Amazon Extends Its Reach To Yet Another Industry – Influencer Marketing
It’s the year 2500. You just got back from your vacation to Mars on an Amazon rocket. Your robot makes you breakfast with food from Amazon, delivered by Amazon. Your flying car takes your kids to their first day of school, where they show off their new shoes they ordered on Amazon. They go to class and pledge allegiance to the United States of Amazon.
Alright… that might be a bit of an exaggeration (or is it?), but Amazon just announced another venture that’s encroaching in a huge, already-established ecosystem. Sound familiar? Amazon is making their move into influencer marketing, according to Jay Baer at Convince & Convert. Social media influencers are now able to set-up a storefront with their recommended products, where their followers can easily buy them. The stars receive around 8% commission on all products sold.
Effects on Media
Since Amazon is at the top of the e-commerce space (not to mention their e-book, smart speaker, original content and grocery businesses- just to name a few), this move makes a lot of sense. It’s simple for influencers to set up, and it gives Amazon a plethora of (famous) “salespeople” to push their products. This also gives brands, and the influencers, the real-time data to see how well their social influence is actually working.
So, how does this impact the landscape of media as a whole? While YouTube is a behemoth in their own right, Amazon could steal from YouTube’s massive database of influencers. As Jay Baer says, “The one historical truism of digital marketing through the years is that whoever controls the metrics controls the budget.” We’ve seen this proven true by companies like Google and Facebook.
With actionable data available (product sales), and with Amazon’s own social influence, it’s not hard to see social media influencers start moving away from YouTube, for example. Especially, if down the line, Amazon forces their hand. If influencers are starting to reap the benefits of the storefront, Amazon could require social media stars to post their content on one of Amazon’s properties, in order to keep receiving those commission checks. This would be a massive win for Amazon. They could take control of the marketing funnel, from a to z.
And remember the original content we mentioned earlier? This is just more proof that content is king, and large players, like Amazon, are starting to put more and more eggs in that basket. It’s also proof that Amazon is slowly taking over, and will surely be running the world soon.
To learn more about influencer marketing, or for any of your other media inquiries, contact RPM today.