By Joe Vezzani, CEO and Co-Founder, LunarCrush
If you’ve purchased a product in the past year, there is a good chance you heard about it from a brand influencer on social media. There’s also a good chance that you weren’t alone.
Influencer marketing, where brands collaborate with individuals who have a significant social media presence to promote products or services to their engaged followers, has quickly become the go-to marketing strategy for global brands and small startups alike, allowing them to reach customers where they are with a voice they trust.
It will continue to grow in the months and years ahead. According to HubSpot’s latest marketing research, 84 percent of respondents indicated they intend to increase investments in influencer marketing in 2024.
The upside is obvious. Consumers are more likely to buy from people and brands they trust, and creators cultivate that trust, leveraging their audiences to drive consumer engagement, brand loyalty, and sales outcomes.
One survey found that 86 percent of brands found their influencer marketing efforts effective last year. This is unsurprising as 25 percent of social media users said they purchased a product because of an influencer’s recommendation, a 33 percent year-over-year increase.
In 2024, the influencer market exceeds $24 billion, representing an enormous segment that is important to brand building and sales outcomes, but also more expensive and difficult to attain for brands with more modest budgets.
Understanding the trends driving this marketing trend will help big brands and small businesses maximize their influencer relationships.
Here are the top three influencer marketing trends impacting advertising dynamics, shaping brand and creator relationships, and redefining customer engagement right now.
#1 Influencers Become Brand Launchers
Influencers and creatives of all types – from visual artists on social media to videographers on YouTube – have one thing in common: they must find ways to monetize their talents and earn a living from their work. Advertising, affiliate links, and sponsorships only go so far.
That’s where brand partnerships make a significant impact, allowing influencers to produce creative work they love while supporting products and brands they believe in.
However, as the influencer market matures, many creatives are taking this proposition a step further, launching their own brands and setting a new standard for influencer-driven entrepreneurship in the process.
We can call this “The Mr. Beast Effect.”
Jimmy Donaldson, better known on YouTube as Mr. Beast, began publishing YouTube videos in 2012. His first video received just a handful of views, but his audience rapidly expanded. Today, he’s the most subscribed channel on YouTube. His videos receive hundreds of millions of views, on par with the Super Bowl.
That hasn’t stopped the top YouTube creator and influencer from becoming a business mogul himself. Leveraging his online audience, he launched a mobile gaming app, a ghost kitchen chain, Mr. Beast Burger, and his most popular product, Feastables, a chocolate snack brand marketed to his Gen Z audience.
He’s not the only one.
As the Harvard Business Review recently explained, “Celebrities have shifted from endorsing established brands to being influencers for established brands to drawing on their influence to create brands themselves.”
In other words, online influencers are not just supporting other brands. They are embracing entrepreneurship, creating products and services that resonate with their audience and expand their reach, which creates additional opportunities for companies working with content creators to market their products.
#2 Data Determines Advertising Impact
Every minute, more than 240 million emails are sent, six million Google searches are performed, 500 hours of YouTube videos are uploaded, and 66,000 photos are shared on Instagram.
The internet is an endless cacophony of noise, making it difficult to determine when influencer marketing is effective, lucky, or just a well-timed coincidence.
As a result, data has become the driving force behind effective influencer marketing strategies. Brands are leveraging real-time analytics to understand and assess their influencer marketing campaigns.
For many brands, the most important metrics include:
- Engagement rate: How actively is an influencer’s audience engaging with their content?
- Reach and impressions: What are the total number of unique users viewing and connecting with an influencer’s content?
- Conversion rate: What percentage of the influencer’s audience takes a desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or downloading an app?
- Follower growth: How has the influencer’s followers changed over time?
- Brand mentions and sentiment: How often and in what context is the brand mentioned in the influencer’s content, and what is the audience’s sentiment towards those mentions?
This information helps brands identify the most impactful influencers and measure the success of their ongoing campaigns.
#3 Niche Audiences Drive Brand Growth
As attention becomes increasingly fractured and macro influencers become more expensive, marketers find that, as the truism teaches, “the riches are in the niches.”
This is great news for small and medium-sized businesses that want to leverage the power of influencers but lack the budget or product capacity to work with mainstream influencers.
Micro-influencers with 10,000 – 100,000 followers are more affordable and, according to HubSpot, frequently more effective than their more popular (and more expensive) counterparts. Armed with the right data and analytical insights, brands can effectively identify these influencers, assess their campaign’s impact, and optimize their strategies for maximum engagement and ROI.
This effectively democratizes access to influencer marketing, allowing brands of all sizes to reach new audiences and compete on a level playing field.
Influencer Marketing is More Than a Trend
Influencer marketing is driving consumer behavior in new and transformative ways, creating opportunities for brands and businesses ready to remain agile, connect with consumers on a deeper level, and harness the influence of key digital personalities to boost their market presence.
However, like all marketing strategies, some influencer relationships are more effective than others.
By understanding the latest trends and the data driving influencer partnerships, brands are best positioned to optimize their collaborations, maximize ROI, and build long-term, impactful connections with their target audiences.
About the Author
A tech disruptor, web3 entrepreneur, and investor based in California, Joe Vezzani is the CEO and Co-Founder of LunarCrush, the platform transforming the transparency and cutting edge analysis of social media intelligence and market insight. The company recently launched LunarCrush Earn, a first of its kind platform revolutionizing how creators monetize and businesses expand their reach to get precise performance results. Under Joe’s leadership, LunarCrush has revolutionized the digital ecosystem, leading the cryptocurrency realm and applying its real-time data as crucially valuable intelligence for marketing, advertising and a range of industries. LunarCrush has achieved recognition as a top 200 website, earning coveted placements and trust from renowned industry leaders such as TradingView, CoinBase, and Kraken. In his role as CEO, Joe champions LunarCrush’s growth with hands-on leadership and mentorship, fostering a rewarding company culture with an environment of innovation and development.
