Influencer Marketing Trends - 2018

Influencer Marketing is becoming extremely important for brands in this Digital Age to form deeper connections with their consumers. Given the rapid shift in the Digital Marketing landscape and rise of ad blockers we explore important trends for 2018 that will define influencer marketing in 2018. We connected with Praanesh Co-founder of Tera-reach and Qoruz, a leading influencer marketing platform to share his thoughts on the influencer marketing landscape, key influencer marketing trends for 2018 and its implications for brands and marketers.

Influencer Marketing Trends 2018

Relevance of Influencer marketing in 2018 - Traditional brand marketing of shouting out uni-directional messages to audiences, has undergone a massive change with the onset of Web2.0, i.e. the Social Networks. Now social networks from being a typical "communication medium" has become a dias of discussions to content hubs which houses personal voices of people. Naturally, this meant "Word of Mouth" moving onto being the key factor for consumer facing brands to attract their audience towards consumption and revenue. Owing to the increase in the number of voices speaking about brand, buyers started looking at key opinion leaders, a.k.a, the influencers who command an authority and expertise in specific genres, i.e. niches, speaking for and against brands. Now it is pretty critical for brands to be on the good books of these influencers, considering the crowd they command and the perception changes which they can bring about for brands.

Influencer Marketing Trends for 2018 and and best practices - Marketers are moving from chasing vanity metrics like "reach" or "impressions" and to deep-diving into "relevance" and "resonance" of the influencers who they work with. Hence data analytics is a strong weapon to understand these influencers who they spend tons of marketing dollars on. The market has evolved to look for more scientific reasons on why they are choosing a certain influencer, rather than plainly 'get it done with' approach. With the layer of automation, this moves up a ladder in helping brands engage with influencers smarter and at scale.

Changing the way Brands engage with influencers - I believe the shift from "Paid Campaigns" to "Ongoing Relationship Building" is the key moving forward. Brands started realising that "Buying Influence" will not leave an impact on the longer run. Far and few brands have been successful in effectively moving into a IRM (Influencer Relationship Management) approach. I believe, with the advent of the automation and data analytics, this process will be smoother and hence more brands will buy into the concept of "Building Engagements through Relationships" and not with just cash at all times.

Using influencer discovery and data analytics - Qoruz is a enterprise influencer data-analytics platform, to help brands discover, analyse and engage with micro-influencers at scale using Big Data and Machine Learning. Qoruz fits seamlessly across multiple marketing functions like research, planning, execution and performance measurement. Brand managers can look upto Qoruz as a key weapon to utilize in smarter influencer marketing decisions and play. 

11 Key Influencer Marketing Trends & Stats - 2018

Influencer marketing (also influence marketing) is a form of marketing in which focus is placed on influential people rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers. The goal of Influencer Marketing is to identify the influencers in your niche and make them work for you by promoting your brand.

1. Marketers receive an average of $6.85 in earned media value for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. 
2. Customers acquired through word-of-mouth (such as influencer marketing) are retained at a 37% higher rate than those acquired through other means .
3. When social media is part of their buyer’s journey, customers tend to convert at a 129% higher rate. They are also four times as likely to spend significantly more than those without a social component.  
4. 67.6% of marketers consider finding relevant influencers their largest influencer marketing challenge.
5. 69.4% of influencers chose to be influencers so they could earn revenue. 
6. Respect matters when working with influencers. 54% of influencers say they will work with brands who respect them as they would any other publisher. 
7. Just 3% of consumers are influenced by celebrity endorsements in their product purchase decisions.
8. YouTube seems to be the second most influential social media platform for purchases. 18% of consumers are influenced by YouTube regarding their purchases.
9. The ones with the least influence are digital ads (4.5%), print ads (4.7%), and TV ads (7.4%). 
10. More than 50% of Twitter users follow musicians’ and actors’ accounts. Their reach continues to be the highest. However the study reveals that people follow them for entertainment and not for product recommendations.
11. Followers Matter - People aged between 13 and 24 are 2x more likely to evaluate influencers based on follower count than older audiences. 
    

The consumer is command - Influencer Marketing Key Trend 2018

​Case- Adidas

Adidas had fallen behind its consumers and were facing the rise of a consumer empowered by digital and mobile. Adidas changed its approach and came out with a global strategic plan for the year 2020: “Creating the New.”
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There were 3 realizations that shaped this strategy. 1) The consumer is command 2) The consumer needs to hear a single voice, and 3) The cultural shift this requires in intense.

Earlier Adidas controlled its launches and rolled them out in each country at its own pace. Now as consumers are shaping trends and in the case of Adidas as sneaker and lifestyle blogs have gone mainstream globally and social influencers have proliferated it has a core set of advanced consumers and fans who drive interest in its products, innovations and storylines.

They had to shift from local launches to global launches, which affects everything from supply-chain coordination to our marketing programs. A big change globally for Adidas is moving away from investing on TV to investing heavily in digital because that’s where their consumers are. It proved to be a drastic but successful move for an iconic brand like Adidas. Their overall growth numbers showed that this shift was successful as its sales grew 31% in the 3rd quarter of 2017 in North America alone.
To make this success possible they've also ensured that they focus on mobile. They tried to make it easy for people to move from search to purchase, especially on a mobile. They partnered with Google to enable a seamless checkout directly from mobile shopping ads on search. 

Driving ROI from Influencer Marketing - Trend 2018

TapInfluence partnered with Nielsen Catalina Solutions on a 2016 study that revealed that influencer marketing generates 11 times the ROI of traditional digital marketing. No business can afford to turn down an 11-times greater ROI on marketing spend. 70 percent of teenage YouTube subscribers trust influencer opinions over traditional celebrities. 32 percent of US influencers who currently work with brands cite Facebook as the best platform, followed by Instagram at 24 percent. 71 percent of consumers are more likely to make a purchase based on a social media reference. 86 percent of the most-viewed beauty videos on YouTube were made by influencers, compared to 14 percent by beauty brands, themselves. Beauty video views have increased 65 percent year over year. 57% of beauty and fashion companies use influencers as part of their marketing strategies.  

Concluding thoughts

​In the 2000s, social marketing was the hot trend, then came content marketing and today, it is influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is further aided by the fact the online consumers are preferably keeping a distance from most forms of ads. As such, influencer marketing is the perfect way of marketing your service without making them feel offended. So much so that most online consumers gladly participate and become a part of influencer marketing campaigns. The beginning of 2017 has seen many consumers relying on social media and reviews when buying a product, eating at a restaurant or even places to visit. But, things began to favor influencer marketing several years ago. Over the past 10 years, social media has built an entire digital world in which millennials socialize, create, and consume. The majority of their interactions and decisions happen online, and now they are reaching the age at which they are making and selling products and services. The wise marketer should pay attention to the growth rate of influencer marketing and track the statistics that can help craft a successful influencer marketing strategy and campaign. 

There is no denying that traditional ads are no longer as appealing to consumers as they once were. With so many ads popping out on print, electronic and social media, consumers are left with no choice but to ignore or block them. Unlike traditional ads, influencer marketing is proving its value as an effective marketing tool. Whereas conventional ads are no longer as effective because ad blockers are becoming increasingly popular and easy to use. The same applies to social media and pay-per-click ads that can be avoided through ad blockers. 47% online consumers are using ad blockers and this is set to rise, so the advertising model has to change. Influencer marketing leverages the popularity and trend-setting power of influencers.  ​