8 COMPELLING INFLUENCER MARKETING STATS

No matter how evolved we think we are as adults, we all still want to do what the cool kids are doing. We want to eat what they eat, wear what they wear, and buy what they buy. At the very least, we want to know what they’re up to.

Influencer marketing allows us to have a direct line to the cool kids. While most of us are very aware that people are generally paid for their endorsements, at the end of the day, we don’t care. We buy into it anyway.

​Companies across all industries are shifting their advertising budgets over to getting their products in the hands of influencers, whether they have small to mid-sized audience or their last name begins with a K and ends with an N.

1. 99% Of Influencers Use Instagram.

99% isn’t a real number that digital marketers get to throw around often, so it’s pretty exciting to use it knowing there’s no room for fudging on this one. Snapchat is a force, and I’ll mention that later as well, but with 1 billion users, Instagram remains THE ultimate social media marketing force. No matter what age demographic you’re targeting, you can find your audience on it.

2. ​Snapchat Influencer Marketing Drove A 51% increase in sales for Loreal.

In a 2017 campaign, they used a variety of channels including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat but Snapchat was BY FAR the most successful. The selfie filter was what really threw things over the edge.

​Snapchat was not built for influencer marketing. Then again, neither were the other channels at the dawn of their inception. Influencer marketing is genuinely about working with influencers where they’re at and figuring out if your product is a good fit for their audience.

3. ​92% of consumers trust recommendations from personal connections, while only 33% trust ads.

Have you asked your Facebook friends what kind of vacuum to buy or asked them where to go for Taco Tuesday? Of course you have. Do you trust your friends over Yelp? I certainly hope so otherwise it’s time to get new friends with better taste.

4. Customers that are obtained by word of mouth have a 37% higher retention rate. ​

I truly believe that the real power of influencer marketing is in the conversations that happen offline as a result of the conversations that happen online.

Think about it. You’re at the store with your sister and you see a new kind of cookie. Let’s call them smoreos as I am not yet getting paid to be an social media influencer.

Your sister saw Kim Smardashian tweeting about stuffing-only smoreos. You buy them.

If you didn’t, it just wouldn’t be as fun of a girls’ night in. Now, you associate stuffing-only smoreos with the best girls’ night in ever and if they ever stop making smoreos, you and your sister will be devastated.
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None of that will show up in your Google Analytics or hashtag report, but it’s real stuff.

5. ​The larger the Instagram audience, the less likely they are to be engaged.

Sensei Marketing conducted a study of 500,000 Instagram users and found that many of the heavy hitters are all fluff and no talk. Part of the reason is because they have paid or spammy followers, but the other reason is that if someone is that big of a deal, they’re probably not someone you’re going to engage with a lot.

​You’re probably more likely to comment on a post of a small band you’ve met locally rather than a post by someone bigger because you’re more likely to get a response, right?

6. 93% of top celebrity endorsers have violated FTC regulations.

Usually the issue is that they don’t disclose that they’re being paid to endorse a product with a simple #ad or something to that effect.

​Here’s the nuts part — in my experience working at digital marketing agencies it’s because they don’t know any better or they forget. It’s a pretty dumb mistake and one that’s the marketer’s job to drill into influencers’ brains as far as I’m concerned.

7. ​Male influencers get paid nearly twice as much as female influencers do on Instagram.

Whatever the reasons are, they’re super lame. It could be somewhat related to industry, but I think that’s missing the point. That’s a GIANT gap.

As a long-time female entrepreneur whose career largely consists of negotiating a wide variety of hustles to pay the bills, this is a glass ceiling statistic. I hope lots of influential females read this and start charging more for paid posts. I really do.

8. Marketers who implemented an influencer marketing campaign earned an average of $6.85 in media value for every $1 they spent on paid media.

This is what’s truly crazy about influencer marketing —it delivers ROI big time without a giant investment and it’s easy to track its success.

Whether or not you’re happy with your ad campaigns or not, it’s worth it to shift at least some of that budget over to influencer marketing.

Have you run a successful influencer marketing campaign? How about an unsuccessful influencer marketing campaign? Pray tell below.