Social Media Shapes Marketing Career

Katharina Becker '18

Katharina Becker '18

Credit: Penn State Behrend

When Katharina Becker ’18 was earning her Marketing and International Business degrees at Penn State Behrend, she had no idea that she would end up working in a cutting-edge industry.

“I’d never heard of influencer marketing until I did an internship at ApexDrop in Erie,” Becker said.

Today, she is a senior campaign developer at the company, which works with Instagram micro-influencers that have a minimum of 5,000 followers on the social media platform.

“We expose influencers to new products,” she said. “They, in turn, share those products with their followers.”

Becker’s duties span product promotion from start to finish, including building landing pages and targeted emails for campaigns, choosing influencers that meet her clients’ needs, and monitoring the progress of campaigns to be sure they run smoothly.

“Influencers can be creative in how they share our clients’ products,” she said. “We encourage authenticity. They don’t have to promote anything that doesn’t meet their expectations.”

Becker never anticipated working in influencer marketing. But, then, how could she have? It’s a career path that only opened a few years ago with the rise of social media networks.

“It’s a great conversation starter,” Becker said. “I recently went to a networking event and attracted the most people to my table as they were curious about my job and influencer marketing.”

Another perk of working in a relatively new field? Plenty of room to chart your own course. “I am able to give a lot of input because there are not a lot of ‘best practices’ that we can reference in our field, and we get to set the standard.” Becker said she enjoys her job. “I love being exposed to and sharing new products. My favorite part of my job is seeing all the awesome content that our talented influencers produce.”

But Becker’s influencers go beyond content; they also deliver results. “You’d be surprised at the widespread impact they have for our clients,” she said.