Want to stay on top of the influencer marketing trends?
As a marketer, you need to stay up-to-date with the latest trends, because what worked yesterday might not work as well today.
What was considered cheap marketing yesterday might be considered expensive and competitive marketing tomorrow.
The marketing landscape is quickly changing, and with the birth of the internet, it is only going faster.
If you are a marketer who stays on top of the latest marketing trends, you can’t have missed that influencer marketing is a new marketing “trend” that has skyrocketed in popularity in recent time, and has gotten tremendous traction within the marketing space.
And really, that’s not very surprising when you look at the influencer marketing statistics, that prove just how powerful it is.
And that’s because influencer marketing is still underpriced marketing, which means there’s a tremendous marketing arbitrage for you.
But while new marketing methods and approaches are important to stay updated with, and on top of, it is also important to stay on top of what is happening within the most popular marketing tactics, how the “best practices” are evolving, and what you need to know in order to generate best possible results.
The better you know what is going on within the marketing area that you’re about to use, the better you’ll be able to understand what drives great results, thus, allowing you to get the most bang for your marketing budget.
Influencer marketing is powerful, yes, but unless you don’t know how to use it properly, and are updated with the latest influencer marketing trends, it will be impossible for you to generate the results you’re seeing other people achieve.
To prevent you from getting behind on influencer marketing, and help you generate best possible results, I’ll be sharing you the top influencer marketing trends you need to know, so you can make sure that your practices are truly the “best practices”, and what helps you succeed with influencer marketing.
It’s not news that brands are devoting an increasing percentage of their marketing budgets to influencer marketing. What is new is how companies and influencers are adapting their processes and creating new best practices to truly evolve in this rapidly growing space.
1. Brands will run more Long-Term Relationships with influencers
It’s no secret that long-term relationships with influencers are far more beneficial and successful than short-term relationships?
Why?
Well first off, influencers aren’t disposable things which you use one time and then throw away.
With short-term relationships, for example where you pay the influencer to promote you one time, and then you forget about them, you’ll never be able to develop and a genuine, deep relationship with them, and while far from all brands and marketers have realized this, it’s not just the relationship you have and build with your target audience that’s important, it’s the relationship you build with the influencers you partner with.
The reason that this point is one of the influencer marketing trends is that more and more marketers realize that they can drive far greater results by partnering with influencers long term.
Because as the brand develops a stronger relationship with the influencer, the influencer will be more loyal and engaged with the brand. In other words, if the brand values, appreciate, and show respect to the influencer, the influencer will do the same thing back. This means that since they’re more engaged in your brand, they’ll do everything they can to help you drive better results. This is something that they maybe wouldn’t do if you’d just partner with them one time.
Then, we cannot forget the fact that finding influencers is a lengthy and difficult task.
What does this mean?
Well, it means that if you’re just going to partner with an influencer once, you’re going to have to actively find new ones all the time, rather than just leveraging the ones you already have, and that have proven to be able to drive great results.
Of course, if the influencer doesn’t drive great results, you aren’t going to want to continue to partner with them, but the influencer marketing trend is still that brands will start to look at these influencer relationships as long-term, and not short-term.
Plus, when an influencer only partners with a brand one time, they’re going to talk about it once and never mention it again. And then, chances are that they’ll end up promoting a competitor of yours later on. On the other hand, if they talk about the same brand over and over, their recommendation will come off as much more trustworthy and authentic – it demonstrates a genuine belief in the product and brand.
Since consumers are more aware of the fact that influencers are paid for endorsement, long-term will be crucial for effective influencer marketing campaigns, and this is one of the influencer marketing trends you need to pay great attention to.
2.More brands will be turning to influencer marketing
Influencer marketing has skyrocketed in popularity over the years. That’s not very surprising considering that more people than ever are using social media, and what social media has done is it has given virtually anyone the opportunity to build an audience and establish themselves as industry experts.
Since marketers are after the attention of their audience, the way they can get that in today’s landscape is by leveraging the audiences that the influencers in their own industry have built.
Plus, not only do influencers have a large audience, they are also far more trustworthy than let’s say television advertising since people look up to the influencers and see them as industry experts.
The influencer marketing statistics speak quite clearly about the immense power and benefits of influencer marketing. At the same time, the cost of traditional advertising such as billboard advertising or television advertising is higher than ever, whilst the ROI is lower than ever.
This means several things. First off, with the increased demand, eventually influencer marketing won’t be the arbitrage that it once was since influencers are starting to properly price themselves, but most importantly, the competition between brands will increase since an influencer can only partner with so many brands and still come off as authentic.
This is another reason why one of the influencer marketing trends that we’ll see that brands have long-term partnerships with influencers, which I talked about in the first point.
3. Marketers will become better at understanding what drives success with influencer marketing
Practice makes perfect, and since influencer marketing is relatively new, compared to other marketing tactics, many marketers have still not been able to master influencer marketing and understand it completely. In other words, there are still lots of questions and uncertainties out there.
But as influencer marketing gets older, and becomes more established, one of the influencer marketing trends we’ll see is that marketers will get better at better at running successful influencer marketing, and not commit some of the many influencer marketing mistakes there are out there.
No longer will you see fiasco campaigns where makeup brands partner with influencers who have never worn makeup in their entire life, or fitness and health influencers promoting unhealthy sodas.
4. Influence marketing trends: more brands will partner with micro-influencers
A huge influencer marketing trend that we’ll see in the future, and are already seeing now is that more and more brands partner with micro-influencers.
In case you’re new to the term, micro-influencers are individuals on social media with a smaller following, but normally a more engaged and targeted one.
A mistake that many brands still do is look for the individuals in their industry with the most amount of followers. They believe that bigger is better, and try to go after the industry giants.
But this is something that will change, and what will happen is more brands will partner with micro-influencers, too.
The reason is that influencers often base their rates on the audience size they have, which means the larger the influencer is, the more they’ll charge to promote you. The problem with this is that startups and small brands will have a hard time being able to leverage the power of influencer marketing because they just cannot afford to pay thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars for a single endorsement.
But this is where micro-influencers come in, and will continue to gain traction within the influencer making space.
The statistics speak quite clearly about the power of micro-influencers and that they are able to drive great results, despite them having a smaller following. But the best part is that micro-influencers charge considerably less for an endorsement, and if they like your product, some will even promote your product in exchange for a product sample.
What this does is make influencer marketing accessible to everyone, no matter marketing budget, and this is an influencer marketing trend that will only get clearer and clearer.
5. Video marketing will play an even bigger role
It’s no secret that video content has taken the social media landscape by storm and that the demand for video content is has skyrocketed and is continue to do so.
In fact, Internet Video Traffic will be over 80% of all consumer internet traffic in 4 years.
Plus, studies have found that video marketing creates stronger customer engagement, which is great for influencer marketing as it can increase conversions and results from the campaign.
With video content proving its tremendous power in marketing, it’s clear that more marketers will want to leverage video content in their influencer marketing campaigns for greater convincing power.
Consumers are screaming for video content, and what influencers and brands are doing on social media is serving their audience with what they want in order to build a stronger audience and attract more people. This means that influencers and brands will want to serve their audience with more video content, including for influencer marketing campaigns.
A picture says more than a thousand words, so imagine what a video does. Videos feel more authentic, and you’re able to better convey your message through them, so ultimately, with videos, you’ll be able to better impact your audience and drive great results from your influence marketing campaign.
Today, most influencers create photos and write a text when they promote a brand, but this influencer marketing trend tells us that this will change slightly in the future.
5. The authenticity of influencers will become even more important
Something that has only become more and more important is how authentic the influencer marketing campaigns come off, and how authentic the influencers come off as.
Obviously, if an influencer marketing campaign doesn’t come off as authentic, it will come off as less trustworthy and credible, and so people won’t trust the words of the influencer, and the campaign will generate bad results.
Authenticity is crucial for a successful influencer marketing campaign, and this is an influencer marketing trend that will only get clearer and clearer to marketers and brands looking to drive the best possible results.
There are a number of factors that affect the authenticity of influencers, and these factors will be something that more and more brands will consider before choosing influencers to partner with.
Questions like “how many (similar) brands have they promoted before us?”, “Do they come off genuine and authentic in their promotions?”, “Are they trusted individuals who are transparent and honest?” will be asked by brands and marketers more than ever, because ultimately, trust is the single most important trait that influencers have, but if they don’t have trust, it will be difficult for them to drive any marketing results.
This is one of the influencer marketing trends that will make it more challenging for marketers to identify suitable influencers as there’s another layer of influencer identification they need to consider. If you need help, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us and we’ll help you!
6.Instagram Stories will increase in usage for influencer marketing campaigns
This is one of the influencer marketing trends that tell us where the influencer marketing will take place.
Of course, if, in the future, new social media platforms are born, brands and influencers will maybe hop on there and run influencer marketing campaigns, but the fact of the matter is that where the attention of the audience is, that’s where influencers will be building their influence, and that’s where brands will be promoting their products.
A place that has increased dramatically in popularity in just a short period of time is Instagram Stories, and it has absolutely no lack of people’s attention, with more than 300 million users in 2017.
Instagram Stories give bring more depth to influencer marketing campaigns, and since Stories disappear after 24 hours, influencers don’t have to be as picky, and not as afraid of cluttering their own feed. Additionally, Instagram stories are known to be more authentic, transparent, and “in the moment”, which contributes to making influencer marketing campaigns more authentic on Instagram Stories.
This is is an influencer marketing trend that is only increasing in popularity, and has already begun. If you follow influencers, you gave probably seen that every now and then, some of them upload paid promotions to their Instagram Stories.
Stories allow influencers to storytell rather than just upload a simple promotional image, and this helps give more context which can help with convincing power.
7. Brands will be better at deciding KPIs
For influencer marketing success, it is crucial that you have set KPIs and are aware of the business objectives that you are hoping to achieve with the campaign.
This is why this will become an even more clear influencer marketing trend in the near future because depending on what you are hoping to achieve with influencer marketing, the way you set up your campaign should look differently.
What’s more, in order to reach your goals with the influence marketing results, it is important that both you as a brand and influencer agree on the goals, and have set them together so that you know what you’re working towards.
This influencer marketing trend will become more common, as brands understand they need to be aligned with the influencer they partner with.
8.Original content will become even more important
Not only is video one of the influencer marketing trends when it comes to content, but as a whole, original content is huge.
The reason?
Nobody likes stale and boring stock-images, and especially not in influencer marketing because promotions with such come off as incredibly inauthentic.
Fortunately, the influencer marketing trend is that this type of content is becoming less and less common, and the vast majority of influencers are creating high-quality, appealing content which aligns with their normal visual theme, and which mediates the message of the brand they partner with in a good way.
If people see an image or piece of content that isn’t original, but instead can be recognized as something they’ve seen before, people will just continue scrolling without paying attention, and when running an influencer marketing campaign, that is obviously the last thing you want to happen.
For a successful influencer marketing campaign, original content is everything. This is why the influencer marketing trend will be that more and more brands will put an emphasis on the quality the content that the influencers produce holds, before partnering with them.
9. Influencer marketing trends: influencer marketing platforms/agencies will become more widely used
Influencer marketing platforms and agencies are already huge within the influencer marketing industry, and helps influencers set up great influencer marketing campaigns that drive amazing results, and in the pace that influencer marketing is growing in popularity, and as more and more agencies and platforms are popping up, more and more brands will turn to these agencies for help with setting up and running successful campaigns.
Since running a successful influencer marketing campaign is actually quite tricky, and there are plenty of things to think about, this is a very natural influencer marketing trend and direction in which influencer marketing is going in. While, on the surface, it might seem like all you need to do is reach out to an influencer.
If you need help with anything in influencer marketing, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. We look forward helping you with your next influencer marketing campaign.
10. Influencer marketing budgets will increase, as well as the cost of influencers
It’s no secret that with increased demand comes increased costs.
It’s all according to the basic supply and demand principle. And influencers can only promote so many brands and still come off as authentic.
What this means is that an influencer marketing trend we’ll see is that partnering with influencers will become more expensive as they realize just how powerful they are, and how much leverage they have with their loyal audience on social media.
This is one of the influencer marketing trends that we can already see today, with increased influence marketing costs, and something that will only continue to increase.
What’s more, the budgets of the brands for influencer marketing will also increase at the pace that their marketing budgets for traditional advertising decreases.
As a result of the increased usage of influencer marketing by brands, what will happen is influencers will get more sponsorship and partnership offers, and can, therefore, be more selective with the businesses they collaborate with. This means that they will only work with brands that they can develop a meaningful partnership with.
11. Brands will give influencers more creative freedom
This is one of the influencer marketing trends that are not only potentially happening in the future, but it is happening right now, but it is getting more and more common for every day that goes by.
The truth is, whether you like it or not, the influencer knows more about how they create a successful influencer marketing campaign that drives results. And a precondition for running one is coming off as authentic.
Far too many brands who run influencer marketing campaigns are trying to dictate everything about the influencer campaign: from what the influencer is going to write, to what photo they are going to use, etc. And they do this because they believe they’ll generate better marketing results, but the fact of the matter is that they won’t.
Instead, what will happen is that the campaign will be so far from the personality of the influencer, and it will be clear to the audience that those are not the words from the influencer and therefore, the campaign won’t be authentic and trustworthy.
What brands are starting to realize is that the influencer is the person who knows their audience the best. They’ve spent years building their relationships with their audience, and so, obviously, they’ll know best what their audience resonates with, and therefore how t create campaigns that drive the best results.
Start trusting the influencer’s expertise and don’t try to dictate too much about the campaign. The influencer needs creative freedom in order to run ana authentic influencer campaign.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing is, just like social media, a quickly evolving landscape, and so this means that you need to stay on top of the latest trends and changes within the industry in order to stay on top of the game and be able to adapt the things that actually work and that actually drives the best possible results.
If you need help setting up your influencer marketing campaign, or need advice on how you can drive the best possible results, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us! We are here to help!
