the "Spiral of Silence" by E. Noel-Neumann, the Theory of Leadership by K. Levin and D. White, G.G. Pocheptsova. In addition, the study is based on scientific research about the concepts of "influence-marketing" and "SMM", brand promotion strategies through social media. The empirical base of the study was made up of real examples of cooperation of large brands with influencers on Instagram, the results of expert interviews with specialists working with bloggers, as well as data from blogging agencies and blogger exchanges (Wildjam, Getblogger), statistical indicators of Popsters and Brand Analytics ”, user materials of bloggers and their accounts, research of various marketing and advertising organizations: VTsIOM, AKAR, Havas Media, etc., relevant materials on the development of the Russian marketing market on the sites sostav.ru and adindex.ru, industry reports on the development of new media. The paper defines the criteria for the effectiveness of a marketing campaign with the participation of an influencer, describes the successful promotion formats, identifies the factors that affect the effectiveness of the campaign, and describes the metrics for evaluating the success of a marketing campaign with the participation of a blogger. The results of the study can become recommendations for advertisers when choosing one or another Instagram blogger to optimize marketing campaigns for brands.