5 Influencer Marketing Trends For Brands In 2020 And Beyond
2019 was a significant year in the business world as more organizations invested lots of resources in new marketing trends that involves influencers.
The previous 2 years have seen a magnificent increase in influencer marketing as part of contemporary marketing strategies. There were several influencer marketing strategies used by brands in 2018 that require a notable retooling and revamping if they are to achieve success in 2019. While influencer marketing needs no further proof of concept, its evolution and popularity is simply due to the numbers that support.
The past two decades has seen social media become a critical aspect of people’s lives. More people who have joined Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest have become content creators. The previous technique of influencer marketing involved celebrities using their popularity to promote products.
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In the modern market, brands have now began to utilize personal profiles and macro influencers to promote their products. The paradigm shift and the insurgence of thousands of people ready to promote products now leaves business owners with much to be optimistic about in 2020.
With more brands ready to put their money in influencer marketing based on its ground breaking results, the following trends are likely to top the market in 2020.
Instagram Will Retain Its Crucial Important Position for the remainder of 2019 and into 2020.
The exponential growth of Instagram is backed by some staggering numbers on a yearly basis.
Social media is the major tool deployed by influencers and Instagram continues to be critical. In 2017 only, there were over 1.5 million posts by influencer marketers on Instagram. These posts contained a form of ad or hashtag that was created with the specific purpose of promoting a particular trend or product.
The sponsored contents conjured up to 1 billion total likes in 2017 only.
With the massive growth of Instagram where the brand reached 1 billion monthly active users in 2018, one can easily expect the influencer market to grow with it. Instagram continues to not only the choice of influencers but also the choice of the younger generations.
The visual concept and the fact that it incorporates several features from other top social media makes its position secure for brand influencer collaborations.
2019 promises to yield for brands who make the best use of Instagram due to its wide usage among millennial consumers
Raw And Foundational Contents Will Lead To Growth
It’s common to find influencers posting generic contents or simply engaging in cyber content theft.
One major trend we expect to see in 2019 is that raw and authentic content will generate great success. Traditional adverts and reliance on stock photos won’t win more audiences than they have.
People connect with brands better when they give them a distinct and in-depth insight into a product. Successful marketing campaigns would however be measured by how honest influencers are with their contents.
With the production of several hi-tech gadgets like the Samsung S10, iPhone XS Max among others, influencers now have top tools to generate genuine contents. This will also raise the bar as brands will be more demanding for a creative, authentic and highly innovative content than ever.
Videos Would Be More Prominent Than Ever
In the building of authentic contents for potential engagements for target markets, videos will play a major influencer marketing role in 2020.
Motion had its share as a top content trend for 2018 and this position will be further solidified in 2019. In terms of influencer marketing trends, videos will not be the only trail blazer. Other creative forms of motion contents like gifs, stop motions, cinematographs, simulations and more would be of high demand.
Highly edited images and polished videos will generate leads and increase the turnover of products.
These contents can be integrated in collaboration with social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and others where the video content directly impact the clients. Expect the following videos to make waves in 2019 – product description and reviews, tutorials, how-to’s, FAQs and more.
Measuring ROI
The challenge most marketers faced in 2017 according to reports is how to measure the ROI based on the investment made by the brand.
With more money doled out into influencer marketing, Brands will employ the use of solid ROI metrics to judge the performance of their campaigns. In an attempt to solve this issue, influencers have resorted to reporting measures of campaigns.
Influencer platforms that have secured API access can calculate and report true ROI on influencer campaigns, measuring them against industry and competitive standards. In order to accurately measure the key performance, indicators like recall or awareness brand studies can be used.
The numbers which include impressions, views and likes must be measured. Although measurement can be a little difficult, there are ways to track them. One of the popular methods of monitoring progress is to use UTM parameters. This simply involves tagging inbound links to your website that you have provided to influencers as call to action.
The source, name and medium will help you track, with the aid of google analytics the specific campaign that generated the traffic, e.g. you can ask the influencer to apply a special promo code to their posts so when visitors convert through the code, you can trace them back to the source and track ROI
Brands will start thinking outside the gram
With Instagram maintaining its position as the undisputed channel for most influencers, brands will try to explore other marketing platforms.
Influencers would be tasked with the responsibility of studying a brand’s audience and knowing what other channel suits them best. Knowing the platforms they interact on and devote their time to help you develop suitable contents for them.
Apart from Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter are also top platforms where influencers achieved much success in 2018 according to statistics. Another major influencer marketing trends for 2019 and beyond is for brands to enjoy the liberty of choosing between micro and mega influencers. According to Forbes, anyone with more than 100,000 followers can be an influencer.
This has led to more people having a go at the profession on a daily basis. The micro influencers are usually individuals who have dedicated their resources to the profession while the mega influencers are mostly celebrities and big names.
Some platforms to watch for 2020 influencers may build profiles on include:
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And SnapChat continues to work some things out and the business is maturing. Finding friends is being widely adopted as well!
Final words
When perfectly executed, influencer marketing is a powerful tool that can steer an organization in the achievement of objectives.
It breeds a human to human connection as well as brand creativity, resulting in an endless network between organizations and their audience.
2020 will be another year where influencer marketing will be further acknowledged by brands.