Marketers are using influencers more and more. With the growing importance of social media influencers, it has been used to propel some of the biggest marketing efforts in history.
The global influencer market is anticipated to produce $15.2 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach roughly $22.2 billion by 2025, according to Statista.
Brands all over the world are becoming more and more interested in influencer marketing, and this trend doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon. As a result, it really pays to be up on the most recent trends in order to maximize the effectiveness of your influencer marketing initiatives.
New social media platforms, entertaining trends, and original methods of audience engagement are welcomed every year. It’s crucial to stay on top of influencer marketing trends.
From Passion to Promotion: Influencers Paving the Way for Brands
Brands and influencers work together on a project to promote particular goods or services as part of influencer marketing. Lead generation, brand exposure, and revenue growth are a few of the key goals brands seek to accomplish through influencer marketing.
Companies must conduct thorough research to identify the right influencers to use in their product marketing campaigns. For instance, social media users who post about interior design are less likely to be effective in selling a new beauty product compared to beauty influencers who buy and evaluate makeup.
Influencers typically focus on a certain niche before expanding their audience. If you want to run a highly effective marketing campaign, you must identify influencers in your field.
What Justifies the Use of Influencer Marketing?
The era of dull television commercials predominating the marketing landscape has finally come to an end. Influencer marketing is only one of the numerous innovative and captivating techniques to promote goods that result in higher conversion rates than before.
Through various social networks, influencers have fostered a relationship with their devoted fans. Since they are frequently real-life consumers and are more reliable than conventional celebrities, people like to support these influencers.
You may increase your content’s quality, web traffic, search engine rankings, engagement rates, credibility and trust, and much more by collaborating with influencers.
Given that focusing on these audiences has more impactful outcomes than the majority of marketing campaigns, firms collaborate with influencers on paid partnerships, giveaways, and other initiatives.
Let’s examine some of the most fascinating trends in the influencer marketing industry which will be adopted in 2024.
| Trend No. | Influencer Marketing Trends | Brief Summary |
| 1 | Importance of audio-first channels | Rise in podcast partnerships due to non-music audio consumption |
| 2 | The brands of creators | Influencers seen as brands partnering with businesses |
| 3 | Campaigns emphasizing inclusiveness and equality | Addressing racial inequality and pay disparities |
| 4 | More options for creators to earn money | Social platforms offering monetization incentives |
| 5 | Live shopping in influencer marketing | Growing live shopping experiences on social media |
| 6 | Live content and real-time posts | Surge in demand for live streaming content |
| 7 | Longer forms of micro video content | Shift from brief clips to longer video durations |
| 8 | Enhanced user experience on social media | Platforms evolving to become more encompassing |
| 9 | Social commerce as a one-stop online store | Streamlined buying experiences on social platforms |
| 10 | Customers favoring principle-driven brands | Brands being active and expressive about their principles |
| 11 | Experiential marketing as a premium experience | Live influencer-promoted events for brand exposure |
| 12 | Nonprofits using social media for donations | Charitable causes leveraging social platforms |
| 13 | More collaborations | Enhanced branded content through influencer partnerships |
| 14 | Using popular TV shows and music for engagement | Using trending audio samples in ads |
| 15 | Increased collaborations between brands and influencers | Emphasis on long-term influencer collaborations |
| 16 | High-quality video content | Focus on quality short-form videos with wider viewership |
| 17 | Safeguards for children on social media | Implementing measures to protect children on platforms |
Top 17 Influencer Marketing Trends to Watch in 2024
Over the next few years, the digital media landscape will undergo significant change. Up to 51% more will be spent on marketing by businesses, and a portion of that money will go into influencer marketing initiatives.
Here are the trends in influencer marketing to watch for going forward, based on the industry’s explosive expansion in 2024.
Importance of audio-first channels will increase
Non-music audio consumption has proliferated as a format. When work commutes disappeared for months in 2020 due to the global epidemic, there was a noticeable growth. As more people turned to podcasts to find entertainment and distraction during lockdowns, more influencers and content producers started incorporating audio as a way to reach their own audiences.
Between 2017 and 2021, the proportion of 12 to 34 year-olds who listen to podcasts on a monthly basis increased from 27% to 49%. Weekly podcast listeners now outnumber Netflix subscribers. The cost of podcast advertising also reached $800 million in 2020, with a goal of more than doubling to $1.7 billion by 2024.
Brands have the opportunity to put their names and products in front of informed, high-income consumers through partnerships with podcast influencers. Of these consumers, 94 percent are active on at least one social media platform, and 54 percent have considered purchasing a product they hear advertised on a podcast.
To aid marketers in evaluating the efficacy of particular audio material, Veritonic, an audio analytics platform, has incorporated brand lift data to audio campaigns. The decision by Veritonic to provide more reliable measuring tools will encourage a huge number of businesses to produce content and launch partnerships on audio-only platforms.
With more companies marketing to audio listeners and better analytics tools at their disposal, firms will be able to determine for sure if sponsoring podcasts with nano influencers results in better brand awareness results than collaborating with micro influencers or other influencers that have large followings.
The brands of creators
Any marketer worth their salt already knows that influencers are brands, which is absolutely essential to viewing creator marketing in the right way. Influencers work in partnerships with brands rather than being hired as employees.
Expect to see not only an increase in the number of influencers positioning themselves as valued brands in 2024, but also a rise in the number of corporations creating entire departments tasked with supplying their influencer partners with an abundance of materials, training, and revenue-generating opportunities.
Why? Because it’s become clear, particularly in the last two years, that influencers are well-established brands even though they tend to be lesser businesses than their brand partners.
Campaigns must emphasize inclusiveness and equality
In 2020, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) became a topic that brands could no longer avoid discussing. A Reckoning was used to describe it, which is appropriate.
With the knowledge that nearly half of Millennials and Gen Zs identify as members of racial or ethnic minorities, DEI is a crucial policy for brands to implement and update. That’s a truth that many business and political figures in their 60s, 70s, and 80s regularly overlook.
Consumers and influencers are scrutinizing brands to ensure that all of the company’s personnel, including its workers and agencies of record, are actively fostering inclusive cultures.
Influencers who publicized the fees businesses paid them in previous years have criticized corporations for failing to address the pay disparities that exist in the influencer market. For equivalent effort, Black and White influencers with comparable-sized audiences were regularly paid more.
Another Instagram-based effort, #ShareTheMicNow, which helped to generate a lot of discussion on racial inequality, involved influencers of color taking over the White celebrities’ Instagram accounts in order to reach a wider audience. Quite epic.
More options for creators to earn money
These days, social media platforms are dangling the carrot of monetization in front of creators to entice them to their platforms and keep them there (along with features that make content more visible and more monetizable).
When someone tags a video with a choreographer’s challenge or dance, it would be good for platforms to launch some kind of licensing scheme for creators, even if it’s only for a few dollars. This would allow choreographers to be compensated for their work every time someone uses one of their creations.
Making sure that all creators have a chance to profit materially and financially from their creative activities is the main goal of this one. You’ve probably already heard about the controversy that resulted from Jimmy Fallon inviting TikToker Addison Rae to perform all the hottest TikTok dances on his NBC late-night show.
Rae’s presence generated a discourse, debate, controversy, and anger monster about cultural appropriation because none of the original creators of the dances she displayed on network television were acknowledged or given credit during the broadcast.
Live shopping will increasingly be a feature of influencer marketing and social commerce
There has been a significant uptick in this influencer marketing trend in recent years. Social media networks are promoting live shopping experiences similar to those on QVC. This year, Facebook and Instagram both launched live shopping services aimed at streamlining and advancing social commerce.
Similar tools are available on Amazon and Pinterest that let marketers collaborate with influencers who excel at producing interesting live streams. This has to be one of our favorite influencer marketing trends, and surely one with the greatest direct impact on influencer marketing campaign ROI.
Using live material and real-time posts to establish communities
Consumers are looking for more live content than only pre-recorded stuff in addition to purchasing. Lockdowns caused by a pandemic gave rise to live streaming content that invited viewers to take part in coordinated activities. We’re discussing anything from going to weekly worship services to studying with the Lo-Fi gal to going to concerts and family game evenings.
For a time now, influencers have been conducting livestreams on Facebook and YouTube. Recently, TikTok implemented a new “LIVE” function that enables users to live stream and engage with the comments and inquiries of their followers in real-time.
Although Pinterest TV is still quite new, foodies, gardeners, those who follow certain religions, and beauty influencers all enjoy it. One of the major influencer marketing trends for 2024 and beyond is real-time content because we can already see it gaining traction.
Content Creators will produce longer forms of micro video content.
Users of TikTok can now upload videos that are up to 10 minutes long. This is a significant change from the quick-tempo, 60-second maximum speed that made the app popular.
However, longer content enables users to provide more in-depth entertainment and give their stories a little more depth.
People are still turning away from conventional forms of entertainment as a result of this influencer marketing trend. Longer video material has already replaced photo sharing and brief clips on Instagram, and users may now upload films up to 10 minutes long on TikTok.
Social media sites will also be given user experience
We want everything, and we want it all together. Instagram launched novel features in 2021 that move the platform closer to becoming an all-encompassing app.
Instagram implemented a “audio” function in August 2021 that enables users to search for, sample, and store music for use in subsequent content. In September 2021, Instagram also unveiled a map search feature. Users can find various establishments including restaurants, bars, event venues, coffee shops, etc. through the map search, which also functions as a business directory.
Instagram offers further details about a business after it has been chosen, including pricing, hours, products/services, contact details, reviews, and more. The objective is to increase users’ time spent using the app, and it is fully anticipated that other platforms will adopt a similar strategy.
Social commerce will become a one-stop online store
It would be difficult to discover a social media network that did not have features that could be purchased. All of the main social platforms have added social commerce capabilities in recent years, giving users new, seamless buying experiences.
Users receive AI-driven personalization’s that highlight the goods they are most likely to purchase, which is also very impressive. It’s a terrific moment to be a consumer with a smartphone because products can be tagged in posts, people can take pictures of items they see in the wild, and related products can be found on social and visual search engines.
According to the Future Shopper Report, 53% of the customers surveyed indicated they planned to spend more on social commerce this year, and 56% said they preferred to be able to make purchases from brands without ever leaving a social platform.
Customers now have a simpler time than ever finding product information and making straight purchases from the post thanks to these small changes.
Customers will still favor brands
Over time, customers have become more selective about how and with whom they spend their money. Consumers (68%) expect brands to be forthright and expressive about their principles, and (54%) expect brands to actively participate in social issue discussions.
As we saw in 2021, brands that don’t show consistency between what they say, what they do, and how they behave internally (corporate culture) can quickly find themselves the target of very public scrutiny. Social media influencers have remarkable sway when it comes to starting those important conversations. This struck the influencer marketing sector even harder in 2022.
Key influencers have utilized their social media material to attract supporters to their cause and bring about substantial change, from movements like #BLM and #MeToo to personal activist accounts to advocate for the environment.
New premium experience will be experiential marketing
Live events that are promoted by and attended by influencers are a fantastic method to increase exposure and win over a large number of devoted fans. Audiences who might be interested in a brand or product can engage with it in a real-world setting through experiential marketing.
According to HubSpot, experiential marketing, also known as interaction marketing, is currently one of the top five marketing tactics that brands are doing. Pop-ups, co-branding events, product demos, product sampling, tours, conferences, classes/workshops, AR/VR, and even metaverse activations are some of the numerous ways it manifests itself.
Consider how much time is given to customers in Apple Stores to engage with devices, play games, browse apps, and discover the value and utility of the hardware. The outcome? They essentially persuade themselves that the phone, tablet, or computer is something they MUST have.
To increase donations, nonprofits rely on social media channels
Social giving, which most of us hardly even consider, is likely to be another extremely great influencer marketing trend for 2024. However, despite the global pandemic causing an economic crisis, some developments in 2020 had a favorable effect on donation statistics.
If you spent any time on Instagram last year, you probably noticed all kinds of asks:
- Micro-influencers urging their followers to support small local businesses
- Socially conscious real-life influencers sharing donation links so that their followers could contribute to legal funds to support protestors who have been arrested
- Grocery stores request that customers “round up” their purchases to support charitable causes.
Many NGOs realized the undeniable truth of last year that starting a social movement with a platform can:
- Increase brand recognition (and have a good effect on brand mentions)
- Help them establish stronger ties with their audiences
- Drive traffic to websites, and
- Rise in giving
There is conjecture that as things improve, contribution trends may decline once more, but NGOs can counteract this trend by using social media strategies and influencer marketing campaigns that are click-focused! Collaborating with online stars, as well as nano and micro-influencers who are skilled storytellers, to engage new donors.
Influencers can be used by organizations to remind contributors of the value and significance of their contributions and to persuade them to give again in the future.
More collaborations
The message is now essentially already present in the app, having previously only been written on the wall. The trend in apps is to make it possible for numerous accounts to collaborate to reach audiences, share audiences, and share engagement rates.
Instagram has released a nice collection of tools to assist businesses in amplifying their branded content through influencer partnerships that can be successfully advertised to certain target audiences.
- Collabs: Enables users to collaborate on posts and Reels so that material may be seen by more people.
- Add Yours: Enables users to upload new images to someone else’s Instagram Story.
- Instagram Reels Bonuses for Playing: For producing material that their communities adore, there are opportunities for producers to receive direct payment from Facebook and Instagram.
Based on how many times their Reel is played, creators may receive compensation. The performance of the reel and the overall number of reels generated determine how much money is made.
Within 24 hours, you’ll choose the Reels Play bonus from the Bonuses tab and tag the reel. Then, after a 30-day period, you are paid for all Reels that have at least 1,000 views. - Partnerships for branded content (in testing): Brands can filter through the creator’s details (using Instagram data), such as their follower count, geography, gender, and age range, utilizing a new partnership message folder in the main inbox.
Brands will be able to find and choose the finest artists for their campaigns using data and special filters. To a “preferred brands list,” creators can add the businesses they are interested in collaborating with.
Popular TV shows, and music are employed to engage people
Never before have we been so entranced by music. Everywhere we look, audio features are being crazily added to social sites. To reach their consumers, advertisers are beginning to use trending and streaming audio samples.
For businesses wishing to include audio platforms into their social media marketing campaigns, there are a ton of alternatives, like TikTok, Spotify, IG Reels, Twitter Spaces, Clubhouse, etc. And yes, if you want to attract younger customers, this is the way to go. Connecting with others is the key to good content, right?
Spotify entered the world of viral music in a novel way. Spotify launched their “All Ears On You” campaign, a B2B campaign that – get this – uses neuroscience to help advertisers understand how to reach their target audiences BASED ON the type of audio content they’re consuming. Spotify saw an opportunity to help connect advertisers with Spotify users and capitalize on their loyal audience base.
The Office, Shrek, Despicable Me, Seinfeld, The Cosby Show, Friends, and 40-Year-Old Virgin are just a few of the NBC properties that users will be able to access through Snapchat’s second partnership with NBC Universal. #RedRoss #WeWereOnABreak #Pivot
Increased Collaborations Between Brands and Influencers
The process of choosing influencers is extremely difficult for businesses, and the subtleties of influencer contracts will make it more difficult to quickly secure influencers for campaigns. Therefore, it is anticipated that a substantial increase in influencer collaborations and ambassadorships that go beyond occasional paid articles.
Many brands find it time-consuming to produce content. While it’s very simple to gain access to a content creator, it can be challenging to measure and even justify the effectiveness of brand sponsorships when it comes to finding one who can produce value-driven material that appeals to the particular target audience segment you’re trying to attract.
Brands must work with influencers who can effectively communicate value if they want sponsored articles to be regarded as high-quality content. Consistent collaborations with influencers who have had great success connecting with a brand’s target audience segments will be possible for companies thanks to ongoing agreements.
High-quality video content, especially short-form video, will continue to be vital
We are witnessing mobile apps finding their way onto larger displays, which is a really exciting influencer marketing trend that is still in its early stages. Because it affects how content is produced and disseminated, this will unavoidably have an effect on your influencer marketing campaigns. Additionally, it is anticipated that it will broaden the audience that views that content.
Following Instagram’s announcement that it will be simpler for users to upload content from their laptops and desktops, TikTok announced a partnership with Amazon Fire TV. The largest screen in the home will be used to watch the influencer content that you and your creative partners create for TikTok.
Short-form video provides the best return on investment (ROI) of any social media marketing tactic. Additionally, it excels at generating interest. 59% of 18 to 24-year-olds use short-form video apps to find stuff they later watch in larger formats.
The preferred channels for increasing interaction and awareness with short-form video include Instagram, TikTok, and now YouTube. This is a huge gain for culinary and beauty demos when combined with the longer forms of micro video content!
More safeguards for children using social media
Children have a massive impact on consumer purchasing. A few years ago, a lot of parents stopped using YouTube because of how slowly the site responded when inappropriate information started appearing in kid-targeted videos.
The government has recently taken action against Facebook and other social media sites that target young users. As more and more platforms work to keep our kids safe online, this is having and will continue to have a significant impact on influencer marketing trends.
In the end, Instagram stopped developing a platform for users under the age of 18. Unboxing videos and in-store tours of the toy aisle are two examples of low-quality, overtly commercial, or heavily branded films that YouTube (and YouTube now technically qualifies as a social media platform) has started to remove.
Conclusion
Trends in influencer marketing are constantly evolving. However, as other social media sites adopt similar practices, they’ll become increasingly important to your influencer marketing initiatives and to all of your marketing activities in the upcoming year.
Reaching your target audience involves subtleties, and developing clever influencer marketing concepts involves even more subtleties. It has never been more common to work with the appropriate influencers to communicate the correct message at the right moment.
But it’s a good idea to follow the marketing trends that will influence branded content if you want to keep your social media marketing campaigns engaging and successful. Your influencer marketing campaigns for 2024 may be impacted by each odd, obscure trend that has been noted.