10 Influencer Marketing Statistics You Need to Know Going into 2020

Influence is not a new phenomenon, so why the recent explosion in popularity? Searches for influencer marketing have risen 90x over the past five years and within a decade, we’ve gone from 0 to 93% of marketers practicing it.

At its simplest, influencer marketing is a partnership between influential people and brands. At its most complex, it’s a living, breathing community built on interactions between brands, customers, content creators, and tastemakers.

AspireIQ recently compiled insights gathered from internal data and surveys, to help brands keep up with the maturing influencer marketing industry. For a full analysis of the social media ecosystem, download the State of Influencer Marketing.

Keep reading for some of the most noteworthy statistics we found.

1. Brands use influencer marketing for more than just promotion

While an AspireIQ survey found that 79.2% of brand marketers listed “brand promotion” as their primary reason for working with influencers, it was closely followed by content creation (62%) and brand reputation (45%).

In fact, 68.8% of brands already leverage influencer content on their websites, social campaigns, emails, print advertisements, or app-store descriptions and another 21.3% say they plan to do so in the future.

2. Instagram is the most widely adopted social media channel

There are eight social media channels that form the core of influencer marketing: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, blogging, Pinterest, Snapchat, and the up-and-coming app TikTok.

Of these, only one channel offers sufficient data and insights into the community, and that’s Instagram. Instagram is also the most widely used by brands and influencers — 96.5% of brands say they have a presence on Instagram, and there are 830,987 influential accounts on the app alone.

3. Video is the fastest growing form of content

YouTube has seen a 34.36% increase in engagement from 2018 to 2019 presumably due to the industry’s shift towards video content. The shift towards more dynamic content will continue into 2020. 82.2% of marketers say they will invest in more video content next year and 49% of marketers say they will increase their brand’s presence on YouTube specifically.

4. TikTok may be the next biggest platform

We predict that brands will begin to invest in TikTok, the video sharing app popular with Gen Z, in 2020. Currently, TikTok does not have an advertising revenue model, so the best way that brands can attack this new app is through influencer marketing and product placement. The Influencer Marketing Factory found that on TikTok, brands typically spend $10K on campaigns and generate upwards of 20 million impressions.

5. Micro-influencers are the highest-value partners

On average, micro-influencers with 10-50K followers have 41.7% higher engagement rates than than macro-influencers with 500K-1M followers. We call this the celebrity effect. Many fans of well-known influencers and celebrities follow them simply because they’re recognizable, and not for a heartfelt reason. This means that each of those fans are less likely to act when called upon.

6. CPE on Instagram has almost doubled since 2018

The current average price per engagement (CPE) is $0.26. Although this rate continues to grow, CPE for influencer posts is hovering at a fraction of that of its advertising equivalent, where the average cost-per-click (CPC) is between $1-2, according to Online Advertising Software, Wordstream.

7. The average number of campaigns created per quarter has increased

Due to increased collaboration efficiency, we’ve seen the number of campaigns created each year grow exponentially. Q2 of 2019 saw a lift of 18% from the previous quarter. We also found that 84% of marketers run more than one campaign each year, with more than half running over 5.

8. The average campaign generates more content than ever

Today’s average campaign features:

• 23 creators
• 50 posts
• 98 pieces of content
• And 108,539 engagements

In 2017, the average campaign only featured 18.5 creators, 26.7 posts 40 pieces of content, and 85,824 engagements. This shows the increased value of influencer content itself, not just influencer’s ability to promote.

9. The average campaign ROI is more than 430%

On average, brands spend $6,249.81 per campaign and earn a media value of $26,986.77. Thus, the average campaign ROI is 432%. If you include sales, clicks, and content value, this number is even higher!

10. Brands save $$$ by leveraging influencer content

On average, by leveraging influencer content, brands save at least 24% on content creation when compared to professional photo shoots. An AspireIQ survey found that brands spend on average, $8,191.23 on a single professional photoshoot, with some saying they spend as much as $100,000 per photo shoot. Even brands that choose to hire internal creative teams to handle their content needs could save hundreds of thousands of dollars each year by leveraging influencers to create branded content.