With the rise of social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, influencer marketing is becoming more and more popular and evolving at a rapid rate! Influencer marketing is now a mainstream form of online marketing and boasts a heap of great benefits. But because it is still so new, the ins and outs of influencer marketing aren’t really common knowledge to most. By the time you’ve finished reading this blog, you’ll be an expert on all things influencer marketing!
So influencers, what are they?
Influencers are people who have built a reputation for their knowledge and expertise on a certain topic. Through posting content on their preferred social media channels about this topic, they generate large followings of enthusiastic and engaged people who trust their knowledge and recommendations. Social media influencers can fall into one of three categories, celebrity influencers, macro-influencers, and micro-influencers.
- Celebrity influencers, also known as mega influencers, have a following of well over 1 million.
- Macro-influencers have a following of between 100k and 1 million.
- Micro-influencers have a following of between 3,000 and 100,000 followers.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing that involves a brand collaborating with an online influencer to promote its products or services. Recommendations from influencers can serve as a great form of social proof to your potential customers.
For example, if you’re a makeup brand, you could enlist a popular beauty influencer to promote your makeup. This could look like a video tutorial using your products. By utilising this type of content, your products/services are being promoted directly to your target audience from a trusted source, which will ultimately help increase brand recognition and awareness.
Why Should I Consider Influencer Marketing
Not convinced that influencer marketing could be a useful marketing tool for you? Here’s a few quick stats that may change your mind.
- You can make an ROI of up to $18 in earned media value for every dollar spent on influencer marketing.
- 90% of respondents in a survey conducted by Influencer Marketing Hub believe that influencer marketing is an effective form of marketing.
- 67% of brands use Instagram for influencer marketing.
- Nearly 40% of Twitter users say they’ve made a purchase as a direct result of a Tweet from an influencer.
Still not convinced? Influencer marketing may seem a bit daunting but we promise that it’s definitely worth the work! There are so many benefits to utilising influencer marketing, we’ll list a few of those below.
Builds Trust Quickly
Influencers have worked hard to build relationships, trust, and credibility with their followers. People trust the recommendations they make. By collaborating with influencers, it allows you to put your message in front of an actively engaged audience.
Improve Brand Awareness
By enlisting influencers to post/create content for your brand, it can greatly expand your reach and positioning online. Users of social media will begin to know more about your brand, your story, who you are, and the products/services you offer.
The key to maximising your influencer strategy is to ensure that you’re providing valuable content for both you and the influencer. This will help to increase the possibility of the content receiving a positive response, and ensure that there will be value for both parties.
Enriches Your Content Strategy
If you are stuck on some creative content ideas, influencer marketing can help to fill those gaps in your content calendar. By sharing influencer content, you are providing a different source of content for your audience, which will help to enrich your content strategy.
Influencer Marketing Predictions for 2022
We have seen a heap of changes in the social media landscape this year, it’s been a bit of a struggle to keep up with them all! Through these changes though, some really keen trends have been identified which will be the driving force behind the influencer marketing landscape for 2022. And let me tell you, there are some super exciting things up and coming!
Top 10 predictions for 2022
- Influencers will be the driving force of seamless shopping on social media platforms thanks to their role in live social shopping, affiliate marketing and sharing authentic product recommendations.
- Trends like #tiktokmademedoit will continue to grow bigger in the new year as social media platforms continue to integrate shopping features.
- Brands will hire creators to work in house and own everything. We’ll see brands use influencers to manage everything from email newsletters to social media accounts. Influencers have developed a community of engaged users, so why not get them on board to enhance your marketing efforts for you!
- Experienced influencers will become aware of how important it is that brands put money behind their affiliate posts, not for exposure or to build the influencer’s brand, but because it makes the influencers content more successful.
- The popularity of streaming sites will continue to grow in 2022 and provide a golden opportunity for influencers to take creator branded content beyond social media platforms.
- Due to the continued rise of TikTok and Instagram Reels, there will be a surge of short-form video content in 2022. This format is rapidly becoming a must-have for influencer marketing.
- Social media platforms are continuously evolving to offer the best tools for influencers to earn more money and companies to better analyse their influencer marketing ROI. Due to this, there will be an overall lift in terms of influencer marketing market expansion and interest from brands to continue shifting their marketing budget from traditional media to influencer marketing activities.
- In 2022 we will see a rise in more authentic conversations happening. The “pay to say” trend will come to an end, and brands that allow influencers to lead the conversations and be themselves will ultimately win out.
- There will be a rise in nano and micro-influencers as they generally have a higher engagement rate than macro-influencers or celebrities.
- 2022 will see more ongoing partnerships and collaborations between brands and influencers. Instead of just a one-off post, influencers will be looking to make partnerships with brands on a more ongoing basis.
If you’re keen to get into the influencer marketing space and want to include it in your marketing strategy for 2022, but don’t know where to start, get in touch with us! We can walk you through the ins and outs of influencer marketing and how best to implement it in your marketing strategy.
