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Influencer marketing is an industry expected to be worth between $5 billion and $10 billion by 2020. Increasing numbers of brands are investing in influencer marketing to increase brand awareness, reach new audiences and improve brand advocacy.

Influencer marketing can be used at any stage of the buyer-funnel. Major influencers (those with a very large reach), can help to boost brand awareness and attract potential customers. Micro influencers (those with smaller but highly engaged communities) are often beneficial when it comes to the consideration and decision stage of the selling cycle. If you are planning your own influencer marketing campaign, it’s important to really consider the campaign’s purpose, so you can ensure you target the right influencers who are going to have sway with your target market.

In 2018, influencer marketing wasn’t without its controversies and influencer fraud was a big topic at last year’s Cannes Lions. Many influencers were proved to have paid to artificially inflate their follower count or have bots post fake comments. Whilst accounts with huge followings on the surface may be of interest to advertisers, fundamentally, if they do not influence your target market they are not worth your time or budget. It is therefore important that, in 2019, we scrutinise the influencers we’re choosing to work with and look beyond vanity metrics such as follower count.

However, despite these incidents, influencer marketing is growing. A recent study shows 65% of brands plan to spend more money on influencer marketing in the coming year and the number of Insta posts tagged with #ad has been consistently increasing each month.

Check out the infographic below, for some of the latest stats around influencer marketing.

Source: Meltwater

Summary of key stats to takeaway for marketers:

• 65% of brands plan to increase spending on influencer marketing
• The main reasons named for investing in influencer marketing are to increase brand awareness, reach new audiences and improve brand advocacy
• In 2017, the number of #ad posts grew in volume each month
• #ad was used 1.5 million times on Instagram last year
• Influencer marketing grew by 198% in 2017
• The KPIs being used most frequently to measure influencer marketing are reach & views (96% using this to measure themselves) followed by engagement (80%) and traffic generated (44%)

This year influencer marketing is likely to continue growing. We also expect there to be more regulation and scrutiny around influencers, as well as a greater emphasis on accurately measuring the impact of your influencer strategy.

ADPR won a highly coveted Gold CIPR PRide Award in the Consumer Relations category for our work with influencers on behalf of global outdoor apparel brand, Helly Hansen.  If you’d like to discuss the use of influencers in your marketing activities, drop Sophie an email on sophie@adpr.co.uk

For more on influencers and digital communications, see our lifestyle tips ADPR’s guide to maximising your lifestyle brand’s PR campaign

Social media is one of the most impactful and cost-effective ways to tell the world how brilliant your company is, but do you know how to cut through the noise? Now is the time to save yourself precious time and energy by signing up to our Social Media Engagement Success service. We’ll do the hard work of managing your channels leaving you free to sit back and reap the rewards.