As more customers rely on trusted influencers for product advice, brands that don’t use influencer marketing risk being left behind by their competitors. Therefore, Influencer marketing trends are something that brands care about when looking for influencers to collaborate with. That’s why they usually search for influencers who are up-to-date about the latest news and trends on different social media platforms.
Using influencer marketing platforms, brands can now easily find influencers who match their business goals. Influencers must take advantage of these influencer marketing trends to develop their authority and expertise and be more appealing to companies.
So without further ado, let’s delve into the world of social media influencer trends.
Top 15 Influencer Marketing Trends
Celebrities and everyday people alike use their social media platforms to promote brands and products. And as the industry continues to grow, so do the trends. Here are the top influencer marketing trends:
1- Influencers Become More Professional
The latest influencer marketing trends show that It’s now more important for influencers to select a niche for themselves and become experts in that field. This will help brands find influencers who create content that relates to their business.
For example, if you are among the beauty influencers, you can select a more precise niche, like skincare or hair. Therefore, it is more likely for a skincare brand to seek skincare influencers and find you for their business.
Furthermore, the quality of content influencers create is more important to brands than the number of followers they have. This is because most brands aim to appear sophisticated and trustworthy within their niche. So, they want experts to promote them. In this case, KOL marketing may have more attention in the upcoming years.
Pro Tip: You can join influencer marketplaces like Ainfluencer to receive more invitations for brand collaborations.
Let’s see what Ainfluencer has for influencers.
Ainfluencer: Get Discovered by Brands
Ainfluencer is a 100% free marketplace for brands and influencers. They can join this platform to connect and collaborate.
As an influencer, you can join Ainfluencer for free and download the app to your mobile. On the app, you can see the latest influencer marketing campaigns that brands have created, and then send your offer to the campaigns that sound interesting to you.
On the other hand, brands can search for influencers based on category, gender, location, language, hashtags, and number of followers. Therefore, if you join Ainfluencer as an influencer, you increase your discoverability.
Here are some tips that can help you receive better brand collaboration:
2- Marketers Spend More Money on TikTok
Gone are the days when TikTok only belonged to a specific group of people. Now, more and more people spend their time on this platform. A report from Datareportal shows that users spend an average of 31 hours on TikTok, which is more than the time they usually spend on YouTube and Instagram.
This shows that TikTok has the potential to become an effective platform for brands to showcase their products and introduce themselves. However, it doesn’t mean that they will not use Instagram or Facebook anymore. But the advertising budget they dedicate to TikTok may rise.
3- Affiliate Marketing Will Become More Important
In most cases, brands ask influencers to unbox or review their products. But now, affiliate marketing is becoming an influencer marketing trend, too.
Since brands want to sell more products as quickly as possible to compete with their competitors on the market, they mostly see affiliate marketing as a more cost-effective method of influencer marketing as they don’t have to pay hefty prices to influencers on a review that may not lead to a sale.
Therefore, they mostly want to collaborate with influencers on an affiliate program. By paying them per product sold, brands motivate influencers to become more convincing with their followers.
Note: Amazon has a special program for Amazon influencers, which is similar to affiliate marketing. It is called the Amazon influencer program. Having a storefront on Amazon can help you increase your online income in the following year.
4- More Emphasis Will Be Set on Live Shopping
The good news is that influencers can also create a shop on Instagram and Facebook, allowing their followers to order the products directly from their favorite influencers. This is the subject of matter for to most brands because they tend to use social media to drive more sales.
5- Brands Look for Ambassadors
Most brands now like to have an ongoing partnership with influencers to create credibility among their followers. They don’t think one-time promotions are as effective as they want. Because, in most cases, the influencers’ followers see the offer as an online ad!
But, when the influencer offers the same product repeatedly in different situations, it will increase brand awareness and boost the chances of selling their product.
Consequently, brands look for online ambassadors, choosing people from the most expert and professional influencers in their niche.
If you want to follow influencer marketing trends in 2024, you should learn more about how to become a brand ambassador.
6- AI Enters the World of Influencer Marketing
There’s no doubt that AI is ruling the world now! Everywhere you go, you can see artificial intelligence doing something. So, there’s also no surprise that it’s becoming one of the influencer marketing trends that influencers and brands should follow.
As an influencer, you can incorporate AI in different ways, from using AI-powered tools to generate captions to editing your videos or photos with AI editors to make your posts more compelling to your followers.
Whatever you do, add creativity to your content to make brands see you as an expert influencer who knows what’s happening in this online world. You should note that AI influencers are trying to take your place; so, don’t lose the game to them!
7- Influencers Collaborate
It’s now time for influencers to connect and co-create content because it’s going to be one of the top influencer marketing trends this year. By collaborating with other influencers, even in different niches, influencers can promote themselves to more people and get more followers. Therefore, influencer collaboration is a win-win game for both influencers.
Note: if you don’t know where to start, this article about YouTube collaboration can help you get ideas about how to collaborate with other influencers on different social media platforms.
8- User-Generated-Content Becomes More Valuable
Brands are aware of the effectiveness of word-of-mouth marketing; it’s when an end-user suggests a product to others. That’s why user-generated content is getting more and more attention from brands. This type of marketing has more transparency, and people trust it more than advertisements.
Furthermore, influencer marketing methods such as giveaway campaigns can also increase user-generated content. Brands can ask their followers to share their posts and tell a story about one of their products.
9- Brands Will Set Performance-Based Deals
As affiliate marketing becomes more notable to brands, they prefer to make deals with influencers based on their performances. Accordingly, they would like to know what to expect from this collaboration.
In this influencer marketing trend, the numbers are meaningful, and the influencers should be able to promise how many sales or clicks they may bring. Although it is not predictable, it’s just an anticipation of the result of that collaboration.
Consequently, influencers should try to be more convincing to their followers or not accept products they don’t find valuable. This way, they can become more reliable among their followers. As a result, more people tend to buy the products they offer.
On the other hand, influencers can make performance-based deals without any concerns.
10- Brands Co-Create Products with Influencers
One of the influencer marketing trends of the upcoming year is the collaboration between brands and influencers in designing new products. As an example of this type of collaboration, you can see Adidas collaborations with top athletes and sports influencers.
However, brands would like to co-create products with the help of their ambassadors. When a product carries the name of a celebrity or a mega influencer, their followers desire to buy it more.
11- Marketers Look for Influencers Who Are Active on Different Platforms
It’s now more crucial for influencers to have accounts on different social media platforms. They should also be aware of the new platforms that will be launched. Marketers may run a campaign on various platforms and want to collaborate with the same influencer.
Being active on popular social media platforms makes you reach a wider audience and build more trust. Accordingly, you can increase your chance of receiving more offers.
12- Authenticity Will Be More Critical
Influencers should create authentic and accurate content because their followers trust them. They may lose this trust as quickly as they build it. Therefore, they shouldn’t promote a product or service that they don’t think is high-quality. Moreover, they shouldn’t share incorrect information and data with their followers because brands check out all the content and its authenticity.
Additionally, don’t lose your chance to receive influencer marketing offers from top brands by adding fake followers to increase your follower base. It’s now easy for brands to check your engagement rate and determine how many fake followers you have.
You should also increase your engagement rate on Instagram and other platforms because it’s one of the important metrics for brands.
13- Brands Focus on Diversity
There was a period when brands only collaborated with celebrities or top models. Now, even fashion brands search for plus-size models besides the hot skinny models they usually collaborate with. Moreover, they find nano-influencers and micro-influencers more engaging and cost-effective for their brands.
Additionally, the LGBTQ group is a new target for most brands, such as fashion or beauty. Therefore, they find male makeup bloggers or LGBTQ influencers more effective for their influencer marketing campaigns.
This diversity increases the chance for more people to make money as an influencer on social media platforms.
Pro Tip: Are you a brand having difficulty finding the ideal influencer for your influencer marketing campaigns? Then, join Ainfluencer to get the most out of influencer collaborations.
Ainfluencer: The Best Influencer Marketing Platform for Brands
Ainfluencer eliminates the complexity of finding the right influencer by offering brands an easy-to-navigate marketplace where advanced search filters help you target influencers by niche, location, and engagement metrics—all at no cost.
Ainfluencer stands out as the most cost-effective and user-friendly platform, especially for small to medium-sized brands. It democratizes access to influencer marketing, making it easier for businesses of all sizes to benefit from influencer collaborations.
Whether you are looking for male fashion influencers or want to collaborate with female fitness influencers, Ainfluencer has a quick method to find whoever matches your business.
Ainfluencer is a 100% free influencer marketing platform that allows brands and influencers to find each other for mutually-beneficial collaboration. Brands can find influencers based on category, location, language, gender, hashtags, and number of followers. They are also allowed to send as many invitations as they like. Further negotiations are also done on the platform.
So, don’t wait for your competitors to take over influencer marketing. Join Ainfluencer today and discover awesome opportunities to work with the right influencers for your brand—all without breaking your budget.
14- Short Videos Stay Popular
It is observed that individuals tend to behave differently on various social media platforms. But they have something in common with all the platforms: they like short videos.
Although the short video was first announced on TikTok and gained the attention of Gen Z, its popularity increased, and then Instagram Reels became popular. Nowadays, short videos are still widespread, and even YouTube has allowed its users to add short videos to their channels.
As can be seen, a short video will stay as one of the popular influencer marketing trends in the following years. Therefore, influencers should be able to create engaging and fun videos to increase their views and reach.
15- Paid Advertising Is the New Trend
A paid ad or sponsored post on Instagram is a type of Instagram advertisement that a business pays to have their post featured as an ad in someone’s feed or stories. This type of advertising is one of the influencer marketing trends that is getting more attention from brands because it can help businesses increase their brand awareness, customer base, and sales by reaching new and relevant audiences.
Tips On Following Influencer Marketing Trends
In addition to anticipating future trends, there are still significant factors to take into account for influencer marketing.
- Local influencers are still valuable to most brands. Therefore, don’t forget to mention your location while posting on Instagram or TikTok.
- Most brands still use hashtags to find influencers. It is essential to use correct and related hashtags for your posts to increase your visibility and get more views.
- People still check out Instagram stories. It would be better if you had at least one story per day. Undoubtedly, exciting stories attract the audience’s attention and encourage them to buy products more than ever.
- Check out the updated rules of advertising on social media. With the development of brands investing in social networks, the rules of advertising in many of them have become stricter. The Federal Trade Commission has sent a message to influencers and marketers for transparency in their brand relationships.
Conclusion
In recent years, we saw significant growth in influencer marketing and collaborating with influencers on different social media platforms. Each year, new changes happen to this digital world that brands and influencers should be aware of.
The influencer marketing trends have set new standards for engagement, trust, and consumer interaction. Following these trends can increase the chance of influencers receiving influencer marketing offers and also help brands stay ahead of their competitors.
Both sides can also benefit from joining Ainfluencer.
FAQs
Influencers need to be aware of the latest influencer marketing trends because brands usually search for influencers with the highest knowledge about influencer marketing and any changes happening on social media. Therefore, anything from AI integration to new social media platforms relates to influencers, too.
Influencer marketing is gaining more attention among brands and business owners every day. Nowadays, most marketers devote a high percentage of their budget to influencer marketing.
Every year, new influencer marketing trends become vital. As an example, new social media platforms may rise that brands and influencers should work with to discover their potential for their business. The previous platforms will also release new features, which brands and influencers should incorporate into their content creation.
Consequently, influencer marketing is changing rapidly. So, marketers and influencers should always follow the latest news about this market to stay up to date about what’s going to happen next.
AI integration can transform influencer marketing by making it more efficient, effective, and innovative. AI can help brands and influencers create more relevant content, reach new and diverse audiences, increase their conversions and sales, and build trust and authority in their niches.
