While following the rise of social networks and creative platforms, influencers have greatly gained in importance, both in terms of their number and their impact on consumption patterns, both for information and for products. . Thanks to their media reach and their influence on the act of purchasing, they are gradually turning into partners for brands. According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, the influencer marketing market is expected to grow to $ 15 billion by 2022, making it one of the fastest growing sectors.
In this sense, it should be said that influencer marketing is and will remain an essential lever of a successful marketing strategy. Faced with its rapid evolution, it is essential to keep abreast of the latest dynamics in order to be able to exploit all the opportunities that it presents. In its new white paper, Stellar, provider of influencer marketing platform and services, has surrounded itself with 37 experts to unveil fourteen trends to watch in 2022.
Marketing will rely more on storytelling
Little by little, traditional sales techniques are running out of steam. It is no longer enough to praise the merits of a product to succeed in selling it, particularly in the face of generations Y and Z, hermetic to promotional speeches which sometimes ring false. Today they prefer to create a strong link with the brand, which now sells an experience or a lifestyle rather than a simple product.
Trends for ad spend in 2022
For this reason, a company must put forward values with which potential customers can identify. How? ‘Or’ What ? Through storytelling. As Inès Sivignon, web editor and influencer explains: “ Through a common story and / or shared between the brand and the influencer, you capture more of your audience’s attention. Everyone loves stories. OneSpot study even found that 92% of customers want ads that look like stories “.
By downloading this white paper on trends, you will also obtain the point of view of Amélie Favre Guittet, B2B Influencer, President and Co-Founder of Talent Management Groupe and of Marcel Nakam, Associate Managing Director of the Jonak shoe brand.
To succeed in getting consumers to subscribe to your brand, it is therefore necessary to create a whole story around what is promoted, what influencers can help. Whether it’s a personal story or a fun story, consumers care about a good story. Inserting the product experience or the brand experience within a narrative allows you to discover a company in a more authentic and credible way, and thus to adhere to its values and to choose more its products or services.
In this sense, storytelling will establish itself a little more as an essential element of an influencer marketing strategy, provided that the influencer is allowed to express his own vision of things to offer more authenticity to his speech.
B2B influencer marketing, the new holy grail of brands
Gradually, B2B influencer marketing is taking shape. According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, 31% of companies that collaborate with influencers today are in the B2B sector. The latter are real experts in their field of action. Freelance in the provision of services, entrepreneur, employee within a structure… He exercises an activity which allows him to bring an additional professional dimension. In this way, the key element is the power of their expertise. ” Impossible for a company to talk about employer brand (employer advocacy), marketing customer journey, SAAS tool without a professional who will master the codes. If the profession of a B2C influencer does not matter, that of a B2B partner is fundamental According to Clifford Mahu, co-founder of the marketing agency The Roaring Twenties, who intervenes as an expert in the white paper.
This potential can be exploited on very specific channels, such as LinkedIn. Unsurprisingly, the book reveals that it is the most used social platform by B2B companies with 94% usage, followed closely by Twitter (87%) and Facebook (84%). It can even push B2B decision-makers to buy: 45.6% of them discovered content that led to a purchase on LinkedIn. By purchasing this report, you will discover several B2B influencer marketing campaign ideas to be carried out on the social network, but also on other media such as a blog.
Twitch successes: when streamers are popular
Although it was gradually gaining popularity, the Twitch streaming platform has grown in importance this year. It now holds 72.3% of the market share of streaming platforms, far ahead of YouTube Gaming (15.6%) or Facebook Gaming (12.1%), reveals Stellar. Since its acquisition by Amazon in 2014 and the successive confinements in 2020, the platform has attracted a diverse audience, several types of streamers: art, music, cooking, fitness, media, talk-show … Content outside of gaming has even quadrupled on Twitch in over the past three years.
” Unlike Twitch, I have a lot more restraint on YouTube », Explains Lilian 31, influencer and streamer on Twitch and YouTube. Indeed, in a continuous quest for authenticity and proximity, the distribution of Live content wins the hearts of users. They can interact lightly with their favorite streamers via the chat and support them in a few clicks through donations, the purchase of badges or simply by subscribing.
Twitch is proving valuable to brands because of its unique visibility and conversion opportunities. Whether a live lasts 2 hours or 24 hours, it allows you to easily convey a message, but not just any old way. ” Our recommendation: do not talk only about your brand and its products, favor interactions and games, talk about news in your sector – except of course for product launches where this will be relevant », Explains expert Pierre-Alain Houard, Marketing Director of Xiaomi Technology.
By downloading this guide, you will also discover the advice of Romain Sombret, founder of MCES and the points of view of Erwin Lapraille, Managing Director of RTL Belgium radios and Christopher Badics, Digital Coordinator and Content Producer of RLT Belgium.
Lives Shopping: the emergence of teleshopping 2.0
Successive confinements have damaged physical stores, causing upheavals in our purchasing and consumption habits. In France, online shopping reached 112 billion euros in 2020 and the share of online sales in retail rose from 9.8% to 13.4%, reveals Stellar’s white paper.
Image: Instagram
For this reason, brands then had to take over the web and turn to influencers. More and more of them are hosting lives to promote products or services. These contents appeal to Internet users because they combine entertainment, with a more spontaneous content creator, and a sense of urgency through exclusive and limited offers. ” In a live performance, we not only share the product we are trying to promote, but also who we really are and that is what the communities follow you for. On the occasion of the Live Shopping that I carried out with Hellofresh and for which I had to highlight their Box Apéro, I invited my community to have an “aperitif” at home », Explains Maria Del Rio, Radio & TV host, actress and Instagram influencer.
Social Selling and Live Shopping therefore have many advantages: streamlining the purchasing process, improving visibility, increasing proximity to the audience and therefore increasing engagement … To achieve these results, you can use the “Marketer’s To-Do List” in the Stellar guide.
AR, VR and Métavers: what future for influence?
The metaverse is undoubtedly the main subject of the end of the year 2021, especially since Facebook, now Meta, seized on this theme by announcing a new economic dynamic. The company has invested more than $ 10 billion in this project.
Concretely, the metaverse is a parallel virtual world where everything we do in the real world is potentially doable. In this universe, we can create an avatar and communicate with other individuals, including those close to them. The metaverse appears as the sum of all augmented realities (AR), virtual worlds (VR) and the Internet. In this universe, we will be able to take part in a concert, buy clothes… Endless possibilities which still need to be clarified.
What about for businesses? Brand initiatives remain few in the metaverse, but are however starting to emerge, specifically through gaming and NTFs, and will undoubtedly be even more numerous in 2022. ” Extending far beyond its gaming roots, the Metaverse is emerging as a youth hub in which the future of socialization, entertainment and creativity is already at stake. », Explains Kristel Vanderlinden, Managing Partner at The Future Laboratory Europe.
Image: Meta
It should therefore be said that this new virtual universe is gradually changing the way we consume. Brands will have to create their digital doubles to consolidate their status as innovative and cutting-edge companies. To do this, they will have to turn to ambassadors. They can use the metaverse to create events and meet their subscribers more easily.
Multiple creative possibilities will emerge, as was the case with artificial intelligence or social networks a few years ago. By downloading this report, you will discover many tips for taking your first steps in the metaverse.
Nine other dynamics are revealed through this guide:
- Transparency and professionalism: towards more supervised influencer marketing;
- Responsible influencer marketing: a boom in committed campaigns with strong values;
- Amplification and coherence: a more global vision to perform better;
- Mix of influencers, genres and formats: the importance of varying the pleasures;
- Long-term collaborations: partnerships of indefinite duration;
- Co-construction: a new actor comes to the table;
- TikTok, Reals, Shorts …;
- Podcast: the growth of the influencer podcast;
- Tech and Data: towards more integrity and measurement.
To discover all the influencer marketing trends for 2022, don’t forget to download the full report from Stellar !