Social commerce will be the most popular influencer marketing campaign objective within the next year, demonstrating the growth of social commerce in influencer marketing, according to new survey research from industry service provider Influencer Intelligence.
The firm’s new report, The Role of Influencers in Social Commerce, based on its survey of 150 marketers across the UK, US, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Middle East, reveals that two-thirds (62 percent) of respondents agree that social commerce will lead campaign objectives.
The report explores the perceptions of marketers across a variety of industries and across a range of platforms including Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch and Snapchat. Key themes include the growth trajectory of social commerce and future trends, social commerce lessons from China for western markets and insights to help marketers optimize ecommerce activity in influencer marketing campaigns.
“Influencer marketing continues to evolve, with influencers playing an increasingly significant role in brands’ social commerce strategies,” said Sarah Penny, content & research director at Influencer Intelligence, in a news release. “As new in-app shopping functionalities develop within social media platforms and marketers grow ever more confident with executing social commerce strategies, this trend is likely to accelerate.”
Social commerce occupying half of influencer budgets and performing key commercial function for brands
The report explores how marketers increasingly integrate social commerce objectives into influencer campaigns, with more than a third (36 percent) including selling products or services as a measurable objective within their influencer marketing for the past two to four years already. The influencer industry has matured rapidly from a brand promotion and storytelling avenue for brands, into a key operational and sales function for many businesses.
This growing confidence in social commerce as an influencer marketing strategy translates into increased spend as one in ten now allocate more than half of their influencer marketing budget to social commerce campaigns.
How & where marketers are spending budgets
The research also reveals
- Shoppable links are the most popular way of driving commerce ROI through influencers, according to almost two-thirds (61 percent) of social media strategists.
- Two-thirds of marketers (68 percent) cited Instagram as the most successful platform for social commerce campaigns
- Almost half (43 percent) of marketers have seen the most success with micro-influencers as part of their social commerce strategy
Shopping live streaming will become a ‘must-do’ practice for all brands within the next year
Half (51 percent) of all marketers in the study said that shoppable live streaming will become a ‘must-do’ practice for all brands within the next year.
A third (36 percent) also predict that influencer marketing campaigns using Augmented Reality (AR) will dominate social commerce strategies by 2024, and 30 percent believe AI powered conversation and personalization within influencer marketing campaigns will also be a leading trend.
As social commerce practices are refined, marketers overwhelmingly agree (74 percent) that it will drive better practices in ROI and measurement within influencer marketing. However, the main barriers to social commerce success in influencer marketing remain obtaining sufficient data from influencers to measure ROI (24 percent) and identifying talent who can deliver sales objectives (21 percent).
“Our research findings demonstrate this trend with marketers agreeing that social commerce will become more prominent as an influencer marketing campaign objective, supported by news that significant budgets are being allocated towards shopping campaigns,” Penny added. “This is something we’re seeing day in day out at Influencer Intelligence, across a variety of sectors, from fashion to food.”
“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 optimize their social commerce activity to get the best out of their increasing spend,” Penny concludes.
