Influencer marketing is now an established form of marketing. It is popular among small busi-nesses and major corporations alike as a tool for promoting and increasing awareness of their own products and services. Especially among young target groups, influencers leverage credi-bility and promote more visibility and influence than other traditional campaigns. Influencer marketing is constantly evolving, and there is set to be a lot of movement in the sector in 2023, too. Reachbird has obtained the views of important experts in order to give companies an overview.
These are the influencer marketing trends that will shape 2023:
- Diversity matters. Diversity, tolerance and openness to different ways of life have long been values that companies have had to embrace to attract younger target groups in particular. 2023 will see the end of the era of identikit influencers. Instead, the focus will shift to collaborations with creators who match the company’s own brand and corporate values. However, it is not enough to simply fly a flag for Diversity Day or take a stand on the latest social issues. That type of simple marketing move will cause followers to look elsewhere.
- Influencers are change makers. Climate change, the coronavirus pandemic, the war in Ukraine, inflation – it’s just one crisis after another at the moment. The social climate inevitably affects influencer marketing. Due to a frequent lack of trust in most forms of communications these days, marketing managers will need to learn how to work pro-ductively with transformative influencing in 2023. As icons of the social media era, in-fluencers are important messengers for their followers and are therefore change mak-ers.
- Recycle content. In social media, organic reach has been on the decline for quite some time now. As a result, influencers with high numbers of followers no longer auto-matically guarantee the success of a campaign. Companies should therefore concen-trate more on influencers who impress their followers with creativity, and should provide support through paid media or collaborate with influencers to create a product together. A relatively easy way of increasing visibility on social media is through cross-media campaigns that reuse content. TikTok videos are often also successful as Instagram reels, for example. And Instagram content can in turn be posted on Pinterest.
- Long-term loyalty. It will become more important for companies to maintain relationships in 2023. As such, it is not conducive to work indiscriminately with a wide range of influ-encers just because the number of collaboration requests is rising. Instead, marketers should say goodbye to isolated campaigns showing just highlights and opt for long-term collaborations that are embedded in the influencer’s own storyline.
- Focus on credibility. Authenticity and personality are buzzwords that are almost over-used in influencer marketing – but with good reason. Influencers who offer their com-munities a steady form of added value by being more approachable and authentic are rewarded by follower loyalty. This is also reflected in the success of campaigns. How-ever, companies also need to make sure that they too are authentic and transparent, and clearly define the target groups they are aiming to reach. Suitable influencers should therefore be selected based on personality and individuality and not just on mere numbers.
- Generation Z and communities. The development of a successful community strategy will become perhaps the most crucial marketing task over the coming years. Communi-ties play an extremely important role for Generation Z in particular – they are the num-ber one place where they search for like-minded people. A large number of communi-ties feature well-connected creators who are creative and offer a far-ranging reach. Sometimes it is the creators themselves who are the common interest, such as on Twitch. When it comes to communities, partnerships open up many doors for compa-nies.
- Cross-promotion on Pinterest. Inspiring marketing will become more important than ever in 2023. Content that promotes emotional wellbeing will also grow in importance. A great platform for this is Pinterest. It sets itself up as a tool for visual voyages of dis-covery. Over 300 million users a month use it to save or share “pins”. There is an inte-grated shopping function that allows users to create wishlists or make purchases direct-ly. Most of the content is embedded with a link to the original site and can therefore generate actual traffic.
- Blockchain is triumphant. New technologies even extend to social media, with blockchain technology being one such example. Content is uploaded as files and also written into a blockchain as what are known as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. Major players plan to introduce this innovation next year. Due to the strong bond fans have with their influ-encers, this opportunity will most likely be met with high demand and thereby automati-cally boost the market for influencer marketing at the same time.
- LinkedIn for new target groups. LinkedIn is not usually thought of as a social media site for influencer marketing. But LinkedIn offers companies an exciting platform for col-laborations with influencers because it attracts visits from people who do not use any other social media sites. Given the fact that many LinkedIn users make business deci-sions, LinkedIn offers attractive opportunities for B2B marketing in particular. Influencer marketing can also boost a company’s own recruitment campaigns.
- CRM meets IRM. It does not make sense to plan and organise influencer management separately from customer relationship management. CRM and influencer relationship management (IRM) must be linked in order to see what sales a campaign generates and which customers have been reached with it. This provides a data-driven basis for decisions to enable the end-to-end management of all aspects, from the search for the right influencer to campaign management and analysis.
“For this year’s trend report, we have once again collated a wide range of feedback from various experts in the influencer marketing scene. These insights can give all those involved new, practi-cal inspiration for future developments within this thriving sector and for their own strategy,” says Philipp Martin, CEO at Reachbird. “All companies will have to get on board with influencer mar-keting in the future. The targeted use of influencers, opinion leaders and multipliers is perfect for quickly gaining in popularity among the relevant target groups. The high level of credibility that good influencers enjoy among their followers is an invaluable asset that companies must utilise to reach the desired target group with their own brands and services.”
The influencer marketing trend report 2023 can be downloaded at https://bit.ly/Reachbird_Trendreport_2023 zum Download bereit.
