Future of influencer marketing platforms
State of influencer marketing
Influencer marketing size
As more than 3.4 billion people use social media networks, Influencer marketing has become an effective brand advocacy channel in the last few years. Influencers can come in any size or shape — if there’s a niche, there’s a creator who holds influence in that community. The global influencer marketing platform market size is anticipated to reach USD 23.52 billion by 2025.
Why influencer marketing
Several changes in the past decade lead to the popularity of new ways of advertising through influencers. With younger demographics spending significantly less time in front of a TV by “cutting cords” and prevalence of “ad blocking” on the web, these users receive their everyday media content solely through social media channels, apps, and platforms. There is no denying the effectiveness of Influencer marketing, but the benefits extend beyond simple dollars and cents. Let’s take a look at some of them.
Builds Trust and Social Proof — Why do you think people follow influencers on social media? Because they are inspired by them and trust their opinions and recommendations. When an influencer, industry expert, or social media personality shares content about a brand and endorses that brand with personal sentiment, it produces instant credibility to the company they are promoting, plain, and simple. The recognition is even more effective in niche marketing when an authority in your industry shares your content.
Return On Investment 11 X ROI
From large corporations to newly minted startups, all varieties of businesses are seeing positive returns from influencer marketing campaigns. Influencer marketing has been shown to produce up to $11.69 in earned media value (EMV) per $1 spent.
Highly Focused and Relevant — Through relevant influencers, your content is placed in front of social users that are already interested in your niche. You don’t have to spend additional funds on testing and finding your audience — the influencer has already fostered this audience on social media.
Improves Brand Awareness — influencer marketing can greatly expand your reach and positioning in the online marketplace. Social media users will begin to know more about your brand, your story, who you are, and the solutions you offer. As a result of close influencer-follower relationships the type of brand awareness the most powerful benefits of social media marketing.
Access To Millennial & Gen Z Consumers — The TV has been left behind for the younger audience, who has increasingly favored and contributed to the popularity of digital media. This is why Influencer marketing is now a mandatory channel for reaching Millennials and Gen Z’ers. Attracting consumers from these audiences brings immense value to your brand.
In a nutshell, if influencer marketing campaigns are executed right, influencers have a positive impact on purchasing decisions and generate high-quality leads, it is a successful tool for attracting consumers with high purchase intent, and thus, is an effective method for driving sales.
Influencer marketing landscape
As more brands invest in this high-value channel, more influencer marketing companies are emerging and adapting to keep up with this maturing industry. Influencer marketing companies are worth nearly $3 billion in valuation* — and they show no signs of slowing.
Talent reps, studios, talent networks, and marketing agencies provide unparalleled results in working with high caliber celebrities and mega influencers in executing large budget campaigns. However, drawn services add up to the higher cost, and high budget requirements create a barrier to entry to smaller size brands, startups, e-commerce shops. For most of them running ads on each individual social media ad platform remained the only feasible option for marketing until influencer marketing platforms started to emerge.
Rise of Influencer marketing platforms
The influencer marketing platform in most cases is a marketplace where marketers can find and recruit social media influencers for a campaign. Given that, most celebrities and mega influencers work through talent representatives and agencies, while marketing platforms provide access to databases mostly consisting of micro-influencers, nano-influencers. Influencer audiences are usually sized between 1Million and 5K followers. They are usually actively present in two or more social media platforms at the same time. For example, an Instagram influencer usually has a Facebook page and a YouTube channel. Partnering with such influencers enables brands to run campaigns on multiple social media platforms at once.
Most platforms have built-in features, enabling brands to discover, connect, and hire influencers. By charging a small access fee, platforms provide a lower barrier to entry than an agency
However, these platforms provide limited Influencer choice. For example, TapInfluence refers to its large platform of “opt-in” influencers, at best, capturing the database of only 3 million micro-influencers, while the total potential market is 10 times bigger.
Another limitation is, the process of running the campaign itself is known to be time and resource-intensive. Even with the help of a platform, running multiple campaigns simultaneously still takes a great deal of hands-on effort. For most marketers who are accustomed to the use of automated native advertising platforms, performing such tasks as contract negotiation, daily communication can be overwhelming on platforms.
Shift to smaller influencers
It might seem counterintuitive for a company wanting to boost sales and increase brand awareness to choose to work with influencers with small followings, but there’s actually a whole host of reasons to do so.
For starters, people with a few thousand followers generally seem more trustworthy, authentic, and relatable than those with huge followings.
Working with smaller influencers can also mean a brand’s message is spread in a more natural-feeling way. Moreover, studies have shown that micro-influencer content is 6.7x more efficient at engaging audiences than bigger influencers. Plus, influencers with 1,000 followers generated 85 percent higher engagement than those having 100,000 followers, and as the number of followers increases, the engagement tends to decrease. When the medium is more accessible, the message makes a bigger difference.
The future?
Influencer management is expected to be the fastest-growing owing to greater demand of brands to maintain efficient influencer relationships for longer and healthier collaboration. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are expected to benefit from the adoption of the influencer marketing platform, which can provide lower budgetary and resource intensity requirements.
To become a widely available next-generation platform following the following innovations need to be introduced:
- Automation — using AI and ML will high volumes of information for programmatic analysis on influencer performance
- Fraud detection and prevention — some newly forming influencers can use bots or engagement pods to artificially boost their performance scores
- Brand safety — working with hundreds of influencer and retelling brand story through their lense of creativity may be perceived in a negative light when the message is delivered without considering brand influencer fit
- Campaign auto management — having clear cut rules for influencers and engagement loops that help your campaign run smoothly and with minimal human interaction. Just like in native ad platforms, set target goals, budget and run.
How ignyte.ai is doing it
Ignyte building a platform with engagement engines brings the best of two worlds, Native Ad platform, and Influencer Marketing automation. Find out more in the next article.
