The Future Of Influencer Marketing: 3 Predictions

• Date: 9 December 2019
• reading time: 6 Minutes
• Blogger: Francisca Zimmermann
• E-mail: [email protected]

Influencers have been a big part of marketing for a while now. Especially over the past ten years, more and more social media accounts grew to reach huge numbers, and businesses have been paying a lot of money to have their brands promoted by the right person or right social media account. 

Source: https://neoreach.com/top-influencer-marketing-stats/

To give you an idea: This graph by NeoReach shows the worth of the influencer business at the moment. It went from an already massive $1.7B in 2016, to $6.5B in 2019. 

Fast growth and new issues 

However, with this fast growth, a few issues started arising recently. 

Fake influencer accounts

The more people found out about the money to be made as an influencer; the more people tried to actually become one. And, as you can probably understand, that is not easy. 

Building up a real fanbase that trusts you and would invest in a product you promote takes many years, careful planning, and a lot of time. It never happens quickly. 

In search of quick solutions, people started getting creative. Aspiring influencers began using social media bots to grow their engagement quickly; they bought thousands of followers and likes, and even spend money on purchasing complete accounts with large amounts of followers. 

These accounts could ‘trick’ brands into investments, but would never lead to as many sales as the ‘genuine’ influencer accounts would. Fake followers simply don’t buy. 

As nicely explained by Social Media Today: 

“As an industry, influencer marketing has become over-saturated and beleaguered by a heavy barrage of high-profile scandals and rampant reports of fraud.”

Suspicious consumers  

These developments didn’t stay unnoticed by the consumer. All of a sudden, there were so many influencers to follow, and all of them were promoting products. 

At the start of influencer marketing, promotions by influencers were like ‘peer to peer’ recommendations. They seemed (and often were) real and personal, as the original influencers would never risk their position by promoting something they didn’t fully believe in. 

This is different now. Consumers know the state of influencer marketing and think twice before they trust what an influencer promotes. 

Where does influencer marketing go?

Does this mean the end of influencer marketing? In our opinion, no. However, we do expect a few changes over the coming years.

A shift to micro-influencers 

Our first prediction is further growth in the popularity of micro-influencers. Micro-influencers are influencers with a relatively low follower count of 10.000 followers or less. 

Real influence 

First, they are more likely to be real, because it's simply easier to gain 5000 real followers than 20.000. Micro-influencers are often accounts that were not started with the primary goal of making money as an influencer. They are often people with a nice story, who love to share their adventures with a community. 

So, what is the advantage of working with a micro-influencer? Investing in a micro-influencer is often more affordable for a brand, and they are less likely to be scammed by a fake influencer. 

Brands know this and therefore move towards working with these smaller influencers more and more. 

Peers 

Apart from brands trusting micro-influencers more, consumers feel the same way. As explained earlier, micro-influencers have a more peer-to-peer relationship with their followers. They often have real conversations with them, and therefore create a real connection. 

This makes consumers way more likely to trust a recommendation from smaller influencers than from the not-so-personal million-follower accounts. 

Let’s look at some numbers: 

 - According to Stackla, people are 9.8x more likely to buy a product or service after seeing a friend’s social media post, compared to that of a large and ‘traditional’ influencer. 

 - According to The Guardian, 70% of consumers trust peer recommendations more than professionally written copy.

The internet is full of similar statistics, and we could go on for a while. However, we think our point is clear. People want realness, and brands do too. This is why we believe the tendency towards working with smaller influencers has only started and will continue over the coming years. 

A shift to organic influencers 

Have you heard of organic influencers yet? Organic influencers are basically consumers. They are people who happily use a product or service, and naturally grow into a position where they help ‘spread the word.’ 

An organic influencer can have a small following, but this is not always the case. In this example by Mention, for instance, we see how Natalie Portman promotes a film in her Instagram post. 

As Mention’s author explains, her post seems genuine and does not look like the typical paid promotion. 

Source: https://mention.com/blog/influencer-brand-advocates/

Is Natalie Portman a small influencer or just a fan without much following? Absolutely not. All you need to find organic influencers is a good relationship. 

Building a relationship with large influencers like Natalie Portman is not always an option, of course. However, the chances are good that there are some helpful people with a good reach among your customers. There are even a few tools that can help you find them, like Stackla, for instance. 

As explained earlier, organic influencers fit perfectly within the recent need for ‘realness.’ Therefore, we think organic influencers, as influential brand advocates, will gain high popularity in the coming years. 

More influencer agencies 

Since brands know the issues with fake influencers, many of them are getting insecure. They fear that the influencer they select to work with turns out to be one of the fake ones. 

And although a small risk remains, a way to slightly lower this risk is working with an influencer agency. These agencies have a network of influencers they work with and match them with a brand or campaign. 

Working with an agency has a few advantages. To start with, the agency takes away a lot of work and insecurity. They do the whole selection process for you and suggest you the best match for your campaign. By making this suggestion, the agency also takes a bit of the responsibility. After all, suggesting fake influencers would not do their name and business well. 

With brands getting insecure, we think influencer agencies will flourish. We have even seen speculations that social media platforms will start their own influencer programs. 

Have you heard of Instagram's test of hiding like counts? 

This blog by Esquire talks about Instagram's reasons for this experiment. Esquire suggests that by hiding likes, Instagram tries to make the life of Instagram influencers harder. The platform would be unhappy with the money made on their platform and would think of ways to get their share: By starting their own influencer agency, for instance. We are not sure if this is true, but it would definitely be a clever move. And if Instagram won't do it, many other agencies will. 

Need help? 

Are you looking for help growing your brand? We work with social media, social advertising, and sales funnels to help our clients develop their business. When implemented correctly, influencer marketing can be a great way to grow activity on social media and generate leads. We therefore really like to work with (smaller) influencers as a part of our strategy. 

Are you interested in working with us? Feel free to contact us for a FREE strategy call so we can discuss what we can do for you. 

Are you interested in learning more about social media yourself? Then our Social Media Gids Community may be a great place for you. Here you can find many helpful resources and join the conversation with other business owners like you. Our FREE e-books and our Social Marketing Class, for instance, are great resources for everyone looking to learn more about the endless possibilities of social media.

Want to post a comment? Join the conversation in our community.

• Blogger: Francisca Zimmermann
• E-mail: [email protected]
• Social media manager & content creator at Social Media Gids
• Francisca Zimmermann is a social media expert with a background in research and a love for learning new things. She travels the world looking for beautiful places and interesting cultures, while she dives into the world of her clients to be able to write about them and their interests as a real 'insider'.
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