Emarketer Influencer Marketing in 2023 Roundup
Emarketer Influencer Marketing in 2023 Roundup
Emarketer Influencer Marketing in 2023 Roundup
R O U N D U P
INFLUENCER MARKETING
IN 2023
June 2023
As brands look to stretch their dollars amid an overall US ad slowdown, influencer marketing is one area ripe
for exploration. eMarketer has curated this roundup of insights, articles, and interviews to help marketers
understand how to find influencers, how generative AI will affect the creator economy, and the impacts of
potential TikTok bans on advertising.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
6 6 tactics for finding small influencers who provide big returns
LTK’s creators run their businesses on LTK, simplifying creator selection and
scaling creator marketing while eliminating privacy issues in communicating
with creators.
A recent national study conducted in March 2023 found that Gen Z and
millennials trust creators more than ads or celebrities. The majority also
regularly buy creator recommendations online and in-store.
It’s been proven that brands that continue to increase their marketing
investment during a recession and recalibrate their spend to more effective
media are more likely to improve their growth during and post recession.
For brands targeting Gen Z and millennials, influencer marketing can be an
important part of a successful marketing plan.
Brands should prepare for the funding chill to continue into 2023 as
economic conditions remain tough, but remember that investment is
only one part of the picture.
“It’s called the creator economy, not the investor economy,” said Brendan
Gahan, partner and chief social officer at Mekanism.
After generating nearly $250 million in sales last year, YouTube creators
Logan Paul and KSI’s energy drink Prime became the first creator-led
brand to have a Super Bowl commercial this year.
Prime’s success will inspire other creators to follow suit. But launching
a business requires a different mindset than creating content, said
The leading companies across the top 10
Alessandro Bogliari, founder and CEO of The Influencer Marketing types of creator economy services
Factory, suggesting that not every creator will go that route. As
a result, brands will continue to be an integral part of creator
collectively brought in roughly $9.50 billion
monetization this year. in revenues in 2022, per influencer
marketing software company NeoReach.
“We’ve had luck with big influencers, and we’ve had tremendous failure
with big influencers, and we’ve had sleeper hits [with] micro-influencers,”
said furniture rental company Fernish’s CMO Evelyn Krasnow, speaking
at eTail West 2023 in March. Finding the right influencers is “going to be
trial and error,” said Krasnow.
Don’t trial influencers heedlessly. Here are tips for finding smaller
influencers who can reach niche, targeted audiences.
Outdoor goods company Solo Brands has had success with micro-
influencers who already love the brand. “I think authenticity around
affiliates that have good content around your brand and are true either
users or advocates of the brand has been more effective for us than
influencers where people can kind of see between the lines,” said CEO
and director John Merris.
Brands looking for a way to promote their products should look to brand
ambassadorships (longer-term relationships with creators that already
have familiarity with the brand). Here are three reasons why.
“The best influencers are the ones who are passionate about your
brand,” said Sneha Lakkaraju, head of marketing and product
development at Pandia Health, which sells birth control medication and
acne treatment online. “If you have a mission they can get behind, that
passion comes easier.”
Pandia Health has been working with several creators across social
media platforms, including Tamra Moon.
“Tamra has been a huge advocate of Pandia Health, and her take on
the brand has not only helped drive new customers but also helped
our marketing team discover some new, interesting ways to talk about
our product,” said Lakkaraju. “She shared narratives regarding her
experience with birth control, reproductive health, and the stigmas
around talking about reproductive health that resonated with her
audience and helped our team generate content to answer some of
the common questions she received.”
“Long-term creator partnerships [like brand ambassadorships] allow Longer partnerships with brand ambassadors enhance the
brands to showcase a more robust, authentic narrative about the way in ambassadors’ content, but they also create a better feedback loop,
which their product or service can improve someone’s life,” said Brianna helping brands and influencers optimize campaigns, Angela Seits, head
Ziegler, marketing manager at Fernish. of strategic planning and insights at PMG, said during our virtual summit
in December 2022.
Ziegler said Fernish is working with Sruthi Jayadevan while she moves
from Dallas to Los Angeles, giving her followers a close-up look at how “If you want conversion analysis, give your influencers the right tools
Fernish helps consumers as they move from city to city. to give you those metrics,” said Lakkaraju. “Discount codes, UTM links,
etc., are great ways to connect social [accounts] to your conversion
Lakkaraju also emphasized the importance of brand ambassadors numbers.”
incorporating brand content into their everyday lives.
This helps both the influencer see how they’re doing and gives the
“[Ambassador] Chante Williams didn’t necessarily make the product marketing team a clear picture of what the influencer marketing funnel
front-and-center in her posts,” she said. “Her posts would be focused looks like and where to optimize.
on her day-to-day life, like reading in her room or walking through town,
but Pandia’s product was always in the background or our website on a A win-win: It’s not just brands that benefit. Jane Ko, social influencer and
computer screen behind her.” the blogger behind A Taste of Koko, said establishing long-term brand
relationships helps her to better understand the brand and deliver more
Though it was a departure from Pandia Health’s normal content style, it authentic content to her followers.
was very effective.
“I personally love longer-term partnerships and I am selective with the
“Her posting drummed up loads of conversations in her comments and brands that I do want to be in a long-term relationship with,” she said. “It
produced some of the highest-performing ads of the influencers we gives me more time to become familiar with the brand and authentically
worked with,” said Lakkaraju. “And in a way, it got our messaging across integrate [it] into my lifestyle if I’m not using them already.”
perfectly. Pandia’s goal is to make getting birth control easy, so we fit
seamlessly into the background of your everyday life.”
Rodney Mason Additionally, a 2022 LTK study identified that Gen Z and millennials—the
Head of Marketing, Brand Partnerships, LTK two generations most aligned with creators—are least impacted by inflation
Seventy-two percent of the US population believe in part because their income rises more closely with the rate of inflation.
the US economy is in a recession according to a But creators are not only popular with Gen Z and millennials. LTK’s “Gen Z
March 2023 national shopper study conducted Shopper Study” also identified that nearly two-thirds (63%) of the general
by LTK. The Conference Board’s Leading Economic population shop creators online based on creators’ recommendations, and
Index, a reliable source for identifying recessions, also 79% have favorable opinions about creator content.
indicates US recessionary signals.
Creator shoppers in the “Gen Z Shopper Study” were three times as likely
However, there is a silver lining in recessionary times for marketers. The to say their buying power is stable or improved and their intent to purchase
average span of a recession is just 10 months, with an average recovery time has increased YoY versus those who don’t shop through creators. Twenty
of 57 months, according to The National Bureau of Economic Research. It’s million people shop creator stores on the LTK platform each month. The
been proven that brands that maintain or increase their marketing investment company’s Q1 2023 clicks and gross merchandise volume saw double-digit
during a recession and reallocate to better performing media options, grow growth over the year prior, in spite of economic headwinds.
most during and post recession.
Digital media buyers are following suit with consumer preferences by
A recently released 20 year recessionary study by Analytic Partners found an investing more in creators. The Interactive Advertising Bureau released an
average of 17% growth in incremental sales for brands that invested more in ad buyer study in May 2023 that found digital ad buyers are planning more
advertising during a recession. The analysis also reveals that 60% of brands campaigns to run against creator-generated content than Hollywood-
that increased marketing spend during the last recession saw an increased produced content, with short-form video being the most planned format.
ROI improvement, and more than 50% of those brands saw increased ROI in
back-to-back years. As recessionary trends continue, the proven smart strategy for brands is to
continue marketing investment at traditional or even increased levels, while
The same study also identified that brands that grew during a recession not recalibrating a portion of advertising investment toward influencers, whom
only maintained or increased marketing spend, but most often recalibrated Gen Z and millennials trust more than ads.
their ad investment to optimize for behavioral shifts in the market.
To learn more about the benefits of investing in creator marketing in a
For brands targeting Gen Z and millennials, influencer campaigns offer a tough economic climate, check out LTK’s webinar, “Creator Marketing for
significant opportunity to improve ad dollar spend in recessionary times. Recessionary Times.”
LTK’s 2023 “Gen Z Shopper Study” found that millennials and Gen Z
trust creators more than ads or celebrities with 77% of Gen Z and 67% of
millennials shopping in-store based on creators’ recommendations.
TikTok’s massive revenue growth over the past few years has begun to
slow down. But the app is nowhere near finished reshaping the social and
digital ad markets—which it will continue to do even if it gets banned.
• TikTok has drawn more advertisers onto its platform, but many
are struggling to master its nuances, according to several media
agency sources. Instead of learning to trust a new platform, brands
are instead having trouble doing what is needed to produce content
at the speed and volume required to scale up on TikTok.
This eMarketer Roundup features a compiled collection of Watch industry thought leaders on webinars, and ask questions live
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