9 influencer marketing trends you need to know in 2024

Influencer marketing is continuing its growth: in 2023, the field was expected to grow a further 29% to an estimated $21.1 billion, and continue growing in 2024. Rapid growth, of course, also means rapid change. Here are 9 influencer marketing trends you can expect to see this year! 👇🏼

1. AI, of course

In 2024, artificial intelligence (AI) stands as a pivotal force reshaping the landscape of the influencer marketing industry. AI has changed how brands identify, engage, and collaborate with influencers. Influencers increasingly leverage AI-powered tools to generate post captions, plan their content, refine their messaging, and maintain audience engagement.

Meanwhile, the most bizarre trend might be the raise of AI-generated influencers. These computer-generated personas, brought to life through AI and 3D modeling, are gaining prominence for their ability to seamlessly integrate into digital spaces. Here’s one of them – you can’t even realize she’s not real! 

Miquela (@lilmiquela) is 100% an AI-based influencer with over 2.5M followers

2. The growth of social searching

This is one of the most important trends in social media: rather than using traditional search engines like Google, people are turning to social media platforms to search for information. According to Google, 40% of young people prefer TikTok and Instagram as search engines over Google.

For a reason: social media platforms offer a more engaging and personalized experience compared to search engines. As social media algorithms are tailored to each user’s preferences and browsing history, they can help to surface relevant content more effectively. Additionally, those platforms enable users to access more user-generated content, which is seen as more relatable and trustworthy than traditional commercial content.

Thus, working with TikTok influencers is also becoming an effective SEO strategy for the brands.

social searching – trend in influencer marketing

3 Influencer subscriptions

Influencer subscriptions are an additional income source for creators who offer exclusive content, perks, and services to their subscribers in exchange for a monthly fee. It allows influencers to monetize their content more effectively, provide a more personalized experience to their followers, deepen their relationships with their audience, and build a loyal fan base.

As the trend of influencer marketing continues to grow, we can expect to see more influencers exploring the potential of subscription-based services to expand their reach and revenue streams.

That might be a trend that will change the industry the most. As creators are exploring alternative income streams, they are becoming less independent from brand deals. Thus, creators will become pickier about their brand collaborations which might also result in price increases.

For the brands, it means that building strong influencer relationships is becoming even more important: if you don’t want to pay enormous amounts of money. you need to find influencers who are your superfans, and turn them into your brand ambassadors.

4. Additional revenue streams for influencers

In general, it seems that influencers are becoming more entrepreneurial, not limiting themselves to sponsored posts only – which is only a good thing, isn’t it!

We’re seeing a growing trend in influencers starting their own businesses, offering services, and selling their own products, digital and physical ones. This is common for niche profiles focusing on personal development, financial advice, nutrition, and spiritual awakening, but also works for other niches.

One of the creators who has been inspiring us is Sindija Bokāne: besides doing brand collaborations on Instagram, she is also running a digital marketing agency that coaches influencers, bloggers, and brands. Additionally, she is organizing social media courses and challenges, selling her presets, and doing much more – a true inspiration!

an example of an entrepreneurial influencer

5. The continuous growth of IGC – influencer-generated content

Creating content is one of the superpowers of influencers – and that’s why more and more brands are working with influencers to get visuals for their social media channels.

This is a trend that gained momentum already last year and is now growing even more – and we’re not surprised! Firstly, it helps brands to get trendy, visually attractive content. Secondly, influencers’ content feels so much more authentic and relatable than professionally produced content, and thus, brings better engagement. Thirdly, it’s significantly cheaper than organizing photoshoots by yourself.

This is especially important on TikTok. Creating short and catchy, non-cringe, and potentially viral videos is not an easy task – so most Marketing Managers prefer outsourcing it from a Gen Z TikTok native. Some companies are already hiring in-house creators to create content for digital channels!

6. The rise of cross-channel campaigns

The average social media user engages with an average of 6-7 different social media platforms. As the average user takes more platforms into daily use, cross-channel campaigns are becoming unavoidable for brands.

By doing cross-channel collaborations, it’s possible to reach a much wider audience. For example, TikTok is mainly used for entertainment, but Instagram is for socializing, inspiration, and getting product recommendations. Meaning, when doing a collaboration on both TikTok and Instagram, the product could be shared in a fun, creative way, but in a more aesthetic and informative way on Instagram.

7. Focusing on data and measuring ROI

Most marketers manage their influencer collaborations through email and direct messages. Here arises a problem: the lack of real-time data and reports makes it difficult to understand if the collaboration was successful or not.

When choosing influencers, the marketer should make sure that their audience matches the target group of the brand. This is one of the reasons why using influencer marketing platforms is becoming more popular each year: they provide real-time audience demographics directly from the social media platform.

Molly Mae Instagram profile report – influencer management tool

@mollymae’s Instagram profile insights, using our influencer analytics tool

Additionally, more attention is paid to measuring influencer marketing results: both measuring actual reach, likes, saves and comments of every posted content as well as using discount codes and trackable URL-s to measure the impact on the sales.

8. Brands and influencers co-creating products

This year, we’ve also seen more brands launching products or collections together with their brand ambassadors.

Such collaborations are great because they definitely tell the influencer’s audience that there is a real connection between the brand and the product. Of course, it also means higher sales numbers for the brands as the influencer’s audience become customers.

So far, this trend has dominated the fashion industry. For example, GymShark has launched 3 collections in a collaboration with their ambassador Whitney Simmons – and all the collections were so popular that they got sold out in the first few days! In Finland, clothes brand Bubbleroom launched a collection designed by a local influencer Sara Sieppi.

9. Focus on building influencer relationships

As with the other marketing tactics, more and more brands are doing influencer marketing on a constant basis – not just before the bigger holidays.

Long-term influencer partnerships are something we always recommend: not only do they stand out on social media but they also feel more trustworthy and thus, bring better results for the brand. Not to mention that long-term collaborations take less time from marketers.

The growth of influencer marketing has led to more brands competing for high-quality influencers. Once the brand has found its influencers, it’d be smart to turn them into brand ambassadors.

Being a brand ambassador is a whole next level of influencer marketing: ambassadors use the brand’s products on a daily basis and recommend them on and outside social media. Therefore, there is so much more impact than with one-off Instagram collaborations.

That also reflects in the development of influencer technology.

Brands that want to build strong influencer relationships while running long-term influencer collaborations on the scale, can’t go without proper influencer management software.

This has given rise to influencer CRM-s: influencer management tools that allow brands to manage all their (potential) influencers, negotiations, collaborations, chats, and content in one place. Not only helps it to save time and be organized – but also grow stronger relationships by remembering all the details about influencers.

Using Promoty’s Influencer Discovery, you can search for influencers worldwide, filtering by their social media metrics or audience data. Additionally, you can see detailed account insights for every influencer – which helps you to find the right influencers for your brand. 🤍

Additionally, you can use our influencer CRM to manage your current and potential collaboration partners, detect branded content, and chat with influencers. Promoty is one of them.

Watch a short demo video of how it works👇🏼 or create a free account to get started!

Get detailed profile analytics for every influencer.

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