Prospects and Challenges for Instagram Influencer Advertising in the Year 2023

It’s no exaggeration to say that influencer marketing has advanced at the speed of light in recent years.
Millions of sponsored posts have been published by Instagram influencers, setting a new record.

The fact that this many people are seeing sponsored material in their feeds is strong evidence that influencer marketing is here to stay.

As a matter of fact, by the end of next year, it’s expected that there will be millions upon millions of sponsored postings. What this implies is that the size of the Instagram influencer market throughout the world will nearly quadruple by the end of the year.

There’s little doubt that influencer marketing has a promising future as more and more companies commit resources to it. Here are the major themes that will drive the growth of the influencer marketing next year, as well as the most essential hazards to watch out for, if you’re interested in getting started yourself.

Opportunity

Marketing to Niche Influencers

This year has seen the rise of micro-influencer marketing as consumers seek out and follow specialists in certain niches. The opposite is true for influencers with a million or more followers on Instagram; not only are they avoided by many people, but they are also seen as being more pushy in their promotional efforts.

It’s hard for fans to put their faith in the advice of a celebrity influencer since they’re probably getting paid to promote the product, and they probably haven’t even tried it.

Marketing campaigns based on the recommendation of items that have been tested and enjoyed by the micro-influencers themselves have also gained traction. As a result, micro-influencers have a high rate of interaction from their followers and, more crucially, their content is both highly regarded and very topical.

According to the latest survey on influencer marketing, 70% of marketers believe that authenticity and openness are crucial to the success of influencer marketing. Micro-influencers are most successful in generating engagement because they are able to build credible relationships with their fan bases.

In turn, the higher the engagement rate between an influencer and their target audience, the quicker the connection is built since the audience can easily relate to the influencer. 82% of customers feel they are more inclined to act on the advice of a micro-influencer. The latter do this by investigating the problems encountered by their followers and proposing answers to those problems.

That’s why it makes sense to team up with a micro-influencer to reach the right people and spread the word about your products.

Nanomarketing: Influencer Promotion at the Nanoscale

We’re making things even more little now! As compared to micro-influencers, whose audiences are already very specific and engaged, nano-influencers’ niche of 1,000 to 10,000 followers makes them even more so.

Micro-influencers are Instagram users who have a large following because their followers believe their recommendations more than those of celebrities, who are typically paid to promote products.
As a result, businesses that want to have an authentic effect on their target audiences will collaborate with nano-influencers, a number that is expected to expand. If you’re in the market for a collaboration of this kind, your top priority should be finding an influencer who can generate high-quality written material, genuine recommendations, and trustworthy advocacy on your behalf.
For instance, you may be able to work with them on content development because they won’t require as much autonomy as micro-influencers.

Several resources exist to help you locate credible micro- and nano-influencers, such as Respona, Google, social networking sites, and the Combin Growth search engine.

Obstacle

False followers

From the dawn of influencer marketing, this has been a serious issue. Brands still have a lot of trouble finding authentic micro and nano-influencers because of the prevalence of false followers.

This piece from Fashionista details a recent report that provides context for the larger issue. Instagram fraud, including phoney followers and likes, is estimated to cost marketers $1.3 billion in 2022 and may rise to $1.5 billion the following year, according to the findings.

However, one of the researchers, Professor Roberto Cavazos of the Merrick School of Business at the University of Baltimore, said that 25% of the influencers’ followers participated in fraud.

While “influencer marketing” is a booming industry with a lot of promise, it also has a lot of fraud and might do a lot of harm.

Julien Lacy, a digital marketing specialist from IsAccurate, has provided the following advice for businesses on how to identify phoney influencers:

See the interaction rates and subscriber counts side by side. If an influencer has a disproportionately high number of likes or shares relative to their follower count, it’s likely that a large amount of their audience is made up of spammers.
Read the feedback carefully. Plenty of empty responses, such as those made up of symbols or emoticons, or replies from the same individual, might be an indication of phoney involvement.
Test to see if interest levels rise. An indicator of phoney followers is an influencer’s post with an abnormally high amount of likes, comments, and shares.
Examine some of the teamwork that has already taken place. Fake followers might be a contributing factor if the influencer has no history of working with companies.

Calculating Influencer Marketing’s Return on Investment

Measuring return on investment is difficult for online firms using Instagram influencers, and that problem is unlikely to go away by 2023, according to research. Just 18% of marketers, according to a recent poll by eConsultancy, said they were able to include influencer marketing data into their total digital marketing calculations.
This is a genuine battle, no doubt about it. As measuring return on investment is seen as “too much of a problem” by marketers, companies considering this tactic should prepare for it ahead of time. Misleading measures, such as the number of likes or followers, just add fuel to the fire (we know this can be fake).