Once considered something rather niche, influencer marketing has now become full mainstream. As people continued to consume a great deal of video content in 2021, they watched influencers on a variety of channels, which swelled subscriber and follower numbers.
The following eight trends defined influencer marketing last year and will continue to shape this powerful channel in the future. And we examine most of them through the prism of one influencer.
1. The industry broke records on the dollars front
Influencer marketing took off in a big way in 2021. According to Staista, the global influencer marketing market size was valued at a record $13.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, more than double the $6.5 billion valuation of 2019.
2. Millions of influencers, ranging from nano to mega
There has been an explosion of influencers on a range of channels that has made it necessary for agencies to step in to direct brands to an appropriate choice. Among these is HypeAuditor, which has a database of influencers broken down by channel with a wide range of features.
For example, selecting Instagram influencers yields over 15 million results when the options are left at “any.” Putting in parameters for country, age group, etc. can narrow down the results, as can the selection of number of followers from as little as a thousand for nano to over one million for mega.
3. Influencers now offers metrics beyond their followers on channels
Local or niche brands can try to get the best bang for their influencer buck by not paying for bigger but for more precise fit. Existing technology allows marketers to choose according to a variety of metrics like quality of audience in general or in a specific region or even selecting someone who is not so big yet audience, but one that is growing quickly.
4. Influencers draw their followers on multiple platforms
Back in the infancy of the influencer movement, you had people who were identified as Instagrammers or YouTubers, and then TikTok stars. But now there is no mutual exclusivity. The creators are smart enough to realize that they should make their content accessible to as wide an audience as possible, and that means posting it across different channels.
Take Nigel Ng for example. He ranks as a mega influencer who connects with his audiences on multiple channels. His has over 110K Twitter followers, almost 5 million YouTube subscribers. He also just launched a new podcast.
Ng’s appeal to large numbers across channels and his strategy of making his content accessible on various platforms, makes him a multichannel operation – and marketers’ influencer strategy must adapt.
5. Influencers are working together to increase recognition across audiences
Mr. Ng started doing comedy standup and gained viral status through reaction videos, but then he also started bringing the Uncle Roger character out to different contexts. Most often he pairs up with an influencer or even professional who cooks because his character has very strong feelings about that. But he also sets himself up for a makeover from @ling.kt and plugged her channels and product.
Marketers should take note that influencers are open for such collabs. Working with tag-teams opens a world of new branding and engagement possibilities.
6. Influencers aim for a positive impact
Staying with Mr. Ng, so he has gotten some flack for playing an Asian stereotype. An interviewer for Esquire brought that up. In responding, Ng pointed out that, on the contrary, he sees the character as standing up for Asians, including Uncle Roger’s refusal to accept the way that chefs regularly get his favorite dish – egg fried rice – wrong.
“Chefs who don’t do research and try to profit from our food, publish it in a cookbook or whatever. When you actually listen to the content, everything Uncle Roger does is to raise the culture up. I can say that with complete confidence, there’s nothing I said in my videos that is negative towards my own culture because I’m proud of being Asian.”
Raising awareness to cultural issues is always a tricky proposition. But brands that can walk that fine line, along with the right influencer, would set themselves up for loads of meaningful customer engagements.
7. Authenticity is essential
In the Esquire interview, Ng touched on authenticity when the interviewer reminded him of an episode in which he observed “‘Ah, not dirty enough’” about the kitchen:
“Yeah I can see myself saying something like that. It’s also kind of true, isn’t it? You go into a kitchen, supposedly Asian, and if it’s too neat, it sort of takes away from the feeling. A nice place can be a modern, trendy restaurant but still have a little bit of that open plan, fire, grease, charcoal, people’s hands a bit black, and chef uniforms a bit dirty. That gives a place a bit of gravitas.”
But authenticity also comes through in the candid moments on the videos that don’t get edited out. For example in Uncle Roger Meet Egg Fried Rice Lady (@Hersha Patel), Patel tries to shake up the rice in the wok and ends up spilling a lot of it on the floor. Ng doesn’t notice at first because he’s facing the camera and only responds to it later. That unscripted event stayed in the video, and audiences loved it.
Popularity is great, but views alone won’t pay the bills in the long run. Influencers count on long term, meaningful relationships with their audiences. That’s what brands should aim for, too.
8. An organic connection
For the Uncle Roger character who considers MSG an essential ingredient, it made sense to give him a specific brand to promote. He gained that through a paid partnership with Sasa brand MSG that gets featured in some of his videos.
While Ng also does one-off promotions for particular products and services on his videos, the MSG brand is a mainstay that has been mentioned regularly since the partnership began. It also makes good marketing sense for the product to be regularly paired with the influencer on multiple videos and multiple channels because it generally does take several views to make an impression on an audience and win over customers.
Given how wide the array of influencers has grown, not everyone necessarily ticks all the boxes for the trends that emerged in 2021. But we can expect to see more brands reach out to more influencers who will try to maintain the balance of extending their reach without becoming too generic in their appeal.
And, as the tech to collaborate with dozens of influencers and their respective audiences exists, it basically ties back to a larger movement in marketing: the scaling of personalization.