With the rise in Influencer Marketing, questions regarding the strategy’s long-term abilities have been brought up. Many companies recognize the popularity of influencer marketing right now but are hesitant to invest too heavily in case the strategy faces a drop in popularity or effectiveness. In order to look at the future of influencer marketing, we need to look at its past.

This article will address how influencer marketing has evolved over the last few years and where it is headed. 2008 – 2012: Social Media Influencers Begin Raising Awareness With the advent of social media came a new way to spread awareness. People wanted information regarding the best restaurants and entertainment, so platforms such as Yelp and YouTube were used in that capacity. These platforms were the first of many to come that would give consumers direct access to a company’s product. Now consumers can tweet or post a video on their social media regarding what they think of a product, and they can instantly reach the eyes and ears of many.

This change in consumer behavior has enabled so many influencers to become effective brand evangelists just by posting about something they love. 2012 – 2015: Influencer Marketing Becomes More Immersive With social media’s popularity, more people are using those platforms to discuss products. Unfortunately, this had caused some problems for marketers, as it could be difficult for them to monitor which of these posts were positive or negative reviews. With the emergence of social media influencers, it became easier to discern if a post was positive or negative. Since then, many marketers are now using influencer marketing because they know there is a very high chance of consumers seeing their reviews. Influencer marketing has also become more immersive which leads to better conversion rates as mentioned earlier.

2015 – Present: Social Media Influencers Redefine How Marketing Is Performed In 2015, many big names in the marketing world started gaining attention from their social media posts. Companies that are well known for their products or services began using those same platforms to tell stories and share different points of view about them. Some of these influencers include: With this new way of marketing, there is a shift in how companies are seen. If you think back to when you first heard about a product and what you thought of it, it was probably because other people had been talking about it on social media. The same thing can happen with influencers.

If a company has no awareness among their target audience, they may consider that they should start using an influencer marketing strategy to increase the popularity of their brand. This could improve their brand’s engagement rates and help more consumers know who they are and what they stand for, which will lead to higher sales as discussed earlier in this article.

With a nearly 15-year presence in the market, influencer marketing has proven to be effective, credible, and most importantly, sustainable for most businesses. Companies that have not already implemented influencer marketing should consider the data gathered since 2008 and take their first steps into the influencer marketing realm.