Customer demands are undergoing seismic shifts every year and so are businesses. With each year comes new expectations, unique brands, new online platforms, and fresh and diverse channels for building brand identities. Businesses are constantly on the lookout for hot strategies to maximize their credibility and conversions. With the recent boom of social media platforms like Tiktok, Instagram, Youtube, and Facebook, influencer marketing has taken the center stage. This unconventional marketing technique strategically blends new and traditional marketing tools to get the brand name across and drive quick sales.

Influencer marketing is carried out by collaborating brands with social media influencers who have established a large online presence and have the power to influence the decisions and likes of the audience they engage. They have the ability to connect with an extremely niche audience among whom the brand reputation grows instantly. Influencer marketing on Instagram is gaining greater prominence since the pandemic, with a wave of youngsters swarming in for an alternate revenue source. Influencers range from celebrity influencers with a million followers to micro and nano influencers with lesser following. Studies show better audience engagement and hence better conversion rates with the latter, as compared to the mega-influencers. Micro-influencer campaigns are budget-friendly and earn higher ROI. Owing to their lesser followership, they can personally engage and interact with the followers, which creates a more genuine and authentic image of themselves as well as the brands they endorse. Hence the future seems more promising for brands fostering long-term micro-influencer partnerships.

The influencer marketing trend has witnessed exponential growth in the past decade, i.e., 800% since 2016. This is now a 16.4-dollar-worth industry which is expected to boom further in 2023. About 90% of consumers trust and follow influencer marketers to make purchasing decisions. Moreover, for every 1$ spent on influencer marketing, brands get an average ROI of $5.2. These statistics prove how influencer marketing is turning out to be the new success mantra for brand building.

The influencers help the brands understand more about their potential audience – their age, location, gender, and other crucial metrics like engagement, impressions, likes and dislikes. Accordingly, the brands can alter their accessories to fit the customer’s expectations. The audience cares a great deal about the opinions of the influencers they follow. They attach trust and credibility to brands endorsed by these influencers rather than follow commercial advertisements. Today, with increased bandwidth and 5G accessibility, people are inclined to consume more video and audio content every day. This gives the influencers greater room for innovation and creativity.

Here are some influencer marketing benefits and trends you could bookmark for 2023 that work best to increase brand awareness and sales – nano and micro-influencers with the right niche audience will deliver the best results; diversity in influencers corresponding to the audience will create a tremendous outcome; and influencers under long-term partnerships work better than on one-time projects. In the GCC countries, especially UAE, influencer marketing is a massive trend, and it is here to stay and evolve.