What is influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a soft form of marketing in which a business collaborates with an influential person to draw attention to or promote a specific product or service. Influencer marketing also extends beyond business into other areas, such as politics, social causes and events. The primary idea is that there’s someone who has a circle of influence and whose words or actions could potentially cause the target audience to take a desired action.

Influencer marketing has proven to be especially effective in the digital age oversaturated with ads. Consumers have become desensitized to ads and many people use ad blockers. Influencer marketing breaks down such aversion to unsolicited ads by bringing the message home through a trusted, friendly and respected influencer.

Types of digital influencers

Digital influencers are typically grouped into 5 broad categories, namely;

Microinfluencers: People with a relatively modest number of followers in a tight knit community with demonstrably high engagement rates

Celebrity Influencers: Famous people with a large following, typically used for the viral element and cross demographic social proof

Blog Influencers: Established writers in different niches whose publications often reach a large base of readers or subscribers

Social Media Influencers: Popular people on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook who deliver content on a wide variety of topics.

Thought leader influencers: High level experts in specific fields or industries whose expertise has earned them large followings of individuals interested in such topics.

Interesting Influencer marking trends for 2019 and beyond

• Data from Influencer Marketing Hub suggests that the industry grown from a $1.7 billion industry in 2016 to become a $5.6 billion industry and it is on track to transform into an $8 billion dollar industry the end of next year.
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• Influencer marketing ad spending is set to reach between $5 billion and $10 billion in 2022. The middle price point of $7.5 billion suggests the industry is poised to enjoy a five-year (CAGR) of 38%.
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• Out of all social media platforms, Instagram is the best performing network for brands interested in connecting with new audiences. Instagram has an average 3.21% engagement rate compared to 1.5% across all the social networks.
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• According to a Linqua study on Internet marketers, 17% plan to spend more than $1M annually on influencer marketing, 39% plan to spend more than $500,000 and 54% plan to spend more than $250,000 on influencer marketing annually.
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Here’s how much it costs to use digital influencers

There are no standard rates on how much influencers charge for collaborations to promote a brand, product, service or do a full campaign. However, one obvious fact is that the days of influencer marketing in exchange for “free” gifts and services from the brand are long gone – cash is still king. Hence, the cost of influencer marketing tends to depend on a myriad of factors such as the size of the influencer’s audience, mandates, creative timelines, IP rights and production costs where applicable.

In addition, the rates also tend to vary by industry. As at 2017, the travel industry paid the highest fees for influencer marketing while business had the lowest costs for influencer marketing as seen in the chart below.

Nonetheless, a report from Ignite Visibility suggests that Instagram influencers typically charge about $1,000 per 100,000 followers, YouTube influencers charge about $2,000 per 100,000 followers and Snapchat Influencers charge about $500 per campaign. If you want the top end of the influencer marketing industry, you can expect to pay as much as $250,000 per post when working with an influencer on the same pedestal as Kim Kardashian.

CGI influencers are gradually disrupting the industry

The influencer marketing industry, like any industry, is not immune from tech-powered disruption. And now, a new breed of tech-powered influencers called CGI influencers are disrupting the industry. Tal Melenboim, is one of the pioneers using a mix of artificial intelligence and CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) to help brands develop the perfect influencer marketer.

Tal Melenboim is an engineer with about 8 U.S. patents to his name. He is also a serial entrepreneur, and some of his notable exits include the sale of Movota to Bertelsmann AG as well as Spil Game’s acquisition of Score Plug.

His current project, Zoe Dvir, is an Israel-based startup focused on helping businesses and organizations develop custom influencer marketing campaigns through proprietary virtual technology. The startup creates humanoid avatars whose personalities can be cultivated into an influencer marketer for different brands and industries.

The company’s first CGI influencer, which goes by the name Zoe Dvir on Instagram, is a young, fashionable, and opinionated female personality who encourages her followers to be the best version of themselves. In the last three months, she has built up an active following of more than 31K followers on Instagram, and her followers constantly engage with her without giving much credence to the fact that she is not human.

CGI influencers VS. human influencers

In the U.S., CGI influencers are gradually becoming stakeholders in the digital market industry. Lil Miquela, created by L.A.-based startup Brud, is probably the most popular CGI influencer. She has more than 1.6M followers on Instagram. Shudu, a CGI model created by photographer Cameron James, is branded as “The World ‘s First Digital Supermodel”. She has about 177K followers on Instagram and she’s been featured on Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty.

As CGI influencers start to gain widespread adoption, the influencer marketing industry will start recording some drastic changes. For one, it will be cheaper for brands over the long term to commission a VR startup to create an avatar than to continue paying human influencers per project.

Beyond the costs, brands will find it easier to avoid many of the challenges of working with human influencers. Such challenges as personality clashes, emotional sentiments and lack of creative control would essentially become a non-issue because the brands will have more control over the creative direction of the CGI’s content.