2020 Influencer Marketing Trends

Micro Influencers

What is a micro-influencer? A micro-influencer is someone who has between 1,000 to 100,000 followers. Micro-influencers focus on a specific niche or area and are generally regarded as an industry expert or topic specialist.

 2020 will see a rise in micro-influencers and not just in the traditional sense.  This will include Peer-to-Peer (ie.‘Someone Like Me’) Influencers, Family & Friend Influencers as well as the Employee Influencer. 

 Data shows that brand content shared by employees get 8X more engagement than if it was shared by the brand’s social channels. Being an advocate and expert of a brand as an employee builds trust and is word-of-mouth marketing at its finest. 

 Micro influencers are cost efficient and target a niche audience, aligning better with target consumers and have higher engagement levels, meaning they are more likely convert impressions to customers.  

Ambassadors or the “Always On” Influencer

 The time for “one-off” influencer partnerships is over. Using the same influencer multiple times not only allows a brand to be more efficient when contracting but also lends well to optimizing influencer strategies. This means the brand will gain insights on what works best across all channels of influencer marketing and helps increase brand loyalty and attention. 

TikTok

After it was shut down, Vine left a massive gap in the social media landscape. TikTok not only fills that void but allows different types of creativity to come to light. What once started off as a music platform has now morphed into a platform for comedy, dance, and cooking, with more and more original content being created daily. Reaching this audience with famous TikTok-ers allows a brand to boost brand awareness with a younger audience and help build brand loyalty.  Brands like Mini have already found early success on this platform.

Video & Audio Content

 Video and audio content will continue to be a priority moving into the second half of 2020.  Users consume videos at a rate of 3X more than any other form of social media content and influencers will continue to create video content to keep up with the ever-increasing demand, whether it’s short form (TikTok) or long form (IGTV,YouTube, FB).   

 Audio content also performs better than other type of content with podcasts continuing to gain popularity. With more and more people tuning in, over 51% of the population say that they have listened to at least one of the thousands of active podcasts out there. Influencers have branched out into podcasts as well, with a lot of them creating their own show.

CGI Influencers

What even is a CGI influencer, you may ask?  This new generation of influencers are Computer-Generated Imagery created and managed by a brand or agency.  This trend has been evolving since 2018 with the introduction of @lilmiquela on Instagram.  Her following has since grown to a cool 2.4 million.  These fake influencers do everything from model clothes, attend red carpet premieres with celebrities.

Our younger tech-savvy demographic is hungry for virtual reality and all things gaming which is why CGI Influencers work well for them.  It also gives brands total control on behaviour and language, and therefore, brand image.

Looking Ahead

All this to say, whether you focus more on smaller influencers or look into using an always-on ambassador, one thing is for sure –influencer marketing isn’t going anywhere.  Consumers now, more than ever, need recommendations from trusted voices, whether it be computer generated or real.