2020’s Top Five Trends in Influencer Marketing.

With studies confirming that aggressive traditional marketing tactics and celebrity endorsements are waning amongst a more informed Internet-fluent culture, influencer marketing has become a vital tool in reaching the modern consumer. In the year 2020 influencer marketing is en route to becoming an $8 billion industry, with giant global corporations like Estee Lauder confirming that they will be allocating a staggering 75% of their marketing budget to influencer marketing. There has never been a more crucial time to gain an understanding of how influencer marketing can best serve your marketing needs.

In the past few years, influencer marketing has graduated from being a niche tactic to a core practice within most consumer goods companies.

2020 At A Glance.

As we develop a better understanding of how to market with the help of influencers, certain trends arise within the field. Thus it becomes important for us to understand these trends and how to best utilize them in a successful influencer marketing campaign. Looking at the year ahead, we can safely predict that these are the trends that you will need to be aware of in order to ride the wave that is seeing companies achieve excellent ROI.

1 - Companies Will Increase Influencer Marketing Budgets.

It is only fitting that the biggest trend in influencer marketing is a direct result of its effectiveness and profitability. Encouraged by the immensely positive ROI that influencer marketing generates, companies are more confident than ever to dedicate significant portions of their marketing budget to influencer marketing strategies.

Spending on influencer marketing will grow at an exponential rate (projected at almost 40% annual growth for the next five years, according to a Business Insider Intelligence report.

In MediaKix’s 2019 annual marketers’ survey, 89% of marketers confirmed that the ROI of influencer strategies was greater than that of any other channel of online marketing, 65% of marketers confirmed that they will significantly increase their budget for influencer marketing strategies and 17% say that they will dedicate more than half their marketing budget to influencer strategies. A recent Altimeter Industry Report recommends that brands dedicate at least 25% of their digital budgets to influencer marketing. We expect even more growth from these figures as we head into 2020, as larger budgets and a greater dedication to influencer marketing strategies will drive other companies to follow suit.

2 - Video Content Will Dominate.

As Internet speed and bandwidth are constantly seeing dramatic improvement, influencers and marketers can more easily create and share video content. In early 2020, a survey conducted by Bitable revealed that 60% of participants would rather watch online videos than television and that mobile video consumption has risen by 100% each year since 2017.

It is estimated that people will spend more time watching online video content over the next few years than ever before, resulting in more marketers investing in online video content in order to drive engagement.

Social media platforms for video-only content, like Tik Tok and Twitch have emerged as major contenders for the top platform used by influencers. Tik Tok, a short-form video sharing network has become a global sensation in the past two years. The platform is especially useful in targeting a younger market, as 66% of its users are under the age of 30.

3 - Long-Term Brand and Influencer Relationships.

A big trend in influencer marketing is that brands and influencers are looking at partnerships more than once-off campaigns. Brands and firms are starting to recognize the benefits of nurturing long-term relationships with influencers, citing several benefits as the incentive for forging an ongoing relationship.

Investing in and building a relationship with not just your influencers, but the vendors you use to find them is a key marker of success.

One such benefit is that in a brand and influencer partnership, companies better define expectations over a period of time; gain a deeper understanding of which campaign strategies are most effective; and have a stable, on-going endorsement for the future.

Another benefit is derived from the nature of how audiences interact with influencers. Since a once-off endorsement can easily come across as just a shameless sponsored plug, an ongoing slew of gradual and seemingly organic influencer-based sponsorships doesn’t compromise the trust the influencer has built with their audience.

V5 Digital - one of the leading digital marketing agencies in Windhoek, Namibia - recently established a brand and influencer partnership between the Emoneko Group and Dillish Mathews. The initial stages of the partnership include a three-month content plan that aims to not only drive awareness of the Emoneko brand and its products and services but also demonstrate the positive impact of a longer-term brand and influencer relationship.

4 - Nano-Influencers are on The Rise.

In the influencer world, the largest follower counts don’t always translate into the best engagement. This goes against the conventional wisdom that the more famous the influencer, the greater the engagement you will get.

As influencer marketing steadily asserts its dominance in the online marketing domain, it becomes critical for companies and strategists to understand how influencers are categorised, and how each category functions:

Macro-Influencers

These top-tier influencers have a massive online presence, with 100k-1 million followers. A macro influencer’s reach usually spans a broad audience and can be used in fewer niche campaigns. These influencers should be reserved for high-budget campaigns akin to the celebrity endorsements of yesteryear.

Micro-Influencers

With a smaller following of anything between 20k-100k followers, these influencers have a smaller reach, but should not be underestimated as their audiences are usually dedicated. These influencers tend to provide substantial engagement rates and are far less expensive to employ.

Nano-Influencers

Although nano-influencers are the smallest when it comes to their following, with anything between 1k-10k, recent studies have shown that these influencers boast the largest percentage of engagement across all brands and platforms. In 2020 we can expect smaller influencer tiers to become increasingly useful and cost-effective as influencer marketing strategies grow more sophisticated and diverse.

5 - A Union Between Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing and Influencer Marketing.

Until recently, most companies have treated social media marketing, content marketing and influencer marketing as separate areas of online marketing. Recently, however, companies are starting to treat these components as cogs of the same marketing machine, with campaigns seeking innovative ways to streamline them into one cost-and-time effective strategy. In unifying these online marketing modes it is still best to familiarise yourself with their individual roles in order to best design a strategy that will cherry-pick the most relevant aspects of each.

Ready to start your journey to success with influencers? Don’t hesitate to contact V5 Digital for a free assessment or to help you decide whether investing in influencers is the right next step.

The importance of influencers & how to use them.

In the year 2020, the concept of influencers is definitely not a new one. As social media has evolved from a neat distraction to an integral feature of our daily lives, we have systematically built up the credibility of a select group of individuals we consult before purchasing a product or service. These individuals range from bloggers, consultants, industry analysts and experts, but more often than not, people who have the same needs as you and I.

Influencers come in different guises. From amateur models, to video content creators, to bloggers and even ordinary people who have amassed a following.

Marketing in 2020

Recent studies have shown that more traditional digital marketing strategies have lost their potency as as consumers have grown warier of how they are targeted. Ad-blocking software has grown immensely in popularity, with studies showing that 41% of Millennials use Ad Blockers, while 80% of users polled by Adobe said they would even pay a small fee to remove ads from their online experience. The mega buying force that is the teenage market has also become less susceptible to conventional marketing strategies, as statistics from PageFair show that 69% of Generation Z will always skip ad content on YouTube when given the option.

Even the age-old tradition of celebrity endorsement no longer commands the attention of the modern consumer, as a 2016 report indicated that only 3% of consumers would consider purchasing a product or service after seeing a celebrity endorse it. However, the same report showed that consumers were 30% more likely to consider the purchase of a product recommended by a non-celebrity influencer.

Why use influencers?

Since most influencers are self-made and self-produced they can create content at an affordable rate.

With the past four years showing a decline in the success of conventional marketing, influencer marketing has shown an astonishing growth of 1500%. This can largely be attributed to the impressive returns companies are seeing from influencer marketing. In a recent study by influencer marketplace, Tomoson, companies have shown to generate a 6.5 to 1 return on investment when spending money on influencer marketing. The same poll also concluded that influencer marketing is the fastest growing online marketing channel, considerably outpacing other digital strategies like display ads, paid search and affiliate marketing.

When marketers were asked to rate the quality of customers attracted through various channels of marketing, the majority ranked influencer marketing as attracting higher-level consumers, i.e. consumers more likely to make future purchases or continue to make use of services provided. This is most likely due to frequent social media users being more likely to recommend services and products to friends and family.

The sheer volume of companies that incorporate influencer marketing into their online strategies has also seen tremendous growth in the last few years. In a poll by Retail TouchPoints, 31% of participating companies said they worked with brand advocates to become influencers, 30% said that they have made use of non-celebrity influencers, and 28% said they have made use of celebrity influencers. Only 33% of marketers cited that they have not employed influencer marketing as a strategy.

More impressive than the number of marketers using influencer strategies is the number of people that purchase products and services as a result of influencer strategies. According to a study by CivicScience, 33% of daily US Instagram users said that they had based their purchase of a product or service on the recommendation of an influencer. In the same study, it is evident that similar purchasing habits are seen on YouTube and Twitter users.

Influencer marketing has also shown to be one of the most effective marketing strategies when targeting Generation Z consumers. In a study by Google, 70% of Generation Z YouTube users said they relate more to YouTube influencers than traditional celebrities. Furthermore, 44% of these users said that they have purchased products endorsed by influencers. These statistics become vital when analysing revenue potential when targeting modern teenagers. Despite Generation Z only accounting for 25.9% of the US population, their buying power is immense, with studies showing that in 2020 they will account for nearly 40% of all consumer markets, with similar findings appearing in most Western countries.

Using influencers

The way in which influencers produce content creates the illusion that they are unmanufactured and unbiased.

When it comes to incorporating influencer strategies in your marketing plan, a host of factors should be taken into account. It is more than a case of finding a popular online presence to plug your product. The success of influencers relies largely on their credibility, relatability and their connection with their following. Unlike traditional celebrities who commodify their talent, influencers rely on their personalities, tastes and affiliations alone to drive their brand. It is therefore crucial that when pairing with an influencer your product and the identity of the influencer convey an organic match. Once a pairing seems contrived or “obviously sponsored”, it diminishes the impact of the nuanced and authentic way in which influencers sell products.

Furthermore, pairing with an influencer can be squandered when a proper strategy isn’t employed to drive your campaign. Working with a marketing strategist when employing influencer strategies can ensure that a relationship with an influencer results in fruitful growth for both the brand and the influencer.

Ready to harness the power of influencers?

Dillish Mathews uses her influence in partnership with the Emoneko Group to create content that drives sales

V5 Digital - one of the leading digital marketing agencies in Windhoek, Namibia - recently set in motion an influencer marketing campaign for the Emoneko Group featuring influencer Dillish Mathews. A thorough brand analysis was conducted by V5 Digital to ensure the pairing of brand and influencer would be an ideal match.

By analysing Emoneko’s target audience, as well Dillish’s army of social followers, V5 Digital was able to construct a content strategy to guide Dillish’s interactions across various social media platforms. The campaign has been a success in terms of driving awareness of the Emoneko brand and its products and services, growing their social following, and ultimately footfall and sales in store.

Ready to start your journey to success with influencers? Don’t hesitate to contact V5 Digital for a free assessment or to help you decide whether investing in influencers is the right next step.

The 2019 State of Digital Marketing

CONTEMPORARY DIGITAL MARKETING: A SNAPSHOT

A recent study conducted for Altimeter by leading analyst Omar Akhtar examines the key practices (strategies, channels & practices) being used to achieve digital marketing excellence. Altimeter is a research and consulting firm who published the report with the intention of helping the industry make progress, guided by the principle of Open Research.

The V5 Digital team is constantly on the lookout for ways to leverage disruptive technologies. It’s this desire to consistently make strides forward which aligns the Windhoek-based Digital Thought Leaders with San Francisco’s Altimeter Group. Now in its fifth year, Altimeter’s “The State of Digital Marketing” is a highly regarded paper, based on a survey of over 500 senior digital marketers in North America, Europe and China.

The most valued indicator of the success of digital marketing efforts is customer loyalty or customer lifetime value (CLV), followed by direct revenue. This suggests that one of the primary ways digital marketers can move beyond brand awareness is by understanding how to use technologies and practices – like e-commerce - that have a more palpable impact on the bottom line.

Despite it’s geographic focus, the paper holds many insights that are applicable to marketers in Africa. It is these key insights that will be pulled out for the purpose of this article.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

While many companies can transform digitally in some way – typically shifting certain functions or channels to digital - most battle with achieving transformation throughout the rest of the organisation. The underlying reasons for this are the challenges around finding talent with the necessary digital skills and being able to successfully scale innovation across all aspects of the business.

The biggest gaps in talent appear to be in data analysis and tech expertise – especially around marketing automation software expertise. These areas are desirable and valuable because they allow for more data-driven targeting and personalisation, customer segmentation and analysis, campaign performance tracking, and they drive the testing and learning processes. User Experience (UX) design and coding are also near the top of the list.

However, the study showed that traditional marketing skills such as video editing and content writing and editing, are still in healthy demand. SEO and paid media expertise have moved to the bottom of the list, probably because in the markets where this study was conducted many of the tasks related to those processes have been automated.

MEASURING DIGITAL MARKETING SUCCESS

The most valued indicator of the success of digital marketing efforts is customer loyalty or customer lifetime value (CLV), followed by direct revenue. This suggests that one of the primary ways digital marketers can move beyond brand awareness is by understanding how to use technologies and practices – like ecommerce - that have a more palpable impact on the bottom line.

SEGMENTATION

Traditional marketing segments customer groups predominantly by demographics and psychographics, whereas digital marketers focus more on behavioural segmentation. This allows digital marketers to focus on personalising content for different audiences.

The study found that marketers who emphasise traditional goals like brand awareness are also more likely to focus on traditional data (demographic), which may inhibit them from tackling other vital success metrics, like customer loyalty.

DIGITAL CUSTOMER JOURNEYS

A whopping 90% of respondents said they have or were busy implementing customer journey mapping. Sophisticated digital marketers increasingly map multi-channel digital customer journeys. Due to the variety of consumers marketing typically needs to address, we have seen the rise of content customisation frameworks that indicate what content will be delivered at different touchpoints to each different audience segment.

TESTING

Testing is a major indication of the sophistication of one’s digital marketing efforts. The majority of participants in the Altimeter survey stated that they conduct three to five tests a month, while the next largest group expressed that they do multivariate testing more than ten times a month.

Testing leads to learning, which is then used to optimise content or experiences at different points of the customer journey so that marketers can optimise formats, offers and messaging. This has become a key function of the strategic planning required of digital marketers.

TOP PERFORMING CHANNELS

It’s no surprise that respondents expressed that websites are close to being their top performing channel, since consumers who visits websites already have high intent by the time they click through to a website. What is surprising is that social media beats websites. On the other end of the spectrum, email marketing is bottom of the list, probably because the influx of emails the average person receives dilutes their impact.

Interestingly, where companies expressed that Customer Lifetime Value was their primary concern, email featured far more highly. This suggests that email should be used for post-purchase communications, rather than brand awareness.

PERSONALISATION

80% of respondents said their company engages in real-time personalisation on their digital channels. This means that if you book a skiing holiday, for instance, a travel company might change the background on their website to images of skiing while you browse. Much more widespread is the use of web and social analytics platforms to deliver personalised content and experiences. However, the shift toward personalisation is evident in the fact that marketers specified that it is their top priority for future initiatives.

DIGITAL MARKETING PLATFORM VENDORS

The four major enterprise marketing platforms are Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle and IBM, which together hold 86% market share. Salesforce beats out the competition as the preferred solution. This is likely because Salesforce scores highly across the board, for achieving brand awareness, CLV and customer experience.

The biggest challenge facing digital marketers when it comes to using marketing platforms is pulling data from across the varied systems they use to facilitate consistent, pertinent customer experiences.

THE NEXT BIG THING

What’s the next big thing in digital marketing? The Altimeter study shows that the most-used tech innovations are:

1. Blended digital and physical experiences that enable and personalise in-store experiences and data capture

2. Voice or smart assistant technologies

3. Machine learning

The study also reveals the next next big thing, since participants divulged which new technologies they are planning to use in the next eighteen months. Topping that list is augmented and virtual reality, followed by the Internet of Things.

THE STATE OF YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING

If you’re a digital marketer or you have a company that is looking to up its digital game, hopefully you have found inspiration in this snapshot of the global landscape. In particular, understanding the multiple business goals that digital marketers can work toward – beyond brand awareness – means that attention can shift toward investing in practices and technologies that further those goals, such as e-commerce and CLV.

V5 digital, one of the leading digital marketing agencies in Windhoek, Namibia, can assist you on your digital journey by understanding your unique digital business needs. Whether that involves helping you to use digital to sell your products or services online, or connecting with your customers on social media, V5 Digital specialises in crafting fine-tuned, clear, agile digital strategies to help your business succeed.

Don’t hesitate to contact V5 Digital for a free assessment or to help you decide whether investing in a digital is the right next step.