Influencer Marketing in 2020

Choosing the right social media influencers for your marketing campaign is a crucial element. One wrong decision can land you in trouble. Recent controversies of influencers like Daryl Aiden Yow, PewDiePie, and Logan Paul have alerted marketers on the consequences of influencer’s behavior on their brand.

Many people also feel there is a lack of transparency on how influencers are deriving value from the products. To overcome this, many influencers are now documenting their experience and sharing it on social media to give a level of assurance to their followers.

Before we dive in deep, let’s understand the basics of influencer marketing.

So, what is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is a collaboration that a business organization makes with an influential person to promote their products and services.

Marketers sponsor an influencer’s content that could add value to their brand. These influencers further have dedicated followers on social media, which means a wider audience and better promotions. Due to the high impact of influencer marketing, more than 2/3rds of retailers from North America use a form of influencer marketing. Further, the impact of influencer marketing is so great that around half of US and UK marketers spend a minimum of 10% of their marketing budget on influencer marketing.

Do you still wonder why? Well in 2019, 89% of marketers have confirmed that the ROI from their influencer marketing campaign is better than campaigns on other marketing channels. Plus, according to a survey, the global influencer marketing platform is projected to grow from $5.5 billion in 2019 to $22.3 billion industry in 2023.

In social media, Instagram has emerged as the most popular social media platform for influencer marketing. A survey from last year says that the nano-influencers with less than 1,000 followers have an engagement rate of 7.2% on Instagram, compared to 1.4% on Twitter. On the other side, influencers with more than 100,000 followers have a 1.1% engagement rate on Instagram, compared to just 0.3% on Twitter.

With ever-increasing engagement rates, you need to finalize your influencer judiciously.

What is a social media influencer?

A person with a great impact in a specific niche can be an influencer.

Usually, influencers play a key role in media, industry associations, communities, sports, or other social spheres. Influencers may or may not be aware of your company, but they represent an audience segment that is important for the popularity of your business. These advocates foster the social relationship between a product/service and its customers.

So, it is important to work with social media influencers who have the capability to reach your target audience, fetch engagement, and build trust.

The Top 5 Influencers Who Can Add Value To Your Brand in 2020

1.      Cristiano Ronaldo@cristiano

This famous Portuguese football player, who plays as a forward for Italian club Juventus and captains the Portugal national team, has more than 160million followers on Instagram

2.      Ariana Grande @arianagrande

As an American singer, lyricist, and actress, she is very popular and has a huge fan following. Her followers on Instagram exceed 150 million.

3.      Selena Gomez @selenagomez

This American singer, producer, and actor remained the most followed person on Instagram until Cristiano Ronaldo surpassed her in 2018. She currently has 148 million followers on Instagram.

4.      The Rock @therock

Dwayne Johnson used the name The Rock for his professional wrestling, and it has stuck with him throughout his career. This wrestler turned actor sits at number 4 with 137 million followers on Instagram.

5.      Kim Kardashian West @kimkardashian

Kim Kardashian is a famous American model, businesswoman, and socialite. She has 133 million followers on Instagram.

A big question- Why does your brand need influencers?

The importance of an influencer is crucial to your business promotions over digital and social media. Let’s now take a walk through some simple yet explanatory scenarios to understand this better.

Scenario 1(a): Imagine that you are at a party where someone you don’t know tries to convince you to be his/her friend by gloating about his or her personality. Would you want to immediately befriend such a person?

Well, probably…No, Never!

Scenario1 (b): Now consider that the same person was introduced to you by your friend. Would you now want to know him/her?

The chances of you wanting to get to know this person will certainly be higher, regardless of if you befriend them or not.

Why? This is because you trust your friend and have faith in his or her recommendations. They are already friends, and a mutual friend can make you more likely to learn more about the person.

Scenario 2(a): Imagine that you want to buy an engagement ring and you are at a store or a supermarket. Suddenly, you see a poster of a jeweler shop that has sales and offers that are enticing. Will you walk in and buy the ring right away?

Of course not!

Scenario 2(b): Now, the picture you saw the same jeweler shop advertisement by a celebrity on your television. Will you now buy from the same shop?

It’s much more likely you’ll walk in the door to check it out. Your chances of relying on that jewelry brand increase multiple times just because a celebrity is attached to it.

Scenario 3(a): What if you have sensitive skin and you need to buy a cosmetic product. The shopkeeper is selling any product that states it is for sensitive skin. Will you buy that product?

Maybe, maybe not.

Scenario 3(b): Now, consider that your friend is also there with you, and she recommends that you buy a specific brand as she has used it and had good results.

Your chances of buying the recommended product greatly increase as a reliable person gave you trusted feedback.

Scenario 4(a): You are a fitness freak and at the gym. Someone you don’t know, even if they work at the gym, is trying to force you to buy whey protein of an unknown brand. Will you trust it?

It’s highly unlikely you’d buy this product.

Scenario 4(b): Now, the same person is an authorized reseller of a famous whey protein brand that your favorite sports star promotes. Will you buy it?

You are much more likely to buy it as it is a brand you recognize, and it’s endorsed by your favorite sports star which gives it some assurance of quality.

This is the same for influencer marketing. When your brand is promoted by a popular celebrity or renowned face, your customers tend to believe in the quality and authenticity of your brand. This trust factor acts as an accelerator towards your brand popularity and with 90.4 percent of millennials, 77.5 percent of Generation X, and 48.2 percent of baby boomers as the daily active users, the likeliness to use social media for recommendations before deciding upon a purchase becomes extremely high.

So, the role of influencer for your brand is evident as:

·        They create valuable content for your brand.

·        They promote and recommend your brand to a huge number of their followers.

·        They talk about your brand during related conversations.

By now, you should have a better understanding of the impact of an influencer and the importance of getting the right one.

But do you know how to find them?

Let’s now dive into that.

8 Steps to Getting the Right Social Media Influencer for your Brand

With more than 500,000 influencers on Instagram today, you have more power to collaborate with an influencer. But, before you proceed, you need to understand the means to find the right influencer.

The following 8 steps will guide you through your social media influencer campaign.

1.      Know your Target Audience: Your audience is ultimately going to make you successful. For implementing your influencer marketing strategy, you need to know the most popular influencer for your target audience.

For example, you sell a sports product, and in order to sell your product, you collaborate with a sports blogger. Do you think that this would be the right choice?

Here is where it’s important for you to understand that not every sports blogger has the same kind of target audience you are looking for. Some might target sports fitness, and others might target sports products.

So, you need to identify and ensure that your target audience matches the influencers to focus on engaging the maximum number of people.

2.      Check the Authenticity: The followers of any influencer tend to buy their recommendations only if they sound authentic. The quality of their content must look authentic rather than giving a sense that they’re talking about only because they are being paid to.

3.      Personality Counts: While looking for an influencer, choose one whose personality and style go well with the message of your brand. Such resonance will make your content look true, appealing, and pertinent to your targeted audience.

4.      Identify the Niche: Every influencer has a different niche of their popularity. While you are looking for an influencer, you need to identify that their niche works with your products and services.

5.      Trust and Engagement is the Key: This is a major aspect that needs to be considered while looking for an influencer. Your target audience must have trust in the opinion of the influencer. Remember that profound trust fetches more engagement with likes, comments, and shares.

6.      Observe sponsored content: If your influencer is already sharing too much-sponsored content, there are chances that they might lose potential engagement rates. More organic content keeps followers’ interest intact when knowing what’s coming next. The recommended and ideal approach is to keep only 1 paid post in every 5 or 10 posts.

7.      Do thorough research: The most popular influencers get lots of offers to join promotional campaigns. So, before you plan to meet them, you need to know that what they do and how they do. Doing this basic homework will help you interact better and prepare a plan for your influencer.

8.      Outline a budget plan: It is obvious that you need to pay a popular influencer well just as you expect extensive reach. It is shrewd to plan a payment structure that considers your influencer’s needs. For example, a commission-based payment structure might be more appropriate than a flat fee. If you are choosing micro or nano influencers, a flexible payment plan will probably be a better option.

?How to Identify your Return on Investment (ROI) on Influencer Marketing

Your ROI is determined by the success of your marketing strategies. But how do you identify it?

Analyzing sales is your first choice in gauging values related to ROI. As a business owner, you plan and invest in influencer marketing to reach the maximum amount of targeted audiences and fetch potential customers from them. It is important to understand that as a new brand, your visibility is just as important as your sales. Getting positive engagement is the basic step to measuring your success, whereas other brands are merely feeding their pages with content.

In order to achieve good ROI, it is important that your impressions are targeted. Influencer marketing provides you a way to reach your customers who may shop for your product based on how better your influencer connects with them.

Here is a 5-step plan that will help you track your ROI:

1.     Set clear goals and objectives: Once you determine your platform, influencer, and content, you need to focus on the following:

a.      Increase your brand awareness

b.     Target new audiences

c.      Advocate people about your brand

d.     Maintain brand reputation

2.     Measure your performance: After your influencer marketing campaign is launched, you should analyze its performance by regularly tracking the increasing or decreasing traffic. It is also very important to stay specific in measuring the growth percentage and then reset a new achievable campaign.

3.     A metric to analyze the performance of your influencer: It is vital to identify what role your influencer is playing in the marketing campaign. Based on the performance, you can estimate the prospects of your influencer marketing. Your influencer performance metric must contain:

a.      Total number of impressions

b.     Overall engagement rate

c.      Number of visitors on your website

d.     Number of conversions as customers

4.     Use Influencer marketing platforms: Influencer marketing platforms are automated tools that track your campaign and calculate ROI. Here are some of the influencer platforms that you may want to consider:

a.      tapInfluence

b.     AspireIO

c.      Upfluence

d.     Framebit

5.     Analyze and experiment: Getting a successful influencer marketing campaign cannot be determined ahead of time. Each campaign you run is an experiment that might or might not bring you success. On the flip side, a successful campaign also needs to be changed according to the flavors of the targeted audience.

Whichever is the case, this ongoing process of experimenting should be done after thorough analysis, research, and market understanding.

10 Vital Influencer Marketing Statistics for 2020

1. 65% of influencer marketing budgets will increase in 2020.

Around two-thirds of marketers are expected to increase their spending on influencer marketing campaigns this year.

2. Most common influencer budgets will range from $1,000 – $10,000/year, followed by $100,000 – $500,000/year.

Almost 19% of marketers are expected to spend between $1,000 and $10,000 on influencer marketing, whereas 18% are already spending around $100,000 – $500,000 per year. Plus, around 7% of businesses are planning to invest over 1 million dollars in influencer marketing.

3. Nearly 17% of companies spend more than half of their marketing budget on influencers.

A small percentage of marketers, almost 17% of them, will spend over half of their marketing budget on influencer marketing.

4. 89% say that ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels

5. Instagram ranks number 1 for being the most important and impactful marketing channel.

The ease of content creation also brings a rise of micro-influencers, whose affordable price tag makes them more accessible for average brands.ts like this?

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6. Snapchat was the least preferred channel for influencer marketing in 2019.

Due to feature limitations, Snapchat stays at the bottom of the preference list for influencer marketing whereas, with ease of accessibility and other fascinating features, Instagram has already overtaken Snapchat stories with more than double its daily active users.

7. Over Two-Third of marketers will spend the most on Instagram.

69% of marketers plan to spend the majority of their budget on Instagram for influencer marketing.

This means it’s over six times more than YouTube (11%), the second most-selected channel for the highest spend.

8. Instagram posts are the most preferred format for influencer marketing.

As an effective content format for influencer marketing, 78% of marketers opt for Instagram posts, making it the #1 choice.

Sponsored Instagram posts are pervasive as they are easy to create, publish, and scale-up.

9. Instagram stories are the second most used format, followed by YouTube videos and Instagram videos.

Stories were originally a gift by Snapchat, and today, more than 500 million Instagram users use stories every day.

10. Twitch Livestream is the least used channel.

For the list of most effective content formats, Twitch Livestream is the least preferred channel by marketers in 2019.

The Chief Influencer Marketing Challenges

With many marketers gaining success using influencer marketing, others need to tackle its challenges. Do you know what these challenges are? Let’s take a look:

Influencer Marketing Takeaways - 2020

Influencer marketing is gaining popularity at a fast pace. As more and more marketers dive into this fast-growing channel, here are a few of its key statistics:

1. Most marketers find influencer marketing highly effective and are planning to invest more in 2020.
2. Whatever your goal is - increase your brand awareness, get more sales, or reach new audiences - it is advisable to set clear KPIs (and tracking) beforehand.
3. Instagram is the crowned head of influencer marketing, so try experimenting with innovative Instagram Stories.
4. Don’t rush in finding the right influencers. Look for quality content that popularizes your brandwidth and finetunes audience alignment.
5. Identify fake influencers or inauthentic engagement as you are prone to see these while researching.

Influencer Marketing Tools – a great helping hand

After understanding various aspects of influencer marketing, you can now get started. Here are a few influencer marketing tools that will ease your process.

HypeAuditor : It is primarily used for Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok account analytics to make influencer marketing work more efficiently.

Heepsy Free plan available. Search 7 million Instagram and Youtube influencers.

Ninjaoutreach Influencer Marketing and Blogger Outreach software that streamlines your influencer marketing and lead generation process with automated outreach and follow-ups

Upfluence Upfluence Software is an all-in-one influencer marketing platform that allows brands to identify their influencers and launch campaigns in minutes. Find influencers from 150+ countries, on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, Pinterest, blogs and Twitter.

Buzzsumo Run a search to quickly discover content ideas, uncover platform insights, identify passionate influencers and more

Followerwonk: This is a tool from Moz which allows you to search for pertinent influencers on Twitter according to the keywords and location. If you are planning to begin, this can be a great first tool.

Hootsuite: The Hootsuite’s search streams help in digging for influencers by monitoring conversations specific to your industry throughout marketing channels. Once you identify your proposed list of influencers, you can add them here to track their activities and find out who their target audience is.

Right Relevance Pro: This application gets you the content shared by influencers based on domain and location. You can use this tool to discover influencers based on the quality of content they often share.

Fourstarzz Influencer Recommendation Engine: With insight into customer influencer recommendations, this application helps you predict your potential reach, customer engagement, and results of other campaigns.

The Inference

Influencer marketing is a powerful marketing strategy that is helping businesses earn better ROI. It is also important to identify that influencer marketing is not a campaign; instead, it is a planned strategy that involves streamlining some crucial elements. Identifying the right influencer is the key to yield fruitful marketing results.