Marketers increasingly look to influencers for sales

More than a third of marketers already include selling products or services as a measurable objective within their influencer marketing and one in ten now allocate more than half of their influencer marketing budget to social commerce campaigns, according to research* from Influencer Intelligence.

Why it matters

The influencer industry has matured from a brand promotion and storytelling avenue into an important operational and sales function for many businesses. 

Takeaways

• Three quarters of marketers (74%) believe the growth of social commerce will drive better practices in ROI and measurement within influencer marketing
• Six in ten marketers (61%) regard shoppable links as the way to integrate social commerce into influencer strategy. 
• Half (51%) agree that shoppable live streaming will become a ‘must’ for all brands within the next year
• Four in ten (43%) have seen the most success with micro-influencers as part of their social commerce strategy.
• The main barriers to social commerce success in influencer marketing remain obtaining sufficient data from influencers to measure ROI (24%) and identifying talent who can deliver sales objectives (21%).

Key quote

“As social commerce becomes increasingly embedded into brands’ influencer activity, there are signs that marketers will grow more experimental into the future, exploring new formats, features and technology. However, certain pain points continue to pose challenges and the platforms and marketers will need to identify new ways to optimise their social commerce activity to get the best out of their increasing spend” – Sarah Penny, Content & Research Director at influencer marketing platform Influencer Intelligence.

*The Role of Influencers in Social Commerce is based on a survey of 150 marketers across the UK, US, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Middle East as well as a series of in-depth interviews with a range of influencer marketing experts.

Read more on the evolving relationship between marketers and influencers in WARC’s new report, produced in partnership with Impact.com: Aligning marketers and influencers: Shifting perspectives on influencer marketing across the funnel.

Sourced from Influencer Intelligence