The year 2020 will always be remembered as the year the entire world, the strong and the weak, the young and the old, all voluntarily decided to lock themselves in their own homes. We began with the zeal of fighting and saving the world now we are anxiously awaiting for it to get over, dwelling over the past when we were free of the virus and romanticizing the future when we will again be free of the virus. Speaking of the future, let’s give you something more to think about. 

While the world was in lockdown, the marketing sector was still in full swing. In fact, it saw a glimpse of its full potential. Especially with influencer marketing. We are living in the present but we saw the future of influencer marketing in these few months. Something noteworthy is that this influencer marketing was not only financial but also social and political in a lot of ways. We saw that with influencer marketing, we can not only endorse products and services but save lives, raise funds, and help people. We have no doubt that it makes the word spread faster and louder. And we think it’s only going to get better in the future. 

We are yet to see more growth, new businesses emerging, new influencers flourishing, new sectors claiming their spot, new financial routes opening and it continues. Let’s take a look at influencer marketing’s future.  

1. Solid evaluation

Influencer marketing is very competitive. Stating the obvious, huh? Yes, but hear us out. Since it’s so competitive already another obvious thing to say would be that it is going to get even more competitive moving further. As we mentioned above, a lot of new things are yet to come. So what can you do to excel in your business using influencer marketing? A good evaluation while planning your campaign can be one way to go about it.

There are certain niches that overlap each other. For instance, influencers from sports, fashion, fitness, and travel, are all eligible to endorse items like shoes, leisurewear, and bags. Unless your business is aiming to target influencers from all the niches, you are going to need to form a strict evaluation process. You will have to stress enough on finding which influencer serves the best to your needs. 

This was difficult before but gradually it is getting better with the help of influencer marketing platforms. These platforms have recently come into the light and it’s the best thing that has happened to the brands and influencers. However, in the future as the market evolves, these platforms too will evolve are going to be proven to be a boon for influencer marketing. 

2. Quality over quantity

Quality over quantity, of course. Most businesses follow this principle and have been successful. But when we speak of quality in influencer marketing, we mean engagement, and when we say quantity we mean the number of followers. At the inception of influencer marketing, the major focus was to target influencers with a high number of followers. And even the charges of influencers were functioning on that basis. But over the due course of time, we realized that it’s the engagement that’s the game changer and not just the number of followers. It is certainly one of the criteria but engagement is the result driven and that’s what we must bet all our money on. 

This points us towards one question- are micro-influencers going to make a comeback in the future? We think so. For reasons like- micro-influencers charge lesser than macro or mega influencers, even though they have fewer followers, they are connected with most of them, and the fact that nowadays, at least one of your peers or mutuals are influencers. All these reasons give the brand an upper hand as the connectivity, communication, and relativity is more.

The starting phase of an influencer involves fewer people, they have time and energy to spare on them, and as they grow they are more likely to get busier and hence, lose the connectivity they had before. However, most of these influencers are successful in retaining their older followers and their trust. Micro-influencers can work great for both small and big businesses. To work with the best micro-influencers, you can use WORD Marketplace that lets you pick the influencers you want to work with. All you have to do is post a brief for your campaign and have the influencers approach you with their content. This and many other benefits of WORD Marketplace can be explored by signing up for no minimum cost. 

3. In-house influencers

If you see an individual endorsing a brand, they are bound to become the face of the brand, at least for the consumers. So why not keep them endorsing that very brand time and again? Yes, this can happen. Trust plays an important role in influencer marketing. The followers of the influencers who have seen them grow over the years trust them with their suggestions and reviews. Every product they endorse, the followers believe them. But moving forward with increasing brands and businesses, in-house influencers might become a thing. 

You can have influencers on board for not just one post or one product or launch but for a longer period of time. This tie-up can be contractual or non-monetary depending on the mutual understanding of the influencer and the brand. As a business, you want the best influencers because they want to yield the best outcome for themselves from their followers. And having these influencers on board for a longer period of time can give your better benefits in the long run. 

4. More personal approach

We think that the key ingredient that makes influencer marketing work is the transparency that the influencers have maintained since day 1. That’s how it all started, didn’t it? People were only posting about their normal life, themselves, their likes and dislikes, their interests, their pictures, and boom! They are making money out of it. So, this isn’t something that anybody needs to learn or adopt. But over time, this will gain more momentum. 

Do we remember the times when we didn’t really know if an influencer is sharing their opinion or getting paid to do so? It’s changed now as it is mandatory under certain clauses to disclose the paid sponsorship. This only got the customers closer to the brands and the influencers. The future of influencer marketing holds more of this for us. Just how BTS, sharing feelings, personal incidents are looked upon, we will see more of it. 

We can go on and on about how excited we are to see all these speculations turn into reality. And we are sure it is going to happen as we are already halfway through. We can see that what merely started as a series of sharing pictures has now become a series of storytelling that businesses like yours can gain profits from.

Marketing made a shift from outdoor banners to display banners to sponsored posts and we know it’s only moving forward. 

Influencer marketing has unlocked the potential to reach. Going global is not just a theory anymore. Brands that started out of passion are serving bigger purposes. Influencers that started for fun are a part of a bigger business chain that they did not think of. Now it’s time for you to make your move and take your business to the next level.