Influencer marketing (as well as influencers) was alive long ago before Instagram and other social media platforms appeared. However, those social media networks provided us all with an opportunity to become influencers and created a whole new industry.
Marketers soon realized what potential this thing could have and budgets for influencer marketing were constantly growing year after year. In fact, influencer marketing is expected to be a $10 billion industry by 2020.
Since being an influencer on Instagram is a trend nowadays, you might think that competition is really high and chances to make money on this platform are non-existing. That’s not true at all – the industry is growing, which means more money is invested in influencer marketing and the need for quality influencers grows together. It doesn’t matter if you are just thinking of growing your audience and becoming an influencer, or you already have a decent number of followers and want to monetize it – we will provide you with some facts and statistics on influencer marketing that should encourage you to be more active on Instagram and start earning money.
You should take a look at this article on how to make money on instagram – it features some insights that will help you better understand the potential of earning money on this platform. Need more followers? There are several services available to help you get Instagram followers. Some are better than others. Be sure to do your due diligence.
One of the Fastest Growing Industries
Besides renewable energy, artificial reality, biotechnology, and other fastest-growing industries, there is influencer marketing. We have already mentioned that it is projected to hit $10 billion in value by 2020. That’s an incredible achievement because it was just a $1.7 billion industry back in 2016.
Everyone wants to know what this social influencer marketing is and how to become a part of it. That is perfectly revealed by the spike in Google searches for “Influencer Marketing”. Search volume for this term grew by 1500% in the last three years.
As much as 63% of brands that are already investing in the influencer marketing plan to increase the budget and there is a good reason for that – it’s estimated that every dollar invested in influencer marketing returns $5,20 in earned media value.
It’s fair to say that it is the most efficient marketing channel as you couldn’t expect the return to be even nearly as high as in this niche. And this number reflects the average return – it can be much higher if a business works smart and finds a proper influencer for the job. That’s why micro-influencers seem to be a better option than super famous celebrities.
You might think that the size of the audience is the most important thing, but the reality is different. Micro-influencers are wanted not for no reason – usually, they have extremely close relationships with the audience, so great engagement is almost guaranteed.
Also, popular influencers tend to have vast audiences with different styles and interests, while micro-influencers have an audience that is targeted and interested in some particular thing. Over 67% of marketers think that the biggest challenge of a successful influencer marketing campaign is to find the right influencers.
By now you probably realized that there is a place for new influencers. If you are good at something (or maybe can teach others something), don’t hesitate to share it with your followers – you are likely to attract a very targeted audience. That way you will be desired by lots of brands matching your audience.
Instagram is the King
The winner of this influencer hype is definitely Instagram. Not only it is the fastest-growing social network, but it is also considered to be the most important social media platform by the majority of influencers and marketers. So if you want to be an influencer, it would be wise to invest your time and effort into Instagram – here are some tips on how to grow your audience.
As we have mentioned, micro-influencers are the most wanted by brands, so to be successful on this platform you should aim for at least 15,000 followers. Even if this number looks impossible to reach to you, you can start earning money with as little as 1,000 followers.
As speaking of format, Instagram Stories are leading the way. More than half of all influencers use Stories to promote products. You may already know, that Stories last only for 24 hours and then they are gone forever (unless you save them on highlights), so that’s a perfect method to display sponsored content and not flood your feed with advertisements,
Lastly, just so you could imagine the impact of influencer marketing, there is this shocking fact – 22% of people aged from 18 to 34 made decisions to purchase (or not to purchase) something because of the influence of social media. There is no doubt that brands are aware of this fact and that’s why influencer marketing is growing so rapidly.