Influencer Marketing Trends for 2023

Influencer & Creator Marketing has become one of the most powerful marketing strategies in 2022. It has boosted brand growth across the entire purchasing funnel, with companies that leveraged online & offline influence strategies outpacing their peers. Understanding social trends and adjusting influence?marketing?strategies accordingly will be key to develop successful campaigns and deliver outstanding results for brands in 2023.

So let’s look into the 7 main influencer marketing trends that will impact marketing teams in the new year:

1. The Future Of Content Is Video

Based on consumer preferences and with social media platforms prioritizing and launching new features, such as live streaming, video will become the most dominant content type in 2023. Perceived as fun, engaging and interactive, video content delivers information in an entertaining way, holding the viewer’s attention for a short or longer period. With TikTok growing in popularity, marketers are jumping on the opportunity to reach younger audiences in particular with short video formats.

2. Shift To Nano And Micro-Influencers

As consumers seek more relevant and authentic content from other people, marketers will focus on nano and micro-influencer collaboration. These mostly unpaid content creators with 1.000 - 100.000 followers also deliver engaged audiences and superior conversion rates. Customers, enthusiasts, and emerging professionals, these influencers have a greater connection with their active community and higher influencing power. consumers trust them for their expertise, reviews and product recommendations, as I explain in a recent Forbes article. When activated at scale, they enable brands to target niche audiences, drive awareness, and boost sales, while at the same time requiring lower investments and yielding higher ROI.

3. Shift From Vanity Metrics To Quality Metrics

Quality metrics (such as impressions, engagement, CTR, or conversion) will gain traction in 2023 at the expense of vanity metrics (such as # of followers). focusing on the number of fans and followers as key selection criteria for influencers over the last years, marketers will realize that this doesn’t necessarily lead to a collaboration delivering any business results. In 2023, engagement, content relevancy, and influencer fit to the brand values will take priority over vanity metrics such as the number of followers. Brands will be seeking influencers who have a strong and engaged community, share an interest and knowledge of their industry, and create relevant authentic content. Additionally, ROI will become an important KPI for brands to measure influencer campaign performance.

4. The Power of UGC

User-Generated Content will continue to gain momentum in 2023, with brands prioritizing UGC to create social proof and boost conversion. UGC also generates more engagement than professionally produced content because it is perceived as authentic, relatable, and trustworthy. ratings & reviews, tiktok videos and youtube tutorials will be among the most popular types of content in 2023. Additionally, brands will be repurposing UGC as part of their social media strategy with UGC appearing in offline advertising, on brand websites or email campaigns.

5. Shift to Longer-Term Influencer Collaborations

Ongoing creator collaboration will gain traction in 2023, with brands seeking to partner with key opinion leaders for a longer period of time. long-term collaborations lead to more credible content and higher brand impact. As creators continue to use their partners product or service, they gain a better understanding of the brand and as they continue talking about their collaboration, they will also gain insights from their communities. Hence creators can turn into real brand ambassadors, helping companies with relevant insights for new product development or marketing communication. In attached Forbes Council article I highlight the best practices for developing long-term collaborations with influencers .

6. Influencer Compensation Challenges

Influencer Fees have exploded during the pandemic based on strong demand from marketers and limited alternatives to produce new content elsewhere. So far most content creators look at their number of fans to calculate the fee for promoted content. However with the shift from vanity metrics to real impressions and engagement, marketers increasingly demand pay per performance models. Creator payment might hence change in 2023 towards cost per engagement (CpE), cost-per-click (CpC) or affiliate models.

7. Influencers as (part-time) Employees

A new trend that is emerging in 2023 is influencers as storytellers, with brands giving them full creative control for content creation and brand communication. Given their expertise and understanding of social platforms and audiences, professional influencers are increasingly seen as creative directors and executive producers. Some companies have even started to officially employ star influencers as part of their marketing leadership team as seen with Kate Moss becoming creative director for Diet Coke.

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Summary & Conclusions

With consumers spending ever more time on social media, and traditional advertising continuing to lose effectiveness I believe that 2023 will be a great year for Influencer Marketing. Having a well-defined Influencer Marketing strategy that leverages all types of content creators, with measureable objectives across channels will be key for success. Leveraging these 7 trends will enable marketing teams to maximize the performance of their creator activities in 2023.