Influencer Marketing Trends To Shape Your Strategy
October 10, 2024
The influencer marketing industry is set to grow to approximately $22.2 billion by 2025. We’re seeing influencer marketing budgets increase faster than regular ads budgets, in fact 3.5x faster than spend on digital activities like paid social in 2023.
Here are how brands are working with influencers in 2024, and the trends you should be aware of to optimise your influencer marketing activities.
What do Consumers Actually Want to See from Influencers?
According to a 2024 report from Sprout Social:
- 53% want influencers that align with their personal values
- 47% want authenticity from influencers, even when posting sponsored content
- 37% want influencers who post the right amount of content (getting the sweet spot)
Consumers voted the best brand and influencer collaborations to be those that are honest, unbiased and entertaining.
The Influencer Marketing Landscape in 2024
Nano Influencers for the Win
When asked which type of influencer they were most likely to work with, 44% of respondents in the 2024 Influencer Marketing Benchmark report cited nano influencers (1K – 10K followers) as their most likely, up from 39% in 2023, followed by 25.7% citing micro-influencers (10K – 100K) as their most likely. It is thought that, in part, this is due to the number of small and medium size businesses popping up, for which influencers with a greater following, and thus greater fees, aren’t a viable option. Plus, there are fewer macro and mega influencers out there, which limits the number of brands they can work with, especially if they’re tied into non-compete contracts. On the flip side, nano and micro influencers can offer greater value in that they often have a more engaged and loyal following than those with a large follower base, offering better ROI rather than vanity metrics.
Longer Term and Repetitive Partnerships
We’re seeing more brands engage in repetitive influencer partnerships. In 2022, only 57% of brands would use the same influencers for multiple campaigns, and 43% would use unique influencers. Whereas now, two years later, 63.% of brands report using the same influencers and only 36.8% use new influencers. This can primarily be attributed to brands’ preference to work with influencers they know. Much like A/B testing, if a brand campaign with a particular influencer is successful in the first instance, it’s likely that the influencer and their audience will be a good match for future campaigns with said brand.
Brands are recognising the value in developing longer term partnerships with influencers, acting as ambassadors to help develop and cultivate the brand story and identity; so much so that certain influencers are now synonymous with the brands they represent. Looking ahead, we may see brands move away from the campaign based approach to influencer marketing, and move more towards a rolling partnership approach.
UGC: Why Brands Are Running Influencer Campaigns
User-Generated-Content has been ranked as the number one objective of most influencer campaigns, above both sales and awareness. As we’ve seen in the music marketing industry, the fire fuelling the songs topping the charts are viral dance trends on TikTok. If you can spark a self-perpetuating challenge or trend, the users do the marketing for you; and in this case, if you onboard the right influencers to kick off a viral dance trend to the song you’re marketing on TikTok, that song is pretty much guaranteed success.
How AI Is Being Used in Influencer Marketing
Almost half (44%) of marketers attribute identification of the right influencers for brands and campaigns to be their greatest challenge, which may be another reason why we’re seeing an increase in longer term influencer partnerships. As with all avenues of digital marketing, we’re seeing greater uptake in the use of AI. In the influencer marketing space, the main use is for influencer identification; examining key metrics such as engagement rates, audience demographics, brand alignment and the quality of content. Conversely AI is also being employed to identify fake influencers and engagement metrics.
How Influencers Are Working With Brands
Influencers know their worth and so does the world, now viewing ‘influencing’ as a profession; reflected in the annual reports from the Influencer Marketing Hub. In previous years, the brands offering free samples to influencers in exchange for their services, outnumbered those paying cash. In 2022 the numbers were roughly equal, though now in 2024, 40.8% state they offer monetary rewards, 30.8% give free product samples, 18.9% give their influencers a discount on products or services, with only 9.4% entering their influencers in a giveaway. Still, less than half offer monetary rewards, though this may be an indicator of just how many firms work with micro and nano influencers, who as newcomers are happier to receive payment in kind whilst establishing themselves and growing a portfolio of brands. When it comes to monetary payment, in previous years the most common payment method was a flat rate, however more brands are now structuring influencer payments in a similar method to affiliate marketing, paying a percentage of any sales made as a result of their influencer marketing efforts.