Micro-influencers have usurped celebrities as the top outlet for investment from brands in marketing campaigns, according to a new study released this week by Rakuten.
The 2019 Influencer Marketing Global Survey shows a general shift away from well-known personalities to smaller, less-exposed social media users. However, cost does not appear to be a primary factor as brands in the US are willing to spend $32,000 on these micro-influencers compared to $39,000 on a celebrity influencer.
Rather than a bigger name being the de facto reason to work with an influencer, marketers are now honing in on a metric called “quality of followers”. They are also being put off widely known personalities due to the fact that more than three quarters of millennials believe that they either don’t like or are indifferent to celebrity endorsements.
Instagram is now the most popular platform for viewing influencer content, ahead of Facebook and YouTube. Influencers are still working overall, regardless of their size, as 88% of consumers say that they have reacted positively to their content and gone on to make a purchase.
Influencers are also driving clicks within the source material as 81% completed a purchase after clicking through from a video or image. Two-thirds say that they trust the recommendations that influencers make as long as they are upfront about the specifics of their relationship with corporate sponsors.
Overall, brands spend 40% of their influencer budgets on micro-influencers with fewer than 30,000 followers on social platforms.
