Influencer Marketing is among the most popular types of marketing with reportedly 93% of brands using it. In the past several years, it has known a fast-growing trend, and today is one of the most promising industries. In this article, we will talk about the entire phenomenon of influencer marketing, and what trends should we expect in the next year.

#1 Main trends of Influencer Marketing

Lower prices 

In 2020, the market value of influencer marketing was estimated at $3.2 billion, but that was in early March. The pandemic, however, corrected the numbers – even if influencers’ popularity has grown, huge brands frozen their collaborations with influencers, and this is one of the reasons why we should expect lower prices for this type of service.

Another reason is the high competitiveness. The number of influencers grows way faster than the number of brands, and, as you can deduce, competition stimulates prices – making them lower and lower. In other words, the trend of lower prices and high competition can bring down to earth the influencer market.

Larger budgets for collaboration

In contrast to the continuously falling prices, companies that work with influencers plan to increase their budgets in the next year by ⅔ or 66%. But why users like influencers so much and force companies to invest in this type of content? Here are several reasons:

1. Influencers provide reviews of specific products, and describe, reveal how the product works
2. Helps users to find easier new products on the market
3. Discounts and promotions provided via influencers are a big advantage for expensive products
4. Influencers are considered experienced users, with high credibility
5. It’s more pleasant to watch an influencer’s video than a video ad.

Blogging Agencies

In the beginning, it was easy to be among the first influencers – almost no competition on the niche, charge as much as you want, create content with pleasure. Today, the industry is so large that needs a decent infrastructure that facilitates collaboration between companies and influencers.

Some influencers decide to create their own club, others think more corporate and join big agencies that will always generate income. Is influencer marketing a day-by-day job? Probably not yet, but the trends show that soon it may become.

Collision or absorption with gamers

In addition to bloggers, big companies and brands now pay special attention to gamers as well. The reasons may differ – maybe because the general mood in the video is more active, or because the marketed product is related to the gaming industry. The list can continue, but one thing is certain – gamers/streamers are trending now, and the market will probably grow big time in the next few years.

So influencer marketing will either absorb gamers or be in direct competition with parallel gaming marketing. It still depends a lot on clients and companies’ preferences.

#2 The Tik Tok Boom

Back in 2019, companies and influencers were saying that Instagram is the main platform for promoting products. Today, Tik Tok managed to surpass Instagram and soon will probably overcome Snapchat. The popularity of Tik Tok is explained by the ease of promoting and creating content. It is yet one of the simplest and at the same time innovative social media that allows many to become influencers or try their luck in this industry.

According to the latest statistics, the capacity for delivering messages to the audience is 3.5 larger than Instagram. Randomizing content has never felt better – many would say.

#3 Influencer Marketing for B2B

Even if Influencer Marketing is not created for B2B, and in many cases, setting these types of campaigns will not work, it doesn’t mean that Influencers are totally useless to the B2B environment. Influencer campaigns for B2B are specific and different from B2C via several key points:

• Creating Communities and forums instead of following bloggers

Finding influence-experts is a challenge for many companies. This is why business owners join different channels and forums where can acquire from other businesses information about what influencer might work for a specific industry

• Clients as market leaders.

Some companies that work with influencers might be a strong voice on the entire market that can change the mind of their competitors. In this case, the influencers are only the voice of these companies

#4 “Sponsored Post” impact on the audience

Bloggers’ reliability is affected by not saying that their content is sponsored, and in this way, they encourage users to acquire something that wasn’t analyzed in an objective way. In 2019 for example, 28% of companies that worked with influencers asked not to mention that the content is sponsored.

At the other end of the table, we have social media that already integrated this feature and made it visible. The advantage of visible sponsored content is that the company that paid for has direct access to statistics. On the other hand, users tend to click less on such posts. Around 9-17% less.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing will definitely be different next year, but the way it will change depends on consumers, companies, and location. And yes, the pandemic will play its role. One of the biggest advantages of Influencer marketing is flexibility – due to which it will survive for at least a decade.