Skip to main content

Social Influencer Marketing: A Must-Have or a Waste of Time?

 | Updated on May 04, 2020

4 min read Social Media
social influencer marketing

Adblock use is soaring. Consumer trust in advertisers is crashing. The new dilemma for marketers: How do you get your message across to people who don’t want to hear it? Cue the rise in social influencer marketing.

Does this type of marketing work? You’ll hear a lot of debate from brand marketers. Take a look at some of the most up-to-date influencer marketing statistics, and form your own opinion.

The Audience for Social Influencer Marketing

The Stats: Teens are tuning in to social influencers in a big way. They consider YouTube stars up to 17 times as engaging as mainstream stars, and 70 percent of teens trust influencers more than they trust opinions from more traditional celebrities.

The Takeaway: Add another stat to the mix: 73 percent of Millennials feel responsible to help friends make purchasing decisions. Now you can see the ripple effect start to grow. Teens find influencers more authentic than traditional advertising, so they pay attention. If you’re trying to reach that market, better start looking for some influencers.

[ctt template=”4″ link=”y31mJ” via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]Today’s teens place more trust in social influencers than traditional celebrities. [/ctt]

The Products of the Influencer World

The Stats: It’s all about the look. Beauty and fashion brands are deeply into influencer marketing, with 86 percent of the popular YouTube beauty videos coming from influencers rather than fashion brands.

The Takeaway: Beauty and fashion brands have been paying attention to the rise of the influencers. As a result, 57 percent of them now incorporate social influencers into their marketing strategies.

What Platforms Host Social Influencers?

The Stats: YouTube isn’t the only place where influence is sizzling. Marketers point to Facebook and Instagram (which Facebook owns) as crucial in the influence world, and the 32 percent of the influencers themselves call out Facebook as the place to be. In addition, Twitter users are more than five times as likely to purchase when they see influencers there.

The Takeaway: If you want to use social influencer marketing, choose your platforms wisely. And whatever you choose, don’t neglect Facebook. In addition, plenty of influencers have well-trafficked blogs, so take a peek into the blogosphere when you’re looking for the right influencers for your brand.

Related: How Facebook is Changing the Marketing Game with Influencers

The Cost of Influencer Marketing

The Stats: U.S. marketers have been increasing the portion of their marketing budgets allotted to social media, up to almost 12 percent from an initial 3.5 percent in 2009. In 2016, the average cost of an influencer marketing program ranged from $25,000 to $50,000, with those numbers expected to double in 2017.

The Takeaway: The barrier to entry in social influencer marketing is very low, so now is the time to start experimenting with it, if you haven’t already. If you’re still skeptical, keep reading.

[ctt template=”4″ link=”7U1E0″ via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]Every dollar spent on influencer marketing generates $6.50 in return.[/ctt]

The Bottom Line: The ROI of Social Influencer Marketing

The Stats: Here’s some encouraging influencer marketing statistics: Studies show that influencer marketing content delivers a return on investment that’s 11 times higher than that of traditional digital marketing. Every dollar spent on influencer marketing generates $6.50 in return.

The Takeaway: One final statistic: 94 percent of brands using social influencer marketing find it effective. Given the low cost, there’s not much reason to avoid it and plenty of reasons to give it a try.

Social influencer marketing is here to stay, and it’s becoming increasingly mandatory in certain consumer goods categories. Dip your toe in this market (easy to do, given its relatively low cost), and see what kind of ROI you might get.

David B

David B

David has been a freelance online writer for a decade and has written for clients on four continents. He specializes in marketing content, long-form informative articles, real estate content, and travel articles that make him fantasize about where he'd like to live. In his down time, he confesses to a weakness for writing clickbait listicles.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

stellar blog

Take your content to the next level with Stellar!

Ensure your writers have the tools to produce quality content that ranks on Google.

More Blogs

24 tips for creating outstanding AI-assisted content in 2025

Me: "You’re a content marketing expert and a world-class writer. Create a single prompt that I can use to get AI to create ...[ continue reading ]

The Stellar guide to UGC: The what, why, and how of user-generated content

Imagine walking through a city where graffiti covers the walls. The messages range from political statements and creative poetry to crude images and, ...[ continue reading ]

Creating Content that Works for You (Part 1)

Know What You and Your Audience Want What gets your audience going? Content creation might seem like a challenging task but the right ...[ continue reading ]