What is the one thing you would change about influencer marketing in 2020?

Tapping into third party social demographics, through influencer marketing, has kept content creators, brands, and agencies busy in 2019.

The happy union between those with an avid audience who always crave fresh content – and the ones wanting to sell something to them – may be best measured using numbers. Ultimately, this was the year that saw an 83% year-over-year growth in influencer marketing spend in the US and Canada, according to research from the influencer marketing measurement company, Instascreener.

With brands reaching into their pockets and spending a huge total of $442m, influencer marketing in these two countries, alone, went up by 18% – or an impressive $69m, compared to the previous quarter.

As you would expect, with the rapid growth, we also experienced falls from grace from some influencers, with self-appointed content creators having to strike a pose for the perfect photo while being chased by online regulators. These influencers had to simultaneously look happy on camera whilst deflecting criticism from car crash campaigns and having to deal with the implications of the notorious ‘ghost followers’ being let out of the closet. Subsequently, influencers are now being held accountable for their less-than-impressive online engagement.

With the year and the honeymoon period for influencers, almost over, it’s time to see what 2020 has in store for influencer marketing and what brands and influencers would most like to change in the near future.

Ed Brew – Head of partnerships at Post for Rent

More focus while choosing influencers

“I think the bubble has started to burst. We are much more focused on the due diligence of the influencers we choose to work with. Hopefully, in 2020 we won’t see a drop in the usage of micro-influencers because there are a lot of them doing amazing work in building online communities but, at the same time, using platforms to track measurements will become more and more important to help brands and agencies to make informed decisions. Influencer marketing has been going for long enough now, and we have seen several car crash campaigns because clients just went for names and amount of followers and took the influencer’s word as face value.

However, for every bad campaign, there were 20 great ones, for every fake influencer there are plenty of very professional ones delivering good results

Ed Brew – Head of partnerships at Post for Rent

Chelsea Carter – Head of content at Marketing platform Whalar

Content will be approached in a different way

“Dare to be different, think outside the box through every step of content creation. Currently, we see very similar pieces of content being posted by brands across different platforms. However, moving forward, we have to think about how we will continue to get people’s attention on a daily basis. When it comes to influencer marketing content you will have to think differently in order to stay relevant.”

Chelsea Carter – Head of content at Marketing platform Whalar

IQuentin Bordage – CEO at Influencer Marketing platform Koulsquare

It will get more professional

“In 2020, the big change will be how brands leverage data to measure content creators. Influencer marketing has grown a lot and brands and agencies are going to spend more and more of their budget on it. We have already seen many changes in the way we work with influencers, but over the next year we will see even more professionalization within the influencer marketing area.”

Quentin Bordage – CEO at Influencer Marketing platform Koulsquare