Businesses seek to bounce back in the new normal with influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing is one of the marketing models that is rapidly entering the mainstream marketing campaigns. It typically integrates the idea of celebrity endorsement and places it into today’s content-driven marketing drive. This marketing approach is emerging as a powerful way for modern-day businesses to create trusted content that is then shared across the web and targeted millions of audiences. Influencer marketing is done through a brand and online influencer collaboration to market one of its products or services. Now as the COVID-19 crisis has impacted all aspects of businesses and society, influencer marketing has also been deeply impacted by this pandemic.

According to the report, the influencer marketing industry is predicted to reach from US$8 billion in 2019 to US$15 billion in 2022. However, the pandemic has already disrupted the marketing revenue, as a survey of 237 brands showed that 69 percent of brands expected to decrease their ad spend in 2020. On the other side, 74 percent of brands surveyed are posting less on their company social accounts at present, while 34 percent said they have shifted social time from Instagram to Twitter.

As each social channel lures influencers to some degree, Instagram is the gold standard for them. In the last couple of months, Instagram and Facebook Live views have doubled, and video streaming site YouTube is working on meeting the increased demand for live streaming. The pandemic, in some ways, has stimulated changes that were already underway, and businesses are actively looking at this industry to bounce back in the new normal.

Since companies have limited their ad budgets to save their financial resources, the demand of influencer marketing has not completely thrown down. The growing realization across brands, improved metrics, and codes of practice that create an effective customer engagement is leading to a resurgence of this marketing model in some categories and a large number of companies are leveraging it. The governments-mandated lockdowns forcing people to stay home have also given the rise of influencer marketing.

With people shelter-in-place due to COVID-19, social media influencers, content creators, and vloggers and bloggers are getting much time and have a great opportunity to boost their engagement with people. These influencers will have an upbeat time in the post-pandemic scenario. 

In this crisis time, trusted social media influencers continue to be a viable source of information and an effective, authentic way to communicate with a large audience base. According to the “2019 Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: In Brands We Trust”, 63 percent of 18-to-34-year-olds age group trust on influencers, what they say about a brand over what the brand says about itself in advertising.

Today, influencers have become an effective source of entertainment and a powerful voice that consumers cannot only resist but follow them on different social media platforms. Hence, influencer marketing is likely to see a massive uptake and will be an effective way for brands to information transmission to large audiences post the pandemic.