If you’ve ever planned a digital marketing strategy for your brand, you’ve considered influencer marketing. Whether you’ve taken the idea further or are still considering it, you may still be wondering about the impact of this strategy. After all, while we should follow the trends, the health of our business always comes first. In 2022, Influencer marketing was a $16.4 billion industry. However, the size of this market is estimated to grow exponentially, reaching $84.89 billion in 2028. It should be no surprise that the forecast for 2023 considers relevant growth and that influencers represent a considerable slice of digital marketing investment. So what these figures tell us is that the way people make purchasing decisions is changing. With the increasing popularity of social media, more people are looking to opinion leaders on these platforms for recommendations. Due to this phenomenon, the advertising market has shifted its focus to keep up with this consumer trend. It is safe to say that digital influencers can be found on any social network. Some influencers are more popular than others, but in the end, what really matters is the engagement with their followers. Instagram remains the most popular platform for influencers, with Facebook and Twitter in second and third place. However, as marketers, we should keep an eye on Tik Tok and Twitch because these platforms are growing in popularity each year due to a high number of followers among teens and young adults. Table of Contents: Who can be classified as a Digital Influencer? Macro or Micro-Influencers? Why working with digital influencers is so popular? 1. Who can be classified as a Digital Influencer? There is constant fuzziness in labelling celebrities or famous people as influencers. The answer to this is: it depends. We start this topic by distinguishing influencers from famous people because they may not be the same individual. Not all celebrities are influencers on social media. That is because an influencer’s job is to engage their audience as content creators. Accordingly, these individuals dedicate hours of their day to planning, creating and producing photo and video content. That takes time, and many celebrities don’t have it due to their priority as actors or singers. Nevertheless, some started on TV and are hugely successful on social media as influencers, like Kim Kardashian or Selena Gomez. Progressively, more celebrities are entering the spectrum of social media influencers to stay relevant. What makes influencers so appealing is their diversity, which allows them to address particular niches. And with each passing day, more and more highly-specific segments of the market are discovered. What’s more, they may be closer than you think. For example, your co-worker may well be sharing relevant industry data on LinkedIn, earning a large group of loyal followers. On the other hand, your neighbour with three children may have an Instagram account where she shares recipes and home organisation tips. While the size of your followers is relevant, it’s even more so whether how they impact your niche. Depending on your marketing strategy and who you want to reach, going for ten micro-influencers may be better than one macro-influencer. 2. Macro or Micro-Influencers? In an interview for Mckinsey’s “Discussions in Digital” podcast, Katie Freiberg, ThirdLove’s director of growth marketing, classified micro-influencers as individuals with 1,500 to 5,000 followers, around 100,000 followers are medium, and more than 500,000 are considered macro. The classification of micro and macro influencers changes from brand to brand depending on their perspective. Some brands make more specific classifications, such as nano and mega-influencers. Micro-influencers are increasingly popular among marketers due to their high engagement rate among their audience. Influencers below 5,000 followers have an average engagement rate of 5.3% compared to those above 100,000 followers, who gather a 1.1% engagement rate. Since the investment is lower, some brands prefer to bet on many micro-influencers to multiply the impact of campaigns. Regardless, that is not a definitive recipe for success, as it will depend on your market and the careful choice of influencers. 3. Why working with digital influencers is so popular? To answer that question, we must look at how people consume today. Some 46% of respondents in a global study say they follow influencers for product recommendations. Furthermore, that same study revealed that 74% of consumers would spend up to $629 (£513) on items recommended by their favourite influencers. These individuals have a tremendous impact on these consumers because they like and feel closer to them than to brands. While many celebrities promote a brand in a big-budget production, influencers usually critically review the product and give their opinion. In this way, they are under pressure to promote quality products because it is what they are supposed to do. Luxury brand ‘Fendi’ and rising star of Tik Tok, Wisdom Kaye Wisdom Kaye is undoubtedly one of Tik Tok’s more popular fashion influencers. Her instant rise in popularity has earned her an impressive 4.9 million followers on the platform. Fendi, an Italian luxury fashion brand, sponsored Kaye with a human-sized box of clothes and accessories. Kaye created different fashion looks based on their products and posted a video.
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