When the coronavirus crisis erupted in full force globally in March 2020, advertising budgets immediately suffered. Everyone was doing their math and, in the estimates, it seemed clear that no one, not even the influencers, was escaping the impact of the situation.
For them, there were also budget cuts , coupled with the complication of creating content in a world in the midst of a pandemic. Last summer, it seemed clear that influencers were also going to have to adapt to the new environment and change how they did things.
Although brands continued to invest in them, for example, they did not want to appear insensitive or that they were caring little about the environment in which consumers moved. No influencer trips on those first dates or glamorous campaigns.
But what happened a year later? How have things really changed for influencers? The truth is that, due to many changes and many adjustments from the first moment, influencer marketing has not disappeared. On the contrary.
One of the HypeAuditor study data on influencers on Instagram indicates that for some stars of that social network, things have gone better in the year of the covid than before. At first, they noticed the blow. Then not anymore. Only 23% of Instagram influencers are now making less money than before the health crisis.
29% maintain the same income and 48%, and this is the important data, earn more now than in the pre-pandemic market. The global influencers market, according to a Statista statistic , has gone from moving 1.7 billion dollars in 2016 to 9.7 billion in 2020 and closing 2021 with a forecast of 13,800. Between 2019 and 2020 it grew more than 3,000 million dollars (2019 closed with 6,500 million global revenues).
Between 2020 and 2021 he will earn 4,000. And as Influencer Marketing Hub’s Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report 2021 pointed out in February , despite all the uncertainties of 2020, influencer marketing remains “highly popular” and “an effective form of marketing.”
Agencies specialized in influencers do not stop appearing, very connected with this increase in investment in the market. In fact, the study data shows a steep decline in campaigns in the first quarters of 2020, but a brutal rebound at the end of the year that has paved the way for what has happened in 2021.
Why the investment grows
In a way, the data is explained because, as they point out in a Warc analysis , right now marketers are valuing influencers even more than they did before the crisis. That is, their valuation has reached maximums and they have positioned themselves as the key piece of any marketing strategy.
Influencers have benefited from the marketing trends that have emerged from the crisis. Marketers want to adapt their campaigns to an environment without physical events or with less traffic to stores (but more online) and they also want to diversify, not put all their eggs in the same basket.
To do this, influencers have become a shortcut. If to this is added the obsession to build “authentic” relationships and to always be available and offering things, this dynamic is even better understood, the analysis completes.
