BY Rachel Cagle
Consumers trust influencers more than they do brands. As marketers continue to see the light, influencer marketing continues to grow. According to research from Ogilvy, influencer marketing has grown from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $16.4 billion in 2022. That’s $14.7 billion increase in only six years! Why? Maybe because, on TikTok alone, videos with the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt have 29.3 billion views. And 80% of consumers made at least one purchase because of a recommendation from an influencer within the last year. Influencers have firmly established trust and loyalty that brands would have to work much harder on their own to achieve. So, why not ask them to partner with your client?
According to Oglivy, here are trends you and your clients should care about when creating your influencer marketing strategy.
3 Influencer Marketing Trends of 2023
More Influencers = Wider Reach
Oglivy points out that there are multiple reasons brands should consider partnering with more than one influencer:
- Cross pollinating audiences
- Making small budgets go further by saturating one niche community’s feed
- Generating more added value content
The more influencers your client has partnered with, the wider their reach to their target audiences will be.
To take that influence to the next level, Oglivy recommends that brands encourage their influencers to work together. When influencers work together to create new content, it benefits the influencers by giving them the opportunity to gain more followers from their creative partner and it benefits the company with the kind of creative content two minds can create together. And if consumers like the influencer marketing content, they’ll share it with their followers to spread the word to even more potential customers.
Invest in Grassroots Influencers
If your client specializes in (or at least wants to promote) a specific, niche product or service, the influencers they partner with should have good connections with the niche target audience community. According to Oglivy, “Collaborating with influencers who share the experiences, values and interests of a micro audience – bolstered by their geographic proximity to the audience – is a powerful way for brands to create impact. The power of grassroots influence lies in its ability to create thriving communities and trusted content ecosystems around specific topics, causes and brands.”
Grassroots influencers already have a following of consumers who are likely to be interested in your client’s products or services. Pair that with their social media know-how and that reach is increased to others within the niche community who may not even follow them yet but will still see their videos. Numerous social media platforms deliver content to users’ screens based on an interest graph, says Oglivy. If an influencer uses the right hashtags and other strategies, mixed with the content area they’re already known for, your client’s sponsored content reaches even further than just the followers’ eyes that you’re guaranteed.
Take Advantage of iCommerce
Influencer marketing can do more for your client than simply granting them impressions, engagements and purchasing considerations. They can also be directly involved in sales. Influencer commerce (iCommerce) ranges from linkable branded content with paid promotion tools and shoppable buttons to a list of links leading to ecommerce sights available on influencers’ profile pages. “iCommerce meets audiences where they are and how they want to purchase, making it one of the most effective ways to sell,” says Oglivy. So, be sure to encourage your client’s influencer marketing strategy to include icommerce to take the benefits of their influencer partnerships to the next level.
How to Find Influencers to Work With
So, how can you know which influencers will spell success for your client’s influencer marketing strategy? You need to know some basic information first, such as:
- Which social media platforms your client’s target audiences are most active on
- What types of content/messaging they’re interested in
- What they intend to purchase within the next year
And that’s just a few of the basics you need to know before choosing an influencer. You can get these answers and more by using one market intelligence platform: AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel.
Photo by Jonathan Tomas