How Is Influencer Marketing Going To Evolve In 2020?

Influencer marketing is showing no sign of slowing down as we are seeing increased popularity, demand, and brands' allocation of big budgets for influencer marketing. Influencers will definitely continue to help brands connect with their consumers in highly relevant ways.

In 2020 new and exciting things are coming to our feeds as well as new changes in brand strategy.

We are sharing some of the predictions for influencer marketing trends we can expect to see in 2020 to help brands navigate the changes:

1) Instagram Engagement is Declining

Engagement rates on Instagram continue to decline which is especially affecting bigger influencers who have 10k or more followers. One of the reasons for this decline are ads which are driving people away.  Another reason is Instagram’s new algorithm that shows relevant content on the user’s feed. What used to be a chronological feed became a series of posts the algorithm thinks is relevant to the user and that the user would like. It means that organic posts are no longer guaranteed to be seen by people.

2) The Rise Of Nano and Micro Influencers and Lower Relevance Of Celebrities

As engagement of bigger influencers is declining, more and more businesses are seeing the value in partnering with Instagram influencers who have a small, but highly-engaged following. Micro and nano influencers are going to become increasingly important as brands are beginning to understand their power.  They can bring a unique value to a brand as they are able to reach a niche audience, often with clear and specialised interests, who are highly engaged with their content. Besides that, they are cost-effective and have a loyal audience who see them as authentic. It is now more important to be a specialist in some niche rather than being famous or having lots of followers.

3) A merger of Content Creation, Social Media Marketing, and Influencer Marketing

As reach of smaller influencers is not high enough, the focus is now not so much on reach than it is on quality content that brands use in their ads. Influencers play an important role as not only creators of content, but as vehicles for the discovery of content as well. Therefore, content created by influencers is a great way of a constant stream of creatives used for marketing purposes.

Content marketing,  influencer marketing, and social media marketing are now merged together as they are actually all just separate components of a single online marketing process.

4) Increase In Importance Of Influencer Platforms

We will be seeing an increase in the importance of influencer platforms which will become a tool of choice for most brands wanting to run their influencer campaigns in-house.  As micro and nano influencers have less followers, brands need to collaborate with more of them. Therefore fewer brands are deciding to do all of the influencer marketing organically as it is too long-winded and it takes an excessive amount of time. Therefore, the big area of growth is with the influencer platforms which are continually evolving. Brands doing influencer marketing will either outsource their projects entirely or carry out their campaigns in-house, using one or more platforms as tools to simplify the process for them.

5) New Platforms Evolving

As Instagram reach is declining influencers are looking for other platforms where they can produce amazing content and have organic reach. New platforms and Instagram tools flooded the social scene giving influencers more creative sharing power than ever. One of the most popular apps is definitely TikTok, the destination for short-form mobile videos. Brands will be able to multiply their marketing efforts to the same dollars, especially with micro influencers who produce amazing content and have a huge potential to get picked up by TikTok's algorithm and go viral.

6) Increased Regulation

In the early days of influencer marketing there was little regulation. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) therefore made some action and made it very clear that influencers now have to disclose when they have a relationship with a brand. 

This regulation should not be a problem for good influencers as they should already:

• market the products that are a natural reach for their audience
• pitch the products seamlessly, showing how the products make a good fit for the audience

Influencers and brands can take advantage of the new features that Instagram offers, for example, Shopping Posts on Instagram. Creators are able to tag products in their posts which makes it easy for people to shop their favourite styles on spot.