8 Trends That are Expected to Dominate Influencer Marketing in 2018

The past decade has seen the rise of influencer marketing as one of the most important and common marketing techniques for many businesses and brands. In fact, as per stats, the field of influencer marketing has grown by around 200% in the year 2017 alone. Here are some other interesting stats about influencer marketing:

In the past year, there has been a 325% increase in the Google search for the term “Influencer Marketing”.
Almost 70% of the marketing firms have increased their budgets allocated for influencer marketing.
There is almost twice the increase in the number of influencer marketing platforms and agencies.
51% of the business owners think that they get better leads from influencer marketing.
Studies show that businesses generate more than $6 for every $1 invested in influencer marketing.

Now as we approach the third quarter of 2018, businesses have begun reviewing and analyzing their influencer marketing plans and strategies. Most businesses no longer think of it as just a social media marketing technique, in fact, influencer marketing is termed as the best for ROI and the fastest growing marketing technique.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is all about businesses and brands developing relationships and engaging individuals with a good following or social media presence of a specific niche for their brand promotions. This method includes recognizing people or celebrities with a huge following who can help impact your target audience and turn them into leads for your business. Influencer marketing includes businesses paying the influencers to get their message out instead of going directly to a large group of customers.

Although influencer marketing is fairly new, it is witnessing tremendous growth from the past few years. And this trend is expected to continue for the next few years as well. Some also believe that it may go on to become one of the bigger digital marketing phenomena in the digital world in the coming years.

Here is a list of eight influencer marketing trends that you might expect in the coming years:

#1. More Brands & Businesses Will Start Using Influencer Marketing

A strategy is said to be successful when it gives you a good Return on Investment. This is where influencer marketing stands out among other strategies. Businesses that use influencer marketing have seen a tremendous rise in the returns in the past few years. In fact, according to a study, it is expected that businesses almost make $7.65 on an average for each $1 they spend. Well, this makes it clear why the number of businesses using influencer marketing has doubled in the last couple of years.

More than half of the businesses believe that influencer marketing helps them get better leads when compared with other strategies. This is why it is expected that in the coming years, the trend of businesses adapting to influencer marketing will grow. You might also see businesses and brands allotting bigger budgets for their influencer marketing needs.

#2. The Rise of the Micro-Influencers

One of the most rapidly emerging trends in the world of influencer marketing is the rise of micro-influencers. Basically, micro-influencers are people who have fewer followers on social media when compared with the celebrities. Despite having just 100-10000 followers, they tend to have a better impact and higher engagement rates than big influencers and celebrities who have millions of follower and subscribers.

In the past few years, the internet audience has shown more trust in the micro-influencers. They think that these people are authentic, which directly helps in your successful influencer marketing campaign. This is why more businesses are approaching micro-influencers to help them with their influencer marketing. Remember, choosing the right influencers is cardinal for a successful influencer marketing campaign, and you need to choose the right influencers to make sure your message reaches your audience.

#3. More Brand Engagement with the Influencers

With more and more businesses getting into the influencer marketing, it is expected to get more crowded by the day. This is why brands need to have a clear strategy when it comes to engaging the influencers for their audience. Contrary to what some businesses might believe, a one-off campaign with an influencer is not going to work in today’s world. They have to realize that they need to have a long-term working relationship with the influencers.

This has been realized by many brands and they have been working to find ways to establish a long-term relationship with the influencers. Fostering a long-term relationship between the influencers and the brands has become a priority since it helps in enhancing the brand value organically.

#4. Influencer Content Will Be the Most Desired Ones

There is no denying the fact that authenticity can make or break any marketing campaign. The future of influencer marketing is expected to see a drastic rise in the influencers taking control of the content. If chosen properly, influencers will study and understand the market and the niche your brand operates in. Their ideas on the strategies come from their engagement with the followers, which is why they know the nuances that are required to engage the audience.

Influencers know the social media space better than everyone. This is why they are most likely to give you valuable insights on how you can approach your audience and turn them into leads. It is also the reason why more brands are engaging influencers to create content so that it could bring in more engagement. For campaigns to evolve into something more creative and engaging, the involvement of the influencers with the content is crucial.

#5. Enhanced Content

Today, you can find new platforms emerging to enhance influencer marketing, which is likely to continue in the future as well. This is why high-quality, creative, authentic, and engaging content is the need of the hour for many businesses, which could help them grab the eyeballs of audiences. Today, video content marketing is emerging as a game changer for many businesses by bringing in more engagement. Influencer marketing also seems to adopt this trend.

The future of influencer marketing is also expected to see the use of more interactive contents, like videos, gifs, infographics, and others to engage the audience. The rise of social media trends and features have also added to the ways how influencers can use different content for their audience. Features like stories, live videos, and others have presented a great opportunity for the influencers to use visual content in various ways to engage the audience.

#6. Influencer Marketing is Set to Grow in Retail

Today, you will find many fashion brands using influencer marketing to reach out to their potential customers. They use celebrities and social media influencers for promoting their brand and apparels. However, it is seen that social media influencers have more engagement from the audience when compared to the celebrities.

In fact, a study says that more than 90% of the customers trust social media influencers than a celebrity influencer. Not only in fashion, but social media influencer marketing is also getting bigger in most of the retail sector, and this trend is believed to grow more in the future as well.

#7. ROI Measurement Will Become Vital

The recent surge in the businesses using influencer marketing strategies is certainly overwhelming, but measuring the returns still continues to be a big challenge. Most businesses agree to the fact that they are hesitant to enter influencer marketing as tracking the returns can get very challenging. Some brands try to track the results through likes, comments, hashtags, use of the coupon codes, clicks, retweets, and click-throughs, which do not account for accurate results.

However, it is expected that businesses will find accurate ways to measure their Return on Investments in the future. You might find new tools and techniques that would help you calculate your returns accurately.

#8. The Rise of the B2B Influencer Marketing

The rise of influencer marketing is largely seen in the B2C world where the marketers try to engage the audience through influencers. However, this trend is changing as more and more businesses are trying to find new possibilities for influencer marketing in the B2B world. The approach that the businesses are taking for B2B is completely different from what they use in B2C. Here, instead of looking for outside influencer, businesses are using their employees as influencers. This provides more authenticity to the marketing campaign while making sure there are more engagements.

Final Thoughts

These are some of the trends that you might expect to see shortly. Influencer marketing will continue to be an important strategy for the businesses in the coming years as well. Brand promotions are becoming the need of the hour and influencers will have a significant role to play in it. The days of campaigns focussed only on ads are gone, and new trends like influencer marketing are taking over. So, expect to see a future where influencer marketing will take giant leaps and becomes one of the most critical marketing techniques. If you know about other trends that you expect to play a great role in influencer marketing, please let us know in the comments below.

Awesome, share it:

Thanks!

Jafar Sadhik

Jafar Sadhik - Started writing content out of passion and now I am doing the same for earning the bread and sharing the knowledge. Currently working at Stan Ventures in the Blogger Outreach service domain.