Influencer Marketing: TOP 6 trends for 2021 by Hivency

Predictions for 2021 in the influencer marketing field are that many more functionalities are going to appear on social media, and new trends are going to start emerging. Along with social media and influence experts, Hivency reveals the next trends, tips and tricks to optimise your influence marketing strategy. From multimedia reviews, to the increase of nanoinfluence collaborations to ambassador programs, discover the 6 main trends for 2021. 

1. Social Media and Social Commerce

Be it WhatsApp, Instagram or more recently TikTok, who has just announced that Social Commerce will be its main axis of development, social media are gradually becoming the new sales channels. 

Marketers will very soon have to change their approach, but they’ll also have the opportunity to offer products that can be directly bought through their profiles or those of influencers. This revolution will offer new partnership opportunities and the development of influence campaigns with both nano influencers and consumers. 

Client reviews will now, more than ever, attract the interest of brands, as nowadays more than 88% of users consult consumer reviews before going through with an online purchase, and 73% when it comes to purchases in physical stores. 

2. The quest to seduce influencers

A few years ago, brands could brag about multiple influencers wanting to work with them. Nowadays, it’s up to brands to reach out to influencers and “seduce” them to pact a collaboration. 

This next year, brands will have to make an effort to forge a connexion with their influencers. Content creators are, more often than not, considered to be simple advertising tools, but for a brand they’re experts first and foremost. They’re experienced people that will add value to any communication strategy. 

With the appearance of ambassadors and “small” influencers, brands are going to have to place people at the core of their influence strategy. Trust can de obtained through a close relationship between brands and content creators, which will allow them to become brand ambassadors. 

This also means influencers will know more about the brands they work with and what they expect in terms of publications. They’ll talk about the brand more often, even outside of the times established in the contract, about their products and their commitments to social causes. 

3. 2021: the year of nano influencers

Nano influencers are swiftly gaining territory and have been ever more present in influence campaigns during the year 2020. For a brand, it’s interesting to recur to this type of creators (with less than 5000 followers) as they allow to communicate messages in a more localised and specific manner than other content creators.  

It’s true that “nano” have a smaller audience, but they are “stronger” and they boast an incredible power of prescription. Nano influencers also allow brands to humanise their digital strategy in the eyes of consumers, as they generate more trust.

Moreover, some clients are also content creators, which helps to create loyalty within the consumers through trustworthy collaborations and product tests. 

4. Clients and the power of multimedia reviews

A multimedia review is a review by a consumer in a format other than the traditional 255 characters text. In short, in video, audio or very descriptive text format. 

All consumers have influence after making a purchase. They can express their opinion through comments and/or rating of the product, service or event, in e-commerce platforms or even the brands website. 

Due to the confinement, many consumers have opted to consume more “locally”, to buy products according to the brands image and more precisely their values, and that’s why before they finalise their purchase they consider the opinion of other clients. More transparent, reassuring and detailed, multimedia reviews are the answer to consumers plea for authenticity. As a result, next year many more brands are going to opt for these kind of reviews to increase their sales. 

5. The benefits of data when personalising an influence campaign

Whether you want to convert your influencers into ambassadors, generate sales or quite simply rejuvenate your target audience, nowadays it’s fundamental to personalise your influence campaigns. To this end, data is at the service of enterprises.  Adopting a data based focus for your strategy will allow you to collect qualified data regarding the behaviour of your audience on social media. Through content creators, you can send the right message to the right audience, who will later buy your products and/or services.

What’s more, when talking about personalisation we’re not just talking about reaching the right audience, but also about building a relationship based on trust with influencers, to benefit from a good engagement rate and increase authenticity. To personalise campaigns, there’s many action routes we can take, like personalise mailings and exchanges according to:

• What the influencer likes
• Their age
• Their number of followers
• Their niche.

You’ll see that personalising campaigns and being honest with your content creators you’ll reach your goals with ease. 

6. Create polls and gain insights thanks to influencer’s followers 

Taking quality pictures for brands and attempting to amass thousands of likes and comments isn’t the true job of content creators… In reality, their job, or sometimes hobby, is bringing to live brand’s stories and their offer to consumers. However, one can also go beyond this kind of collaboration and carry out polls with the community of influencers. This is a great opportunity for brands to have quality feedback and to test their products with the right communities. 

According to a Hivency study, 77% of polled influencers consider being a content creator is a passion or a hobby

Bonus : the opinion of more than 20 experts

All throughout or e-book, that provides a profound understanding of the market, approximately 20 experts in influence marketing reveal their tips and advice. 

Enterprises like the Branded Content Marketing Association, HubsPot, Digimind, Agorapulse, and brands like Laboratorios Phergal have come together with Hivency, the influence platform, to help professionals optimise their influence or social media strategies.