Wonder

Research Outline

Prepared for Tim O. | Delivered February 5, 2020

Influencer Marketing and Influencers

Goals

To gain a better understanding of the importance of the influencer market.

Early Findings

 Influencer Marketing Hub released its "The State of Influencer Marketing 2019: Benchmark Report." containing survey responses provided by 800 marketing agencies, brands, and other relevant professionals. The survey questions and responses were developed to determine the views and build insight into the thoughts of the participants concerning influencer marketing.
A key finding from this survey is that despite rumors to the contrary, the influencer market is going strong and showing no signs of slowing. 
Platforms, where influencers have a huge presence, include Instagram and YouTube.
 YouTube is currently the largest platform in use. It is the second biggest website, behind Google. 
Instagram is the fastest-growing social media platform. IT currently has over 1 billion monthly active users posting 95 million photos and videos and uploading 400 million Instagram Stories daily. 
The number of influencer marketing platforms has grown significantly since 2015. In 2015, there were 190 influencer platforms and agencies, a number that increased to 335 in 2016, 420 in 2017, and 740 in 2018. That means 320 new influencer platforms and agencies entered the market in one 12-month span. 
Businesses and firms who partner with influencers gain an average earned media value of $5.20 per every $1 they spend on influencer marketing.
Not every business or firm who partners with influencers profit from it. with approximately 25% of businesses either lose money or just break even. The main reasons these businesses lose instead of gain from working with an influencer is that those in charge of influencer marketing don't fully understand it and partner with the wrong influencer, such as an influencer whose followers are not consumers who would be interested in the product or service the partnering company provides. 

As awareness of the power of influencer marketing grows, so does interest in it. According to Google, searches for "influencer marketing" through the Google search engine increased from 3,900 per month in 2015 to 61,000 per month in 2019, an increase of 3,500%.
Influencer marketing is closely linked to content marketing. So closely linked that influencer marketing is considered by many to be the best delivery mechanism for content marketing. 
The above data has been pulled from this client provided website: https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-2019-benchmark-report 