Five influencer marketing trends to look out for this festive season

 

 

By Pawan Bagga

In the hemisphere of digital marketing, influencers took the leading role in 2020. Both, investments in influencer strategies rose exponentially and brands found it wiser to divide their expenses amongst generic social media marketing and influencer-related marketing. All this occurred because of the high demand for digital ads, promotions, and marketing that surfaced with the arrival of the pandemic.

As the pandemic cooled down and brands began building on their marketing momentum, influencer marketing trends have begun to sky-rocket even more. They are assisting more prominent brands in accomplishing their monthly KPIs through both organic and paid mediums.

This medium of personality-based marketing has become a primary strategy by leading organisations in their respective domains. As of 2020, the key focus was on the below factors:

Reaping the financial viability of micro-influencers

Depending on less costly influencer marketing platforms

Building prolonged collaborative partnerships with influencers

Deploying storytelling methodologies

Influencers launching product collaborations

Rising influencer events

This pattern has now changed and with the festive season right up, below are some trends which will take place to drive a brand’s success. Each of these five influencer marketing trends is high in demand, and brands are unquestionably employing influencers to help grow their businesses online.

1. Influencers depend on live streaming

Live streaming permits desired influencers to communicate and chat with their viewers directly. This drives engagement with the influencers and the brand’s audience, and above all, it sets the foundation for increasing the brand’s recall rate. The brand images slowly get etched in the audience’s memory, and they begin to associate at a higher level.

With the rise of niche-specific influencers and live streaming platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, influencer-customer interactions are on the rise. This surely seems to be a big bet for brands this year.

2. Heightened use of audio and video content

Video and audio content in combination provide monumental organic reach, and many well-to-do brands have already begun exploiting this trend. Influencers have started releasing a variety of audio-visual content types such as guides, tips, reviews, and even roundups. When users watch your product or service in the same frame as the influencer they follow, there’s a more profound desire to give your brand a shot. Influencers target this sensitivity and create an array of video types, all with an end goal to promote your brand as an active, enticing industry participant.

3. Brand values brought to the limelight

Factually, consumers of the internet are ready to invest in products and services that obey their

promises. Moreover, they are accepting of brands that resonate with their brand values through daily content. Thus, influencers play the role of proof-providers indicating your brand’s sincerity to its principles. Above that, as brands continue to demonstrate their perspective of societal issues with a creative tweak, the audience seeks validation for the same. This is where influencer marketing fills in the gaps and adds brand value which helps in the long term.

4. Lesser dependence on celebrity influencers

Celebrity influencers are facing massive competition from nano and micro-influencers. This is because the latter tend to empathise more with society and react to more pressing matters as the general public does. The secret to attaining results through influencer marketing lies in engaging with audiences through brand alignment and an authentic tonality. If you get these two elements right, expect a great ROI on your marketing budget.

5. Influencers deploying more intricate, long-form captions

Intending to cultivate a more relatable connection with their audience, influencers have shifted to long-form captions. The personalised nature of these captions develops an understanding which leads to a greater degree of trust between the consumers and influencers. Considering Instagram allows a limit of 360 words (2200 characters), influencers can curate micro-blogs that resonate with the visual content. Whether motivational, sensitive or for awareness purposes, these captions have plenty to contribute to the narrative of the post.

Thus, this festive season brands should get back to pumping money in their influencer marketing strategies, focusing on proper segregation of activities. Their lifestyles and overly diversified projects have gifted them with limitless creativity and it’s a good opportunity to capitalise on them in a great manner.

The author is co-founder, Tyche Media