Influencer Marketing facts

Termed as the fastest growing form of marketing, influencer marketing has made its mark not only on social media, but in mainstream marketing.

Therefore, we have decided to bring some attention to some influencer marketing facts to help you better understand this billion dollar industry.

We start off with a simple introduction of influencer marketing. It is the use of influencers to market a brand/product on social media. Influencers here refer to social media users who have the ability to shape the perception and influence the decisions of their followers in the online sphere.

7 facts about influencer marketing

Influencer marketing fact #1: 70% of Teens Trust Influencers More than Traditional Celebrities

 

Trust forms the foundation in a typical consumer purchase journey. Consumers are more likely to purchase from a brand that is perceived as reliable and trustworthy. However, it is not easy for brands to build that level of trust with their direct consumers.

Therefore, influencer marketing is necessary as influencers bridge the gap between brands and the general public. With influencer marketing, influencers are associated with your brand. This results in followers trusting the brand influencers work with.

Besides, an added benefit of influencer marketing would be the reduction of resources wasted when brands promote themselves. Instead of spending large sums of money on advertisements, brands have the option of using influencers to represent themselves to form connections with the general public.

Influencer marketing fact #2: 86% of Women Use Social Media for Purchasing Advice

With the increase in social media usage, users are finding new uses for this platform. While you might have started out with the intention of using social media to connect with your friends, you might now find yourself using surfing Instagram to find the latest eats in town.

This statistic further reinforces the point. Therefore, brands who have women as their target group should establish some form of social media presence.

While setting up a social media account for your brand could help, starting an account from scratch often takes too much time. Therefore, your brand can adopt influencer marketing for various purposes.

Influencer marketing allows you to tap into the existing connections of influencers, giving you immediate access to a large group of consumers.

The use of an influencer as an intermediary between brands and female target audiences has been proven to be effective. This is supported by statistics that state that half of women made purchases due to influencer posts.

Influencer marketing fact #3: 49% of Consumers Depend on Influencer Recommendations

Influencer marketing is not only relevant for women and teens. This is because it relies on ‘word of mouth’ marketing, a type of marketing that applies for most demographic groups.

It is often accurate to assume that one is more likely to trust information coming from people they know, be it their friends or family. Using the same logic, followers are more likely to trust the words of an influencer they have followed for a long time, as compared to an advertisement made by the brand itself. Hence, this accounts for the trend where we rely on influencers for recommendations.

Besides, statistics also show that 40% had purchased something after seeing it on Twitter, YouTube or Instagram. This proves the point that consumers deem influencer recommendations as convincing and trustworthy.

Influencer marketing fact #4: Instagram Generates Engagement

While other social media platforms are great for influencer marketing, Instagram stands out as one of the best platforms for engagement. Engagement usually refers to the number of likes, comments and share a post gets on social media. Brands measure the amount of interest in a post with engagement rates. This is because these actions all require social media users to actively engage with a post.

Instagram is one of the best platforms when it comes to influencer marketing. In fact, Rhythmone’s influencer marketing benchmark report puts Instagram on the top in terms of engagement rates. The report shows a 3.21% engagement rate for Instagram as compared to 1.5% compared to other social media platforms.

Influencer marketing fact #5:  6 in 10 Teens Follow Advice From Influencers Over Celebrities

While celebrities are a good option to reach a large number of people, influencers seem to be more relied on when it comes to advice.

This could be due to the existing relationships between influencers and their online followers.

A Think with Google study has shown that influencers gain 3 times as many views, twice as many actions and 12 times as many comments compared to videos from traditional celebrities.

Influencer marketing fact #6: Influencer Marketing Campaigns Earn $6.50 for Every Dollar Spent

The impacts of influencer marketing can be both long and short term in nature. While the long term impacts like branding, brand awareness and building of relationships with consumers are hard to be measured in monetary aspects, studies have shown that the ROI of influencer marketing is more than proportional to its investments.

According to a Tomson study, businesses earn $6.50 for each dollar spent on influencers with the top 13% earning $20 or even more. This amount goes to further prove the effectiveness of influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing fact #7: 57% of Fashion and Beauty Companies Engage in Influencer Marketing

Anyone with a social media account would have most probably seen influencers who have tagged a brand in their OOTD pictures, or did an unboxing of a new beauty product.

The fashion and beauty industry has a prominent stake in influencer marketing. This is because the saturation of brands in such industries has made it challenging for brands to differentiate themselves from big names like H&M and Zara.

Therefore, influencer marketing provides an opportunity for fashion and beauty brands to establish themselves among their target audiences.

This explains why 57% of companies now use influencers as part of their marketing mix.

Conclusion

Despite being a relatively new industry, influencer marketing has been quickly adopted into the operations of brands.

We hope these facts can clear up some confusion in relation to influencer marketing.

We look forward to what influencer marketing brings us in the future!

Sources

Izea.com, influencer-marketing-facts/
Rhythmone, 2015-influencer-benchmarks-report
Digitalmarketinginstitute, 20-influencer-marketing-statistics-that-will-surprise-you
Hello.fashionmonitor.com, rise-of-influencers
Thinkwithgoogle.com, consumer-insights/youtube-stars-influence