The global influencer marketing market has been garnering significant revenues. Over recent years, the reach and engagement of social media influencers have increased, demonstrating favorable outcomes.

Many brands have recognized the benefits of employing these trusted, online voices in magnifying their brand promotion efforts. These factors are expected to support the market growth in the future as well.

Citing many consumers turning to online spaces for shopping, entertainment, and conversation, MRFR expects the influencer marketing market to reach 2.85 billion by 2025, expanding at an 8% CAGR from 2019 to 2025.

The market has been growing continually since the rise of social media marketing, and many brands have already started to embrace this sophisticated marketing approach.

However, the recent COVID 19 pandemic shaped the influencer marketing industry by boosting digitization. Especially small businesses faced a major challenge during the pandemic due to their limited customer reach.

Due to people’s growing preference for online shopping and restricted spending, businesses were encouraged to take innovative steps to promote their brands.

Resultantly, they moved to digital/online marketing, where influencer marketing showed them a new way they can look up for their brand promotion. At the same time, startled by unprecedented lockdown and social distancing mandates, people rapidly turned to online shopping. The pandemic disruption changed consumer patterns from in-store to online/virtual purchases.

This shift was so massive that it boosted not only the ecommerce industry but also influencer marketing trends. The uptake of influencer marketing increased notably between 2019 and 2022.

While the pandemic crises are and will continue to be notably challenging for the retail sector, they are expected to create interesting opportunities for influencer marketing.

How Influencer Marketing Reached Peak of Popularity

Influencer marketing offers a marketing tool to promote a brand or endorse products or services through social media. Through their online reputations, usually within a specific niche, influencers serve as brand ambassadors for firms looking to increase sales by gaining more followers.

Today, more and more businesses are turning to influencer marketing and boosting their budgets in this ever-growing online environment.

Over the last decade, marketers have realized the importance of having a powerful online presence due to the growing internet penetration and the popularity of social media.

With each new technology, marketers look for new, innovative ways to promote their brand and acquire more customers. All these factors indicate the rise of influencer marketing.

Social media has transformed brands’ marketing and promotional approaches. Influencer marketing is a hybrid version comprising old and new PR tools that, at its core, run content-driven marketing campaigns.

The rising uptake of influencer marketing in increasing numbers of enterprises worldwide escalates the market sales. Besides, benefits such as increased reach, better social engagement, and deeper customer relationships, propel the adoption of influencer marketing platforms.

It is more important for D2C brands, specifically fashion brands, to create content to build the brand image so that more people get connected and attracted to it.

A right influencer need not always have a huge number of followers but the ability to influence viewers through building a relationship that resonates with trust, authenticity, and relevance.

When it comes to ROI or media value, influencer marketing turns out to be a cost-effective tool that can make a brand fly higher.

Watch the following video by Surfside PPC to know more about ROI (return on investment) in marketing:

And reliability and credibility are the most significant factors in influencing audiences. Also, the content is often a huge factor impacting buying decisions, and content marketing adds to brand equity and other brand health scores.

Future Trends of Influencer Marketing

The outlook of the influencer marketing industry looks positive. Influencer marketing is here to stay, and operations have changed a great deal in a short time.

Like any marketing strategy, influencer marketing trends are expected to change drastically in the next couple of years. However, considerations for setting up a campaign will remain the same as most marketing campaigns.

Brands will continue to look to create additional types of influencer marketing campaigns and more resources to run influencer campaigns.

Influencers marketing tool providers will increasingly form partnerships across YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and even LinkedIn.

Various brands on social media will turn to influencer marketing to harness the power of customer engagement to grow their profitability.

FMCG companies worldwide are fostering their budgets for influencer marketing, which will self-regulate and become responsible for creating a massive need for influencers.

The recent episode of the crypto industry crashing would act as a point of inflection for leading influencers. However, there are various tax concerns that would pose significant challenges for creators.

Moreover, the advent of virtual influencers like virtual humans and AI-created profiles & digital avatars, especially in China and East Asia, would create obstacles to the growth of influencer marketing.

Leading lifestyle brands like Dior and Prada have already embraced the new virtual influencers approach and are extensively partnering with them.

Strategies Industry Players Follow to Expand Businesses

Influencer marketing agencies try hard to provide their customers comprehensive services, from campaign strategy building and influencer selection to paid media and reporting.

They work on a holistic approach that can enhance the quality & integrity of campaigns and safeguard against fraudulent followers and harmful or questionable content.

They use AI-powered quantitative and qualitative methods to align the best influencers with brands based on their campaign objectives.

Most influencer marketing service providers strive to craft high-performing marketing strategies to help their clients reach desired audiences.

Using patented analyses and rich text mining over billions of data signals, they help clients uncover shopper’s intent, anticipate needs, and build an ideal audience base to reach specific campaign goals. Also, they form strategic partnerships to help their customers gain instant ROI.

For instance, on July 14, 2022, LTK, a leading influencer marketing platform, recently announced its partnership with stripe, a financial infrastructure platform to fuel instant payments to creators on its self-serve solution- Connect.

LTK’s connect solution helps brands build and scale self-serve creator programs, boosting brand awareness and sales. The partnership will reduce the time between completed work and payment.