The proliferation of platforms and formats like short-videos have changed the influencer marketing game for marketers, brands and creators. In this fast-evolving space, keep up with the big trends and hot topics that matter in Storyboard18’s Weekly Shorts in collaboration with affable.ai, an end to end AI-powered influencer marketing platform. Track how creators, communities and brands are engaging with users and disrupting marketing to get a sharp and fast insight into the present and future trends.
Influencer marketing works because of ‘Trust’. Word of mouth has been the most prominent form of marketing for decades because people trust others over business entities. Influencers help amplify this word of mouth.
As the fear of recession looms, more budgets will move toward influencer marketing. $16.4B was spent on Influencers in 2022, which is expected to surpass $20B in the next two years. Influencer Marketing isn’t a fad anymore.
As 2022 winds down, now is a great time to think about how you’d want to create an effective influencer marketing strategy for the next year—and equally important, what you should leave behind.
Brands have also been focusing more on diversity and inclusion in their influencer selection. Data helps drive more diversity by reducing human bias. As marketing budgets shrink, every dollar will be carefully spent. We already see early signs of affiliate-like influencer programs where influencers are compensated based on the sales they drive for the brands. It aligns incentives for the brands and influencers. In 2023 and beyond, we will see more and more brands leveraging influencers as affiliates to drive sales for them.
Said that influencers are also looking for monetization opportunities. In the last couple of years, we have already seen mega influencers launching their brands. Through the combined power of platforms like Shopify and Instagram Shopping, more micro-influencers can launch their own brands.
Listed below are our top 10 trends to ace your 2023 influencer marketing goals
1.Shoppable and Interactive Livestreaming
Livestream shopping will continue to be popular in 2023. The shoppable ecommerce space has constantly been evolving since the Covid-19 pandemic with the growing consumer demand for an improved shopping experience.
2. Short-form “How To” Videos to Grow Stronger
Short videos will change the game in 2023, with YouTube backing YouTube Shorts and Meta emphasizing Reels. “How to” and “Day in the life” types of content streams on all platforms will continue to dominate.
3. Instagram to be squeezed between TikTok and YouTube Shorts
The success of YouTube Shorts and the popularity of YouTube has a good chance of pulling people away from Instagram. Experts believe 2023 will be more about Meta chasing TikTok and YouTube.
4. After Micro, Is It the Rise of Nano Influencers This Time?
While marketers continue to favor micro-influencers in 2022, analysts predict that in 2023, more companies will gravitate towards nano-influencers — a powerful category of influencers with fewer than 10,000 followers. According to statistics from affable.ai, nano influencers on Instagram had an engagement rate of around 4.41 percent in 2022, which was substantially greater than that of other influencer categories. Contrarily, Facebook displays an engagement rate of 1.17 percent, fueled by nano influencers.
5. Growth of B2B influencer marketing
B2B influencer marketing will be an essential strategy to devote marketing spending on. More businesses seek to use the power of social media, particularly LinkedIn, to promote their brands better and showcase their products or services.
6. Paid Media To Amplify Influencer Content
Expand your chances for product discovery on social media. Since Influencer marketing is one effective strategy in that direction, giving influencer content a slight boost through paid ads might work wonders in spreading awareness of your niche product.
7. The Continuous Rise Of User Generated Content
UGC is becoming vital in social commerce because brands realize that they don’t need to have influencers posting; instead, they need the value of strategic content to create buzz around their brand.
8. More Celebrity Influencers Will Branch Out To Metaverse
The metaverse is projected to generate $2.6 trillion for ecommerce and $5 trillion overall by 2030. Metaverse will continue to play strongly in 2023. Esports (electronic sports) will expand as gaming is a large global industry. Celebrity influencers may branch out to other luxury items in other industries, e.g., metaverse.
9. Creator-hosted Vodcasts to Evolve
Vodcasts increase viewership, establish more meaningful connections with listeners and foster deeper audience engagement. Podcast Index had 39,194 video podcasts in its database as of November 2016. According to Podnews, as of June 2022, the total had increased by more than 25 percent to 50,863.
10. Affiliate and Hybrid Formats Will See A Massive Growth
As 2022 ends, we see brands struggle under pressure to increase conversions amid concerns about an expected recession. It also applies to influencer campaigns, where success should be measured by how much each influencer contributes to brand visibility and sales. The collaboration between an influencer and a business is, therefore, essential. Experts anticipate that affiliate influencer collaboration will be a significant trend in 2023 due to this.
This week’s Influencer Marketing Short is written by Nisarg Shah is the chief executive officer and co-founder, affable.ai, based on data from the platform.
affable.ai is an end to end AI-powered influencer marketing platform. Used by over 5000 marketers and agencies manage, collaborate and analyze their influencer marketing strategy, at scale, with speed. affable.ai and Storyboard18 are collaborating to get you weekly insights into the disruptive world of influencer marketing.