Influencer marketing has become an essential piece of the modern brand’s marketing. The creator economy has grown so fast, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released guidelines to govern influencer partnerships and keep influencers transparent about their deals.
In 2022, the influencer marketing industry grew to an estimated market size of $16.4 billion and is expected to reach an estimated $24 billion by the end of 2024.
In many ways, influencer marketing has become the standard for brands across categories, from beauty to gaming hardware to food and beverage brands.
This guide to influencer marketing trends will dig into the up-to-date numbers, explain what they mean, and even share some expert insight into the future of influencer marketing.
12 top influencer marketing trends to shape 2024
1. Brands will show micro-influencers all the love
Micro influencers are accounts with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers, while nano-influencers have less than 10,000 followers. And according to Aspire’s 2023 survey, both types consistently achieve the highest engagement on all social platforms.
Serg Aspidoff, founder and CEO of Shoutcart, a self-serve influencer marketplace that reaches over 150,000 influencers, is also seeing brands have success with smaller influencer accounts.
“These are influencers with smaller followings, but they have highly engaged audiences and often specialize in a specific niche market. Several factors play into their success, including authenticity and a higher likelihood of forming genuine partnerships with brands,” he says.
“These people are often more flexible and open to unique collaborations, leading to more creative campaigns and a higher ROI. Primarily, though, their smaller audiences result in lower costs for brands. This is because micro-influencers typically charge less for partnerships and are more likely to accept products or experiences in exchange for promotion.”
A key part of the company's social media strategy is to use "faceless" micro-influencers who show off eye-catching watches in short bursts. Depending on the influencer's reach, the company pays influencers between $100 and $1,000 per post. Their posts also use a Halo Effect. For every 50 accounts that post, another 50 to hundred will repost it for free, giving the brand more visibility.
2. Repurposing influencer content across social networks
Brands are stretching their influencer marketing dollars by repurposing content across various social media platforms. Dan Cassidy, founder of Brandhopper Digital, a marketing agency and Shopify Partner, says, “Most people think the value of influencer marketing is about getting in front of the influencer’s audience, but the main trend we’re seeing is that it’s all about the content, and less so the audience anymore.”
Dan uses a multichannel strategy to promote influencer content, which “can be amplified across platforms like TikTok and Instagram through paid advertising,” he says.
“Brands who want to be successful at influencer marketing today will focus on content creators who can tell a brand story quickly and visually so that can be repurposed by the brand across organic and paid social, on the ecommerce store, and in marketing communication via email as well."
3. Influencers will control the narrative
Glamorise is a 101-year-old company that closed the sizing gap, offering plus-size bras for women who can't find their size anywhere else. The brand has worked with many influencers over the years and found that giving influencers creative control yields the best campaign results.
“One thing we do with influencers is let them have a large degree of creative control of the content they produce for us, says Maeve Gesuadli, social media coordinators at Glamorise. “We give them generic tips and pointers, but generally, let them create content that they think their audience would like to see and engage with.”
For example, the brand partnered with creator Molly Tranchin (@fashionveggie) to promote a range of brands from its collection in an Instagram Reel.
“All the bras seen in the video are Glamorise's, but she integrated the collaboration seamlessly with the other content she has on her page. This video also performed well on our own Instagram and TikTok pages when we reposted it,” Maeve says.
4. Influencer posts will become more authentic
When choosing influencers to partner with, many brands focus on engagement rate instead of follower count. A Sprout Social 2023 report reveals that the most memorable brands respond to customers and prioritize original content (over trending topics), and engage directly with followers (over publishing tons of content).
This shows customers the brand is genuinely interested in the customer. So when partnering with influencers, the same has to be true. So don’t opt for the influencer with the biggest following. Audience size isn’t the only indication of success. This is why more brands are focusing on sales (18.4%) and engagement (16.4%).
But the product doesn’t always need to be the main focus. For example, Glamorise also partnered with Casey Brown (@streetsbeatsseats) to promote their no-bounce camisole sports bra.
“Our sports bras are all seen in the Reel, but they aren't the main focus/message of the video,” says Maeve. “These kinds of influencer collaborations stay true to the feel of the influencer's page and keep the audience engaged because it's what they're used to seeing from them, instead of it being a blatant ad.”
5. Investments in ongoing brand partnerships
Ongoing partnerships, rather than one-time deals, are becoming increasingly popular in influencer marketing. Melanie Edwards, senior ecommerce and digital product manager at Olipop, explains, “It takes time to acquire new customers. A month-long campaign can be beneficial, but it won’t produce as dramatic results as a year-long (or longer) campaign will.”
“Make sure you partner with someone who has staying power. You want your influencer relationship to go the distance,” she adds. Look for an influencer with an engaged audience that is excited to see new content from them.
Stur, a hydration brand known for their sugar-free water mix flavors, has begun embracing TikTok Shop as a significant growth channel after years of selling on Amazon. Capitalizing on their popularity within the TikTok community, particularly under the #WaterTok hashtag, Stur has been launching new flavors in collaboration with prominent TikTok creators and licensing partnerships.
Stur's engagement on TikTok has already led to a notable increase in sales, contributing to over $100 million in annual revenue, a 40% increase from the previous year, as reported by Modern Retail.
6. The rise of creator marketplaces to find influencers
As advertising costs and inflation soar, many brand owners are searching for alternative ways to acquire users. A new tool called Shopify Collabs allows approved creators to earn revenue by partnering with Shopify merchants. Following Shopify's April 2022 acquisition of influencer marketing company Dovetale, the platform launch is the latest step in fueling merchant growth.
Using Collabs, sellers and influencers can connect, collaborate, and sell products in front of new audiences across social platforms. Businesses can set their own terms for paying for content and negotiate rates with creators. You can add the Shopify Collabs app to your store today.
7. More influencers will create their own brands
The trend of influencers turning into founders highlights a shift in DTC brand strategy. It shows the growing importance of personal branding and organic social media growth to bypass high customer acquisition costs.
Monica Grohne, the founder of Marea Wellness, gained a massive Instagram following for her 30-day video series on making meals with at least 30 grams of protein, taking her follower count from 3,000 to over 150,000. Her success came from developing a personal connection with her audience through personal and inviting videos.
Using her social media prominence, she began aligning her content more with Marea Wellness’s mission, which supports hormone health. As you can see in the video that follows, she discusses her experience with depression and how she overcame it with nutritional supplements.
Her ecommerce brand is now an extension of her creator brand, the two have become one, and it's a smart move to attract customers more effectively than traditional brand marketing could.
8. Influencers and brands are teaming up to create Shorts
Short-form videos have become a mainstay for creators, and the people are loving it. According to Statista, YouTube Shorts had reached over 2 billion monthly logged-in viewers as of July 2023. For brands, HubSpot found that 90% of marketers actively using short-form video in 2023 planned to increase or maintain their investment in 2024.
Modern Retail+ Research confirms this. A 2023 study found that, on average, influencers who posted YouTube Shorts content received over 128,000 viewers per Short posted. Short-form tutorials and routine videos received the most attention, garnering an average of 400,000 views. As shoppable and sponsored content continues to grow on the Shorts platform, influencers will create more original content just for Shorts in the coming year.
9. Fashion and beauty brands could benefit from generative AI
In 2024, we expect to see more ecommerce brands experimenting with AI capabilities. For instance, in the beauty realm, AI can act as a personal dermatologist, offering customized skincare advice through self-diagnostics and chatbots. It's also the stylist behind the screen, using generative AI to try on and recreate celebrity makeup looks virtually before you buy.
Ecommerce is getting a makeover with AI, too. It's the savvy personal shopper predicting your next must-have item and managing inventory in real time. Visual search lets shoppers find products with just a photo, and virtual try-ons ensure that what you see is what you get, reducing the guesswork in online shopping.
Fashion is also using AI to personalize styling—Stitch Fix, for example, uses algorithms to curate fashion picks just for you. They customize fashion profiles by collecting 90 unique details through an in-depth questionnaire. This covers everything from style tastes and clothing sizes to height and geographical location, allowing its algorithms to prioritize and suggest fashion pieces that match each person's unique preferences.
China's taking it further with AI-generated avatars, which are quite popular. These digital influencers work around the clock, offering a cost-effective solution for brands. For as little as $1,000, brands can create a digital influencer, which benefits smaller brands that can't afford the high costs of human influencers.
Advanced AI avatars can interact with live comments, enhancing the illusion of genuine human communication. Large language models assist in crafting these scripts, ensuring the content remains engaging and on-topic.
Whether you’re for or against generative AI avatars, there’s no ignoring that it could add $275 billion to the apparel, fashion, and luxury industry over the next few years.
10. Influencer marketing will continue to grow
The influencer marketing size is expected to reach over $174 billion by 2031—a 33% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Danny Desatnik, the head of partnerships at Creator Camp, also believes that influencer marketing platforms will continue to flourish, as working with creators becomes an alternate source of valuable content:
"To grow, brands need to continuously reach a larger audience today than they did yesterday. As they grow, so too does the need to relate with more diverse audiences. One way to relate is through content. Specifically, content with diverse subjects and environments. Brands can do exactly this by working with a diverse set of creators to solely produce branded content. Use the content for email, SMS, online, and even out-of-home placements. Think of creators as a hybrid between a production house and a creative agency.”
There are many other reasons why the influencer marketing strategy will continue to gain popularity. Raj Nijjer, CMO at Refersion, believes it will become increasingly necessary with massive changes coming to the realm of data privacy.
"User privacy changes from Apple and Google heightened the need for brands to work with first-party data, and the demise of cookies has caused advertising platforms like Facebook to struggle with accurate attribution. Every marketer should use influencer or affiliate marketing platforms powered by first-party tracking technology that enable accurate attribution.
The right technology partner helps brands report accurate ROI and cultivate a trusting relationship with their influencers with accurate and on-time commission payments.”
11. Regulatory compliance will force more transparency from creators
Earlier in 2023, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) updated their guidelines to enforce more transparency from social media influencers regarding sponsored content. It comes at a time when the industry is booming and more brands are advertising products via influencers across social media.
The FTC’s crackdown issued a warning to influencers and trade associations to clearly disclose their financial incentives. An incident that drove this decision was when two TikTok dietitians, Steph Grasso and Mary Ellen Phipps, were caught not disclosing their relationships with the American Beverage lobby group, which represents brands like Coca Cola and PepsiCo.
The FTC's updated guidelines outline specific requirements for transparent disclosures, reflecting an effort to ensure consumers are not misled by sponsored content. These rules include:
- Comprehensive disclosure of relationships: Influencers must disclose any type of relationship with brands, whether it involves financial compensation, personal connections, gifts, discounts, or other perks.
- Visibility of disclosures in videos: When endorsing products in videos, influencers need to include the disclosure prominently within the video itself, not merely in the video description or caption.
- Detailed instructions for sponsorship disclosure: The guidelines offer explicit instructions on how influencers should disclose their sponsorships, aiming to standardize and clarify the expectations for all parties involved.
- Application to various formats: The rules also address endorsements across different media formats, including Instagram Stories, Snapchat, and livestreams. For instance, influencers must superimpose disclosure over photos in stories or snaps, and repeat disclosures periodically during livestreams.
12. ROI will evolve
Blaire Kang McClure, associate product marketing manager at Impact, predicts that there will soon be a more holistic way to measure tangible ROI from influencer marketing.
"Paying per post has been the predominant mode of compensating influencers, and engagement is still, by far, the most common metric used for measuring influencer marketing success. Now, the pressure is on to connect influencer activities to tangible ROI. But in order to accurately track and measure it, brands need a holistic view of the customer journey, from last click to conversion, and a way to programmatically monitor attribution, revenue, and influencer payout information.”
No one can predict the future with certainty, but these insights should help you start thinking and planning for the future of influencer marketing.
What can brands achieve with influencer marketing
Influencers are essentially internet celebrities who collaborate with brands as an ambassador, helping them achieve a variety of goals. Here are a few ways brands are making the most of influencers’ audiences and achieving impressive results.
1. Increase in sales
Influencers have remarkable sway with their audiences. One survey found that 21% of shoppers between 18 and 54 made purchases based on recommendations from influencers. We see this happening more with Gen Z (32%).
Learn more: Social Commerce Is Here and It’s Reshaping How We Buy
As such, influencers can inspire their followers to take actions like visiting an online store, browsing or following a brand’s social media accounts, and even buying their products.
And it’s profitable. Brands that use influencers can see an ROI of $5.78 for every dollar spent on these campaigns. HiSmile has eclipsed $130 million in sales thanks to influencer marketing. The oral care brand signed promotional agreements with three landmark influencers: mixed martial arts star Conor McGregor and Jenner sisters Kylie and Kendall.
A wave of customers flooded the HiSmile store when the brand was endorsed by these notable influencers. The Instagram campaign with Conor McGregor alone got a 5x return on ad spend along with a 90% increase in total male customers.
The brand now boasts more than three million social media followers, 5.5 billion social media impressions, and more than 1.5 billion views on its social videos across Instagram and YouTube.
2. Brand awareness and trust
Getting the word out about products or services through influencers also means tapping into the trust they’ve built with their niche audiences. As a result, rather than having to start from scratch, customers attracted via influencers are warm leads who are often ready to buy.
Tammin Sursok, an actor and content creator, posted about her partnership with Lulusimonstudio through a heartfelt story during Mental Health Awareness Week. As a result, her audience learned of the brand, already convinced of its authenticity.
Lending trust is especially important during times of uncertainty, when consumers feel unsure about their economic futures (like during a looming recession). One survey found that 69% of respondents trust influencers, friends, and family members for recommendations vs. a brand.
The reason? An influencer’s approval feels more authentic and relatable compared to a brand’s and serves as a powerful form of external social proof.
3. Increase in earned media value
Earned media value (EMV) is a metric that helps brands understand the ROI of third-party marketing activities like influencer marketing campaigns and provides a dollar amount for the value of impressions an influencer generated. It can be tracked through page views, unique visitors, likes, shares, and comments on social media.
Influencer marketing provides a significant boost to EMV through its broader pool of potential customers. In fact, a luxury furniture brand used a celebrity influencer and 20 macro-influencers for two events, generating:
- 40 million impressions
- 7,000+ organic Instagram followers
- 3,000 engagements
- 350 pieces of content
This strategic approach led to a $30,000 boost in ecommerce sales and $100,000 in earned media value within a single month.
Influencer content is excellent social proof to tie into product pages, too. Not only do they help increase time on site, but they also help drive conversions by providing more visual context that convinces shoppers to buy.
Influencer marketing pitfalls to watch out for
When done right, influencer marketing can be a goldmine of new customers and opportunities. But successful campaigns are just as much about avoiding the pitfalls as they are about taking the right steps.
Here are some pitfalls to watch out for.
1. Not choosing the correct social platform for your audience
Just because a social platform is popular doesn’t mean it’s the right one for your business. The optimal social channel should have the type of influencers you want to work with, as well as the target audience that aligns with your buyer persona.
The social media platform you choose should fit your brand messaging and your product. Getting to know the influencer, their followers, their interests, and even their geographical location is really important when working with influencers. Viewers will notice if your product doesn't match the content they're sharing right away. Brands should always look for creators to work with in their niche.
Here are a few questions to consider when evaluating social channels for influencer marketing:
- Does this platform have the demographic that my brand sells to?
- Are the users using it for shopping and discovering new brands?
- Are my competitors finding success in this space?
You may find that while most of your audience is on one platform, they aren’t active there or aren’t using it to find new brands. Be sure to do your homework.
2. Lack of transparency
The FTC guidelines explain how influencers can properly endorse products online. Aside from following all the legal aspects, it is important to remember that influencer marketing is about authenticity and transparency.
Customers trust influencers and act on their recommendations because of the rapport they’ve built with their followings over time. Your brand should continue to uphold this trust. Staying transparent about sponsored posts and paid collaborations and avoiding false advertising are simple ways to avoid damaging the trust of prospective customers.
3. Measuring only conversions and reach for ROI
Measuring ROI from your influencer marketing efforts is necessary as it helps you make data-informed decisions, helps identify what’s working, and provides insights to help you change what doesn’t resonate with your audience.
But measuring the ROI only through the number of conversions or reach is a common mistake. Sometimes customers need some time before they make a purchase. This doesn’t mean that your campaign has failed. Staying as the top choice in a customer’s mind is still making a buck in the future through influencer marketing.
Reach alone can also be a dangerous metric. While it’s tempting to hire someone with a huge following, it’s important to note the quality of engagement they receive.
Thousands of comments look great, but how many of those are meaningful interactions, and how many are just emojis or one-word compliments? Pay attention to the quality rather than the quantity when vetting influencers.
Follower count and engagement rate don’t always indicate success, so experiment. Find the right creators. Pay the creators to produce and post Instagram stories. Give each creator a unique link to use as a swipe up. Look at each creator’s CTR relative to their engagement rate.
4. Hiring the wrong influencer for your brand
Finding a relevant influencer is crucial. Many brands make the mistake of hiring someone notable and popular just because they can afford to. However, the influencer you choose should ideally be within your niche and have a community that aligns with your target audience.
Once you find the right influencer, Blaire Kang McClure at Impact, suggests you develop a long-term relationship with them rather than a one-time collaboration:
"Long-term partnerships are becoming the preferred form of engagement for brands and influencers as brands trend away from one-and-done sponsor campaigns. By engaging in a more long-term relationship with influencers, brands are able to lock in a consistent flow of content that can be repurposed across distribution channels (i.e., social media, email marketing, out-of-home). Repeating content leads to higher conversion rates and can be a cost-effective way to partner with a small number of on-brand influencers instead of spending significant amounts of marketing budget on a broad group of partners to see what sticks.”
Shama Hyder, CEO and founder of Zen Media agrees. She believes that long-term relationships with influencers will be much more powerful.
“I think we will see brands invest in more long-term relationships with key influencers, rather than more transaction project-based work,” she says. “One-off sponsored posts only go so far, but engaging with an influencer on a regular basis where they truly become a brand ambassador, that’s going to be much more powerful.”
Learn more: Influencer Marketing for Retail: How to Find the Right Ambassador for Your Business
5. Creating repetitive content
A great thing about influencer marketing is that influencers already know what works for their audiences. Even so, brands often make the mistake of having stringent rules around content creation for the influencer. As a result, the message style may or may not be a good fit with the influencer’s community.
Trust that the influencer knows best. Give them the freedom to talk about your product the way they deem appropriate. This doesn’t mean you completely hand over control. Feel free to ask for a round of edits before publishing and offer a wide net of flexibility.
How to get started with influencer marketing
Running an influencer marketing campaign can be overwhelming. There’s a lot to handle, including finding relevant partners, managing different campaigns, monitoring KPIs and progress, strategizing with influencer marketing agencies, and so much more.
But it can also deliver results better than many other marketing channels combined.
Working with a marketing agency or a partner can reduce the time and cost involved (and improve the efficiency of your campaigns). Check out apps like Refersion that specialize in affiliate and influencer marketing. Their expertise and technology can help you find the right creators at reasonable rates and run a successful data-driven campaign.
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