Grapevine Study Shows State of Young Influencer Marketing Industry

Influencer marketing – a marketing method in which brands create campaigns that focus on individuals or specific groups of like-minded consumers and in which they often use celebrities to send out the message – has grown in popularity in recent months. The marketing style has its own TMC channel that professes its potential over and over again.

For example, contributors have written since July that consumers have shown a desire for honesty in brands’ campaigns, that businesses can see a return of $6.50 for every dollar they spend on influence if they do it right, and that as many as 92 percent of consumers trust the word of the right influencer. Those are some big potential followings with even bigger possible returns.

Grapevine, a prominent online influencer service, helps connect brands with content creators on platforms such as YouTube and Instagram. It has released its first annual report, “2016 Influencer Marketing Benchmarks,” which looks at a wide range of industry metrics such as cost-per-click and compares popular marketing services such as Google AdWords and Facebook Advertising with the influencer marketing found on its own site. It also looks at the total return on investment companies can expect to earn when using influencers to promote their products. As one of the first comprehensive reports on the industry, it has the potential to shape how brands look at this type of marketing in the months ahead.

Grapevine CEO Brendan Lattrell noted the state of his industry and boiled down the effect that this report could have on how companies decide to lay down their advertising dollars.

“With influencer marketing still in its infancy, there’s a lot of ambiguity around campaign efficacy and whether this channel can generate results for brands,” Lattrell said. “Our goal with ‘2016 Influencer Marketing Benchmarks’ is to give marketers the clarity they need to make educated decisions about present and future influencer marketing spends.”

His comment that the industry is young and unproven shows a lot about the confidence Lattrell has in his own company and about the influencer method as a whole. There is no fix for its young state except to wait for age. However, it isn’t often that a CEO admits the variability inherent in a business model. The 2016 report offers a lot of detail about where the market stands, but it can only grasp at straws when trying to determine where the market will end up. That too will only come with time.

A copy of the report can be found from Grapevine at this link.