Influencer marketing has gotten big in the past few years, and it’s no surprise why. Influencer marketing is the process of leveraging an existing social media influencer—someone who carries a strong reputation with a large number of people in a given niche—by having them endorse your brand, support your content, or co-create content with you and your brand.
As many as 39 percent of marketers are actively increasing their marketing budgets for 2018, with 86 percent of marketers relying on the strategy for at least some of their 2017 campaigns. So far, the start of 2018 looks much like the end of 2017, with the same approaches and tactics working as well as they have in the past. But the future of influencer marketing, like any marketing strategy, is subject to changes in trends, audiences, and technologies—and I anticipate many changes to come for influencer marketing in the next several years:
1. Status diversity. Today, if you want to get in touch with an influencer and have them advocate for your brand, most people start targeting people with 100,000 followers or more. They gravitate toward the biggest names in the industry, and understandably so; the more powerful an influencer is, the more valuable their advocacy will be. But as competition for influencers begins to grow and experts become easier to access, we’ll likely see more diversity among influencer targets. In other words, we’ll see influencers of all levels, including the high-follower elite and low-follower newcomers, getting attention from brands.
2. Influencer cliques and groups. The nature of influencer marketing is interesting; if you’re associated with an existing influencer, your reputation and authority will grow by proxy. It’s a collective “rising tide” that affects all personal brands revolving around that influential center. Accordingly, we’ll start to see the emergence of more influencer “cliques” or groups of people tightly connected with one another. Based on interactions, we may even be able to chart out these relationships in an interconnected web, with stronger influencers at prominent nodes and weaker influencers surrounding them. It will affect how influencers are seen, and how their followers interact with others.
3. Greater demand for authenticity. The entire field of content marketing evolved from a consumer demand for authenticity. People were tired of seeing traditional advertisements, meant only to sell, and instead gravitated toward authorities who presented them with trustworthy information. Influencers were a part of this wave, but now that they’re being more heavily commissioned to speak on behalf of brands and produce co-branded content, that trust factor could fade. In response, consumers may start demanding more authenticity from the influencers they follow, watching carefully for signs of sincerity and accuracy.
4. Bigger barriers to entry. If you want to become a guest author and flesh out your personal brand, I have some bad news for you; we’ll likely see bigger barriers to entry moving forward. Part of the motivation here is the sheer demand for influencers. Marketers everywhere are flocking to influencer marketing in droves, and accordingly, more individual personal brands are striving to become influencers in their own right. This is leading to a surge in content production and social media activity, which will make competition much fiercer if you want to earn your place as an expert in your field.
5. Transparency and regulatory crackdowns. In April of 2017, the FTC sent out several letters and an official warning for influencers and brands to clearly disclose their relationships. In other words, the government is cracking down on undisclosed partnerships and sponsorship agreements. Increasing concerns about this lack of transparency will likely drive industry leaders to be more public about their relationships and intentions, and hopefully will play a role in keeping consumer trust high.
6. Integrated functionality in platforms. With platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram noticing the importance (and potential) of influencer marketing, we may start to see platform-based innovations that make influencer marketing and outreach more convenient (or more profitable). For example, we may see advanced communication options for popular users, or a path to monetization that includes influencers and social app makers sharing the profits in a given transaction.
7. Qualitative assessment tools. Soon, it won’t be enough to have a large quantity of followers on your account; marketers will also be looking to see how you engage with your followers, and what types of followers you have. We already have a plethora of tools that can help us quantitatively gauge an influencer’s sphere of influence, judging them based on their total reach and posting history. But soon, we may have tools that can give us a detailed breakdown of their followers’ demographics, better understand their engagement rates, and even judge the quality of the relationships they have with their followers.
Will these predictions come to fruition? Or will influencer marketing evolve in a completely different direction? I’ve placed my bets, but there’s no way for any of us to tell for sure. All I can say for certain is that the tropes of influencer marketing we know today aren’t likely to stay the same for much longer. If you want to ramp up your efforts and out-compete your rivals, or if you’re interested in breaking into the field for the first time, you’ll need to be ready to understand and adapt to these changes—no matter how they unfold.
