Measurement and Transparency Take Center Stage as Influencer Marketing Grows, According to Linqia Study
57 Percent of Marketers Plan to Increase Their Influencer Budgets in 2020, Focusing on Campaign Measurement Accuracy
Linqia, the leading influencer marketing company, released its fourth annual report, “The State of Influencer Marketing 2020: Influencer Marketing Grows Up.” The study surveyed marketers on how brands and agencies are using influencer marketing and how they plan to leverage the channel in 2020. The study found influencer marketing to continue its quick growth with 40 percent of marketers running more than six influencer marketing campaigns, and 20 percent of these marketers plan to allocate a quarter to half of their budgets toward influencer campaigns.
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Influencer marketing offers brands a unique and meaningful way to connect with 21st-century customers — reaching any demographic they want. In the study, one finding stood out above all others — 98 percent of marketers identified transparency as an important element of influencer marketing. Influencer audience accuracy was the top transparency concern, with marketers wanting to ensure the influencers they work with have real followers.
“As brands increase their influencer marketing budgets, it’s clear that the industry is advancing into its growth and optimization phase. Marketers are moving away from celebrity influencers and toward authentic micro-and macro-influencers to create quality content on proven channels like Instagram, while also experimenting on newer platforms, like TikTok,” said Nader Alizadeh, CEO and co-founder of Linqia. “Quality of the content is now so important, marketers rank it above product sales as a measure of success.”
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Additional findings from the survey include:
- Micro-influencers (5-100k followers) continue to grow in popularity with 78% of marketers saying they want to work with micro-influencers in 2020, the most selected influencer type
- Marketers prefer nano-influencers (less than 5k followers) over celebrity influencers — with 26% of marketers interested in working with nano-influencers compared to a 22% interest in celebrity
- Instagram continues to be the premier platform for influencer marketing with 97% of respondents planning to use it
- Marketers have high hopes for tall screens, as almost 60% believe vertical video will be important to very important for them in 2020 and 83% of marketers ranked Instagram Stories as the second most important social network platform, ahead of Facebook and YouTube
- While TikTok continues to generate buzz, only 16% of marketers plan to use the platform in 2020
- 88% of marketers plan to re-use influencer content across social, website, email and display channels
- Nearly half of marketers, 49%, were unaware of new guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) about sponsorship disclosure rules
- Engagement is the most important key performance indicator for marketers, as 71% measure the success of a campaign on this metric. Brand awareness and impressions came in second and third at 62% and 60% respectively of how marketers measure influencer success
- Determining the ROI of marketing efforts still ranks as the number one concern for marketers with 46% selecting it as the main concern in 2020
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