Influencer Marketing Insights
Influencer marketing is taking the advertising and PR world by storm. Retail brands are using influencers to announce (and even co-create!) new products. Service companies are partnering with bloggers to serve as peer-influencers for their latest offering. Even the Department of Defense has jumped on the influencer marketing bandwagon to assist in military recruitment efforts of Millennials and Generation Z.
While many traditional marketing agencies and directors initially dismissed influencer marketing as just another digital bubble, this innovative strategy has proven itself to be an essential part of the modern promotional mix. Influencer marketing has grown into an entire industry, as Instagram influencers considered a $1 billion dollar market in 2017. The incorporation of bloggers and social media influencers into an organization’s communication strategy has gone from a trending topic to a high priority.
If you’re like most consumers, you’ve been exposed to influencer marketing (and might have even responded to an influencer campaign!), but haven’t really explored what influencer marketing is and may not be aware of how influencer marketing works.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Simply put, influencer marketing is a term used to describe compensated partnerships between media-relevant personalities - also known as “influencers” - and brands.
Influencers are compensated (monetarily or through “gifting”) in exchange for posting content about the brand. This type of sponsored, influencer-created content is typically guided by brand-directed key messaging and often subject to agency or organizational approval prior to posting. Insightful influencer marketing campaign managers will encourage Influencers to use creative license to maintain their authentic voice in the sponsored posts, as this will improve engagement among the influencer’s audience.
Who is an Influencer?
Influencers aren’t just teenage stars with millions of followers. The term “influencers” applies to a variety of SMEs/thought leaders that have an established online community, a reputation of credibility, and promotional skills. The more visibility, credibility, and promotional skills an influencer has, the more they are able to charge brands for sponsored partnerships. While follower counts are one aspect of influencer stats that marketing teams consider, other things, like engagement rates, niche audience access, and subject matter expertise are also very important considerations. Micro-influencers (influencers with less than 30,000 social media followers, have been reported to generate a higher return on investment (ROI) on influencer marketing campaigns, than social media celebrities.
3 Characteristics of an Effective Influencer
When reviewing potential influencers for brand partnerships, organizations should evaluate influencers on the three influencer essentials - visibility, credibility, and promotional skills, as all three are required for sponsored content to be successful.
Remember: Influencers are more than their following count. If an influencer has a large following but lacks credibility, the campaign can reflect poorly on the brand.
Additionally, it’s important to acknowledge that an influencer that would be considered a good fit for one organization may not be the best fit for another organization operating in a different industry or focused on different goals. For example, a parenting blogger with 4,000 social media followers and 3,000 UMV on their website that consistently creates content around niche topics, like supporting children with learning disabilities may be a much more strategic influencer for a children’s’ tech education company to partner with than a more generic lifestyle blogger with 65,000 social media followers and 40,000 UMV on their website.
Influencer Marketing Statistics
Influencer marketing is a rapidly growing marketplace that quickly evolves to keep up with the latest social media app features and user trends.
While static image posts on Instagram may have been standard sponsored deliverables in 2018, 2019 saw a rise in video usage and story integrations on Instagram - a change that prompted a new standard for influencer content. Staying on-tip of the constantly changing world of influencer marketing is a tall order; however, recent statistics reveal influencer marketing to be an advertising goldmine.
Here are a few influencer marketing statistics to provide you with more insight into this innovative promotional approach:
Influencer marketing was a $10 billion industry in 2019.
80% of marketers surveyed said influencer marketing was effective for their organization.
71% of marketers surveyed reported the quality of leads and traffic from influencer campaigns were better than other sources.
Influencer marketing is predicted to be a $15 billion industry by the year 2022.
Influencer Marketing is an Integrated Strategy
Successful influencer marketing is so much more than just an aesthetically-pleasing Instagram post with an #ad disclaimer in the copy; it’s an integrated strategy that includes multiple key components.
Successful influencer marketing includes:
Social media
Photography/videography
Technology skills
Copywriting
Public relations
Marketing strategy
Influencer marketing is an innovative promotion approach that works around many of the limitations of traditional advertising to connect with advertisement-immune consumers and build brand relationships with highly-targeted markets.
Why Influencer Marketing Works
Influencer marketing works because it meets consumers where they are, which is on the internet. Today’s digitally-dependent consumers are spending an average of 16 minutes of every waking hour on social media - a usage rate that will accumulate over a user’s life to be more than five years of their lifetime. Advertisements - even the funny ones - are so last year. In our commercialized world, consumers crave authenticity and relationships - two things influencer marketing has the potential to provide. Influencer marketing helps brands connect with consumers in a non-salesy way. An effective influencer marketing campaign will spark conversation and engage communities, building relationships that go beyond a sponsored posts’ half-life.
Integrate Influencer Marketing into Your Organization’s Marketing/PR Strategy:
Influencer marketing presents a number of opportunities for today’s innovative organization, and can help position brands for the future. If your organization is interested in learning more about how influencer marketing can enhance its outreach initiatives, contact Becker Digital to schedule a Discovery Call. We enjoy strategizing customized digital approaches and connecting organizations with their target audience.
Becker Digital’s in-house influencer network, Operation Influence, provides our team with a variety of resources and established connections within this always-evolving space. Also, check out Becker Digital’s webinar, Influencer Marketing in the Digital Age, for more information on this exciting outreach strategy.