Influencer Marketing Statistics: Data-Driven Insights for Strategic Investment

Over the last two decades, social media has become an integral part of people’s lives—and a crucial way for brands to reach new audiences.

As more users joined social media platforms like Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Twitter, many of them became content creators themselves, curating and crafting their own stories, photos, and videos for others to see.

This is how social media influencers were born, and quickly attracted the attention of marketers.

Over the last five years, brands have collaborated with social media influencers across channels to generate awareness, and influencer marketing grew from an ancillary marketing tactic to a $5-10 billion dollar industry.

In spite of this, many small businesses remain uncertain about influencer marketing and whether to invest in it as a channel.

So does influencer marketing really work?

Today, influencer marketing is more accessible and measurable than ever before, and more marketers report finding it effective in achieving their goals.

Here are 11 powerful influencer marketing stats curated to inform your marketing strategy this year, based on a 2019 survey of marketers by Mediakix, an influencer marketing agency.

What is Influencer Marketing?

In order to understand influencer marketing, you need to understand influencers.

A social media influencer is someone who has built a loyal following through their online content creation.

Influencer marketing is when companies partner with influencers in order to increase brand awareness or conversions among a specific target audience.

Marketers accomplish this through sponsoring an influencer’s online content, with the goal of endorsing their brand, product or service, and in some cases, drive purchases.

The reason many companies struggle with influencer marketing is not that the channel doesn’t work, it’s often because their sponsored content is not thoughtfully planned, executed or authentically aligned with the audience.

Many factors can negatively affect the performance of an influencer marketing campaign. Here are just a few:

• Selecting influencers who aren’t aligned with your brand, or wouldn’t normally use your product.
• Not evaluating the influencer’s target audience alignment before partnering up.
• Pushing a rigid script on the influencer, rather than collaborating on a creative approach they feel will resonate with their fans.
• Failing to set clear terms and timelines for your agreement.
• Publishing blatantly promotional, hard-selling content that turns off fans.
• Not setting up proper tracking, URLs or landing pages beforehand.

The fact is, when executed correctly, influencer marketing works for a wide range of companies—and the data backs this up.

10 Most Important Influencer Marketing Statistics for 2020

Influencer marketing is gaining more traction and investment than ever before.

The majority of marketers plan to increase their marketing budgets this year, and Instagram is rapidly becoming the most widely-used channel in the industry.

Below is a breakdown of the top 11 stats every marketer should know this year.

1. 65% of influencer marketing budgets will increase in 2020.

Nearly two-thirds of marketers will increase their spending on influencer marketing this year.

In 2018, only 39% of marketers planned to grow their influencer marketing budget, suggesting that brand investment in influencer marketing will increase dramatically this year.

2. The most common influencer budget is $1,000 – $10,000/year, followed by $100,000 – $500,000/year.

19% of marketers will spend $1,000 – $10,000 per year on influencer marketing in 2020, while 18% are spending between $100,000 – $500,000 per year.

7% of companies plan to invest over a million dollars in influencer marketing in 2020.

This suggests that influencer marketing is leveraged by a range of companies, from smaller organizations to much larger brands.

3. 17% of companies spend over half their marketing budget on influencers.

A small but not insignificant percentage of marketers—17% of them—plan to spend over half of their entire marketing budget on influencer marketing this year.

While this percentage is modest, it highlights how pivotal influencer marketing has become for a handful of companies, particularly ecommerce, fashion and beauty, gaming, travel and lifestyle brands.

4. 89% say ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels

Generating positive influencer marketing ROI (return on investment) remains top of mind for many marketers in 2019.

Many small business owners are understandably wary about investing in an emerging channel if it can’t generate quantifiable results.

However, nearly 90% of all marketers find ROI from influencer marketing comparable to or better than other marketing channels.

5. Instagram ranks #1 for the most important and impactful channel.

Moving into 2020, Instagram has become a social media powerhouse.

With over 1 billion users and a fast-growing network of influencers churning out millions of sponsored posts each year, Instagram has become the most important influencer marketing channel.

While more established channels like Facebook and YouTube remain popular, the ease of photo-sharing on Instagram spawned a huge variety of influencers with a direct line to different niche audiences.

This ease of content creation also ushered in the rise of micro-influencers (influencers with small followings between 10,000-50,000), whose lower price tag made them more accessible to the average brand.