Celebrity Marketing: How to Target a Specific Market Using Social Media

Written by: Bob Williams | The Brand Agent

Celebrities who appeal to different age groups are changing almost as fast as social media evolves


When using social media for marketing, it is important to know demographics of each platform. For example, if a company’s client is a vlogger in their early 20s or late teens, it would be wiser to have them promote a product on Snapchat than promote on Google+. According to a BI Intelligence survey , 45% of Snapchat users fall into the 18-24 age range, while only 16% of Google+ users do.

18-24 – Ideal celebrities for this market are ones that have a large following of younger people. Taylor Swift did a post on Tumblr asking why Apple’s new music program had a free period where artists were not paid. This post gained over 89,000 likes and produced an outcry from 18-24 year olds in Swift’s favor. In terms of platforms, her demographic primarily uses Snapchat (45% of the app’s users), Vine (28% of the app’s users), and Tumblr (28% of the app’s users). Facebook still commands the most users of any social media platform. The platform has simply transformed into a much broader mix of ages, ceding much of its former power to newer apps.

25-34 – This age group is arguably the most marketable of all. Influencers who typically post pictures on Instagram or Pinterest would be ideal influencers for this demographic; such as interior designers, fashion designers, or foodies like Martha Stewart . This demographic falls in the range of about 20% of users on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn and many more . This groups difference over others is it makes up the majority of Pinterest users (26% compared to the next highest of 21%).

35-44 – This demographic has a noticeable drop off in the amount of users on all social media platforms. However, 35-44 year olds make up the majority of users on LinkedIn, and are only 1% behind the 25-34 age group on Twitter. They also have a strong presence in Google+. Although the 35-44 age group may not have an extremely large audience on Twitter, they have enough of a presence for the celebrity’s message to get across effectively. (For example – Larry King )

45+ – There is a large shift in the amount of users with each platform with this age group. The top three in order are Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest. An example of an influencer on Facebook and LinkedIn is Bill Gates , who is older and can connect better with this demographic. For companies targeting people of this age or higher on social media, a good bet would be to promote their product through Facebook and LinkedIn.

For a more detailed look at social media demographics, check out these survey results from the Pew Research Center .