As we have noted: A popular new concept is “influencer marketing.” What is it? And how should it be used? This post deals with 2018 influencer marketing trends.
What Is Influencer Marketing”
According to Evans on Marketing: “Influencer marketing is a BIG deal. With it, we target well-known individuals. Their effect on the purchase decision is high for some consumers (followers).”
Consider these remarks from the CEO of TopRank Marketing:
“What does ‘influencer marketing’ mean you? Do you think of celebrities with product photos on Instagram? Or having a famous YouTuber run a contest? Why not send products to bloggers? And hope they do a nice review? Surely that’s not all marketers want from influencer relationships.”
“Think of brands working with or paying influential people to create content. And how that lifts brand credibility and reach.”
Click the links to read further:
- Influencer Marketing Coming of Age.
- How to Reach Influencers: Infographic.
- Stronger FTC Influencer Marketing Rules.
Key 2018 Influencer Marketing Trends
Now, we review 2018 influencer marketing trends.
As Vivian Michaels observes for TNW:
“The popularity of influencer marketing rose 90x from 2013 to 2016. And it doubled the first nine months of 2017. Reasons range from their versatility (for all businesses) to their noninvasive nature. Because of this, we need to study trends.”
Thus, Michaels identities seven key 2018 trends:
- “Value of services to increase. Influencers are sought-after on social media. Witness the rise of accounts with thousands of followers. At the same time, more firms will use influencer marketing. Thus, demand for social media personalities increases the their service value.”
- “KPI and ROI measuring vital. With high demands on influencer campaigns, we want to measure key performance indicators (KPI) and return on investment (ROI). Thus, we expect new software and marketing platforms.”
- “The year of integration. 2018 will see brands combine different influencer types. Each group reaches a specific target. And that reaches more people.”
- “Video marketing critical for online audience. Video reduces me-too messages. And it is engaging.”
- “Lawsuits against brands and influencers. Influencers and brands are careful. Yet, in 2018 we expect lawsuits to grow.”
- “‘Fake’ influencers with bought followers. “For little cost, a social media user gets thousands of followers. They have a big fan base. But, they buy them.”
- “Instagram to surpass one billion users. Instagram is popular. in 2018, its influencer marketing will rise.”
Click the image to learn further.
As I am reading these seven predictions as to what will happen in the influencer market in 2018, they seem to make sense to me. For instance, #5 discusses the rise in law suits against influencers; this correlates with the FTC’s new rules. With the recent integration of these new rules, it’s a no brainer that there will be an increase in legal issues concerning influence marketing. Influencing marketing is becoming such a large trend that it positively and negatively affects the market. I see it almost everyday now just scrolling through various social media feeds. I would expect to see on my feeds next year, all of these predictions to come true.
Influencer marketing trends are very prevalent on social media. I find this trend a lot on Instagram and Facebook. I know that the Kardashian’s/Jenners and people that they are affiliated with are apart this new trend. I personally think that it is a great way to market a product. For some reason, everyone wants to be able to own, wear and do the same thing as famous people. Marketers definitely have the right idea!
As it mentioned, in 2018, there will be more than 1 billion users on Instagram. When company tried to promote their products, media like Instagram will be more competitive and brings more influnce power the potential customers and followers. Obviously, the success of Instagram also push the growth of advertisment industry.
It seems that influencer marketing trends seem to be on the rise, but I wonder how effective some of these influencers end up being. With the vast numbers of Instagram posts, would there be too much clutter? Compared to Instagram, are there other sites which may be more effective and reduce advertising waste?
Influencer marketing is very effective and really helps companies generate more sales by providing a greater reach. The most popular method of influencer marketing at the moment is with social media celebrities. By seeking out social media celebrities with millions of followers, companies can gain new buyers that they never had before. Additionally, most companies allow the Youtubers and Instagramers to give out coupon codes for the products. This really brings in more people, especially since everyone loves a good sale.
Influencer is a really hot topic these days, especially in the beauty industry. Nowadays, almost all the brands in beauty industry send out the PR packages to those major influencers to let them promote their product so that they can gain more sales.
A great app which would be a complement to influencer marketing would be an app that can analyze a photo and produce marketing details from it. In particular, the app could be used to analyze instagram photos to extract links to buy the products which are depicted in the photos.
The huge popularity of social media increases the power of influencer marketing. Giving products to people for review purposes that have large fanbases (youtube) allows for more people to learn about products and potentially sway them to purchase products. Simply using celebrity endorsements may work for some consumers, but not the more savvy shoppers that rely on more than just a photograph of a celebrity using the product.
With influencer marketing strategy. Brands or new products can reach lots of consumers in a short time. However, as the industry grows, the competition between influencers is more intense. Lots of influencers fail late, so a brand should carefully select promotion channels.
In our social media age, Influencer marketing seems understandable. As young people are moving away from television, companies need to rely on more than just television commercials. As mentioned in the blog post, Youtuber and video marketing seems more and more common, especially for companies that are less heralded, with a new product. Most big youtubers now reference and use products that are sent to them via these companies. This is just the biggest example of a trend that I do believe will further increase in 2018 and beyond.
When doing my term project on GMC and Tesla, I came across an article where Cadillac worked with a fashion and art publication to launch a café and car showroom all in one. I thought it was a good idea to work with an influential magazine to create a unique experience for customers while promoting the vehicle brand.
Influencer marketing is used a lot nowadays. Recently, Sprite has been advertising a Winter Holiday commercial with LeBron James as it’s celebrity influencer. I think that this type of marketing is very effective and it does influence the decision of consumers. This allows a brand to associate their product with a celebrity. Companies like Sprite have the right idea using celebrities that people know in order to help market their product and give some form of credibility to their product.
Influencer marketing is an interesting strategy and shows to work well these days and is clearly shown from the numbers. From 2013 to 2016 influencer marketing rose 90%. Being on social media, I see this alot, famous people showing off products that they “use” and then individuals that look up to these famous people go out and buy the product.
I think that celebrity endorsers have a significant impact on consumer behavior, whether they realize it or not. In one way or another, people model their behavior based on the actions of others, especially if the other person is someone they admire. That’s why influencer marketing is so impactful on consumer habits and why its popularity has been rapidly increasing. For instance, I never cared for beef jerky before Jack Links began using NFL players as endorsers. Now, I love to eat Jack Link’s beef jerky.
Social Media Influencers are very common on multiple platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. As a user of social media, it is sometimes difficult to dissociate paid advertisements from individual content due to the blurred lines between social connectivity and company promotions. While it is valuable for firms to market to target markets on social media, it can sometimes be frustrating to the consumers due to the introduction of another outlet for advertisement.
They are required by law to disclose if they are promoting a brand for money, and it seems to be happening more now
It is no surprise that influencer marketing has become so prevalent today. With social media quickly becoming more and more engulfed in our lives, everyday people can now interact and see what celebrities are doing daily. Whether it be celebrities using their snap chat or instagram, they have millions of followers on their finger tips seeing their every move. Firms will continue to take advantage of this and push their products through influencers because it is so easy and effective.
Influencer marketing is really a big hit in recent years. In Korea and China these years, people have paid a high interested in Airport fashion because they want to know what the actors or actress wear. Most of time, once the influencer wore somethings new, people would like to search the brand and price and try to buy it also. So for many fashion brands, their PRers try to build relationship with those influencers and make a new promotion for the brand.
This post reminds me two of the previous posts I read on this blog. One is “Sports Star 2017 Instagram Popularity”. From my opinion, the most common influencer type is celebrities. Most firms especially fashion brands sign celebrities to influence their fans to become the consumer of their brands. Top influencers like those sports stars who have most Instagram followers are also who companies are fighting for. The second post that came into my mind was “Top Authentic Global Brands”. These days when we see influencers introducing brands or play vague commercial tricks in their postings, we always doubt if the product is really as good as what an influencer says. It is also important for those famous influencers to choose a authentic brand in order not to ruin their reputation and popularity. Maybe in the next few years, their will be a list of “Top Authentic Global Influencers”.
After reading this post, I realized that the trends of the Market will be change a lot in the future, most of those change are really get many influence in our daily life now. In the list of trends above, Social media will be the most important part to influence people. It will bring lots of opportunity to the people to advertises easier and save lots of money. But in the social media, we still need to improve our ability to identify false information
The increase of social media usage has definitely lead to the increase of influencer marketing. Instagram is such a big market for this because it allows users to post pictures or even short video clips of them using the product and writing a short post underneath with why they like the product. If I had to guess, I would say that in 2018 Snapchat will also become a huge platform for influencer marketing. Some products are already beginning to advertise on Snapchat and this trend will probably continue as Snapchat also allows for short video clips of product use to be posted.
As the increase of social media and users continues to grow it makes subsequently that marketers would tap into this largely unsolicited space. And with many social media sites greatly reducing the available of advertising space, making it more expensive for companies who would want to advertise there and make the site more enjoyable to consumers. With more and more people becoming spokespeople for various companies and causes online I think it’s important to keep influence marketing when consuming social media content as it is not as personal as we perceive it to be.
Influencer marketing is a major key concept in today’s marketing world because so many people today have at least one to a handful of role models to which they might look up. From Youtube video creators to young entrepreneurs, the range of successful athletes and music makers and more types of people is always expanding and always gathering more followers.
As this post demonstrates, social media is gaining popularity. By 2018, there will be more than one billion people on Instagram. The internet and social media will increasingly become the most popular platform for companies to reach out to their market and promote products and services. Personally, I am losing interest in social media and plan to delete my accounts on twitter and instagram – I believe their time consuming and not beneficial nor educational. It will be interesting to see how my perception of social media will change, or not, as companies rely on it more heavily to advertise in the upcoming year.
I really agree that ins is a really popular APP and which can influence trend.Normally，I go to a new restaurant by finding a beautiful picture on ins.
Great post Evan! I’m marketing influencer just like you!