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Influencer Marketing is here to stay. No two ways about it. Share via

Undoubtedly, the pandemic has accelerated the growth of the influencer marketing landscape across the globe, with more and more brands, irrespective of their size and target audience, having increased their budgets manifolds to reach out to their consumers using this method. Going by the trends over the last couple of years, it has become known that influencer marketing is here to stay, at least in the near future, and might well overshadow the other popular marketing tools and techniques. But will the impact of influencer marketing on a brand’s marketing campaigns sustain in the long run?

Numbers don’t lie

A recent survey of influencers in one of the developed markets found out that most social media influencers have witnessed an increase in their follower count, and the engagement rate has also gone up for most of them. According to a report by Influencer Marketing Hub, the influencer marketing industry had grown from a mere $1.7 billion in 2016 to an estimated $9.7 billion in 2020. Furthermore, these numbers are expected to reach around $13.8 billion in 2021.  Another research report by Markets and Markets said the size of the global influencer marketing platform would grow from $6 billion in 2020 to $24.1 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 32 percent.  All these surveys point out that the influencer marketing industry has good growth potential in the times to come.

Increasing demand for online content

Many researchers have found that consumers are increasingly glued to their smartphones and consume enormous amounts of content on the go. There seems to be no stopping this trend. This situation means brands are going to have to meet their consumers where they are most active. Hence, it will lead brands to focus more on the social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, Youtube, and Twitter to catch the imagination of their target audience.

There’s a budget for every marketer

When it comes to budget, influencer marketing has proved over time that brands of any size can leverage this technique to reach out to their customers. While celebrity influencers can charge more than a million dollars for a single post on Instagram, there are nano influencers who can do the job of promoting your brand amongst their niche followers for less than 100 dollars. And apart from nano influencers, there are micro, macro, and mega influencers who can also influence their followers to take note of your product. So, for brands, influencer marketing creates much flexibility when it comes to the finance aspect. This is also one of the reasons why influencer marketing grew exponentially even during the pandemic.

Significant interest from brands

More than 65 percent of brands planned to increase their influencer marketing budget in 2020, said a report by Bigcommerce. And that is only going to increase in the future, believe experts tracking the industry. According to another report, if influencer marketing is done efficiently, each dollar can generate up to $18 for the brands, which is a massive number. On average, the same report said that the brand could get upto $5 for every dollar spent on influencer marketing. In addition, Mediakix, in an earlier report, had said, 89 percent of marketers feel RoI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels.

After analyzing the numbers and how the influencer marketing industry is shaping up, it will be no exaggeration to state that it is serving the interests of the brands in a very efficient manner and is one of the most preferred methods of marketing for companies. Brands are bullish about the flexibility that influencer marketing provides in terms of budget, reach, unique content, better engagement rate, and RoI and seem happy to keep investing in it. Influencer marketing is getting into the mainstream marketing method of late and soon can give the other popular techniques a run for their money. Be rest assured, it is not going to go away anytime soon.

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