Influencer marketing: trends to follow in 2022

While following the rise of social networks and creative platforms, influencers have greatly increased in importance, both in terms of their number and their impact on consumption patterns, both for information and for products. . Thanks to their media reach and their influence on the act of purchase, they are gradually becoming partners for brands. According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, the influencer marketing market is expected to grow to $15 billion by 2022, making it one of the fastest growing industries.

In this sense, it should be said that influence marketing is and will remain an essential lever of a successful marketing strategy. Faced with its rapid evolution, it is essential to keep informed of the latest dynamics in order to be able to exploit all the opportunities it presents. In its new white paper, Stellar, provider of influencer marketing platform and services, has surrounded itself with 37 experts to unveil fourteen trends to follow in 2022.

Marketing will rely more heavily on storytelling

Little by little, traditional sales techniques are running out of steam. It is no longer enough to praise the merits of a product to succeed in selling it, particularly in the face of generations Y and Z, hermetic to promotional speeches that sometimes ring false. Today they prefer to create a strong link with the brand, which now sells an experience or a way of life rather than a simple product.

For this reason, a company must put forward values ​​with which potential customers can identify. How ? Thanks to storytelling. As Inès Sivignon, web editor and influencer, explains: “Through a common and/or shared story between the brand and the influencer, you capture more of your audience's attention. Everyone loves stories. A OneSpot study even found that 92% of customers want ads that look like stories.”

By downloading this trends white paper, you will also get the point of view of Amélie Favre Guittet, B2B Influencer, President and Co-Founder of Talent Management Groupe and Marcel Nakam, Associate General Manager of the Jonak shoe brand.

To succeed in getting consumers to adhere to your brand, it is therefore necessary to create a whole story around what is promoted, which influencers can help with. Whether it's a personal or funny story, consumers become attached to a good story. Inserting the product experience or the brand experience into a narrative makes it possible to discover a company in a more authentic and credible way, and thus to adhere to its values ​​and to choose more of its products or services.

In this sense, storytelling will establish itself a little more as an essential element of an influence marketing strategy, provided that the influencer is allowed to express his own vision of things to offer more authenticity to his speech.

B2B influencer marketing, the new holy grail for brands

Gradually, B2B influencer marketing is taking shape. According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, 31% of companies working with influencers today are in the B2B sector. They are true experts in their field. Freelance in the provision of services, business manager, employee within a structure… He exercises an activity which allows him to bring an additional professional dimension. In this way, the key element is the power of their expertise. “It is impossible for a company to talk about employer branding (employer advocacy), marketing customer journey, SAAS tool without a professional who will master the codes. If the profession of a B2C influencer does not matter, that of a B2B partner is fundamental”, according to Clifford Mahu, co-founder of the marketing agency Les Années Folles, who intervenes as an expert in the white paper.

This potential is to be exploited on very specific channels, such as LinkedIn. Unsurprisingly, the book reveals that it is the most used social platform by B2B companies with 94% usage, followed closely by Twitter (87%) and Facebook (84%). It can even push B2B decision makers to buy: 45.6% of them discovered content that led to a purchase on LinkedIn. By obtaining this report, you will discover several B2B influence marketing campaign ideas to be carried out on the social network, but also on other media such as a blog.

Twitch success: when streamers are popular

Although it was gradually becoming popular, the Twitch streaming platform has gained prominence this year. It now holds 72.3% of the market share of streaming platforms, far ahead of YouTube Gaming (15.6%) or Facebook Gaming (12.1%), reveals Stellar. Since its takeover by Amazon in 2014 and the successive confinements in 2020, the platform has attracted a diversified audience, several types of streamers: art, music, cooking, fitness, media, talk shows... Non-gaming content has even quadrupled on Twitch at course of the last three years.

“Unlike Twitch, I have a lot more restraint on YouTube,” says Lilian 31, influencer and streamer on Twitch and YouTube. Indeed, in a continuous quest for authenticity and proximity, the broadcast of Live content wins the hearts of users. The latter can interact lightly with their favorite streamers via chat and support them in a few clicks through donations, the purchase of badges or simply by subscribing.

Twitch is proving valuable to brands due to its unique exposure and conversion opportunities. Whether a live lasts 2 hours or 24 hours, it makes it easy to convey a message, but not just anyhow. "Our recommendation: not to talk only about your brand and its products, favor interactions and games, talk about the news of your sector - except of course for product launches where this will be relevant", explains expert Pierre -Alain Houard, Marketing Director of Xiaomi Technology.

By downloading this guide, you will also discover the advice of Romain Sombret, founder of MCES and the points of view of Erwin Lapraille, Managing Director of RTL Belgium radios and Christopher Badics, Digital Coordinator and Content Producer of RLT Belgium.

Lives Shopping: the emergence of teleshopping 2.0

Successive confinements have damaged physical stores, causing upheavals in our purchasing and consumption habits. In France, online purchases reached 112 billion euros in 2020 and the share of online sales in retail increased from 9.8% to 13.4%, Stellar's white paper reveals.

For this reason, brands then had to take over the web and turn to influencers. More and more of them are hosting lives to promote products or services. This content appeals to Internet users because it combines entertainment, with a more spontaneous content creator, and a sense of urgency through exclusive and limited offers. “In a live we not only share the product we are trying to promote, but also who we really are and that is why the communities follow you. On the occasion of the Live Shopping that I did with Hellofresh and for which I had to highlight their Box Apéro, I invited my community to have an “apéro” at home”, explains Maria Del Rio, Facilitator radio & TV, actress and Instagram influencer.

Social Selling and Live Shopping therefore have many advantages: streamlining the purchasing process, improving visibility, increasing proximity to the audience and therefore engagement... To achieve these results, you can use the “Marketer’s To-do list” present in the Stellar guide.

AR, VR and Metavers: what future for influence?

The metaverse is undoubtedly the main subject of the end of 2021, especially since Facebook, now Meta, took hold of this theme by announcing a new economic dynamic. The company has invested more than $10 billion in this project.

Concretely, the metaverse is a parallel virtual world where everything we do in the real world is potentially feasible. In this universe, you can create an avatar and communicate with other individuals, including those close to you. The Metaverse appears as the sum of all Augmented Realities (AR), Virtual Worlds (VR), and the Internet. In this universe, we can take part in a concert, buy clothes… Infinite possibilities that still need to be clarified.

What about businesses? Brand initiatives remain few on the metaverse, but are beginning to emerge, specifically through gaming and NTFs, and will no doubt be even more numerous in 2022. “Extending well beyond its gaming roots, the metaverse is becoming a youth hub where the future of socializing, entertainment and creativity is already at stake,” says Kristel Vanderlinden, Managing Partner at The Future Laboratory Europe.

It should therefore be said that this new virtual universe is gradually changing our way of consuming. Brands will have to create their digital doubles to consolidate their status as innovative and cutting-edge companies. To do this, they will have to turn to ambassadors. The latter will be able to use the metaverse to create events and meet their subscribers more easily.

Multiple creative possibilities will emerge, as was the case with artificial intelligence or social networks a few years ago. By downloading this report, you will discover many tips for taking your first steps in the metaverse.

Nine other dynamics are revealed through this guide:

To discover all the influencer marketing trends for 2022, be sure to download Stellar's full report!