Welcome to this week’s BANKNOTES newsletter, and the first newsletter of 2023.

Are you still writing 2022 on things? We are!

With a new year comes new trends and initiatives.

Influencer marketing has become a key part of many brands' marketing strategies over the past few years.

With the rise of social media platforms and the ability for individuals to gain large followings, influencers have become a valuable tool for businesses looking to reach new audiences and promote their products or services.

As we start 2023, it's important to stay up-to-date on the latest influencer trends to ensure that your brand is making the most of this marketing strategy.

This week we take a look at some of the key influencer trends that are expected to dominate the market in the coming year. From the rise of micro-influencers to the increasing importance of authenticity and transparency, we'll explore what you need to know to stay ahead of the curve in the world of influencer marketing.

Also this week:

• 30 Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know
• Why Mobile Marketing Is Growing So Fast
• Creator Corner: Meet Keith Lee  

Top influencer marketing trends for 2023

Welcome to 2023. A new year means it’s time to sit down and evaluate your influencer marketing campaign results, set new goals, and create a new strategy for the upcoming year.

Traackr’s 2022 Influencer Marketing Report found that 54% of marketers successfully increased brand awareness with influencer marketing, and 82% said it impacted sales growth.

So what's going to be trending this year?

Whitelisting (creator licensing) will continue to be the name of the influencer marketing game in 2023

Brands that put whitelisted ads at the front and center of their social media campaigns have seen incredible results.

“We have been running influencer whitelisting on Facebook and Instagram for many brands and have consistently seen influencer whitelisting outperform advertising through their own brand page,” says Alexander Pauwelyn, founder of Optimized.

“Especially during Q4 when CPMs are at a peak, we have seen influencer whitelisting reduce CPMs and CPCs drastically and even cut CPAs in half in some cases.”

Recent influencer marketing stats support Pauwelyn’s claims. Lumanu reports that influencer whitelisting outperforms traditional social media ads by 20-50% across consumer categories.

Nurturing organic partnerships with creators

Today’s audiences consume more than 13 hours of online content every day. As a result, consumers recognize paid ads in the blink of an eye and can tell when a product promotion is purely transactional.

“Each year, consumers become increasingly familiar with the world of influencer marketing, and their ability to recognize inauthentic ads is heightened, which can lead to influencer campaigns falling flat,” says Emma Lenhart, agency founder at Avira Media.

“There is a shift to working with influencers who have mastered the art of raw, unfiltered, and in-the-moment content for their followers.”

Nurturing long-term relationships with creators will be a winning strategy

“For companies to be successful in 2023 they need to focus on developing long-term relationships with the influencers that they work with. So often brands focus on one-off transactional relationships and that won't make strategic sense as this industry continues to grow,” says Justin Levy, director of social & influencer marketing at DemandBase.

When you look at influencer marketing data, it makes sense why long-term relationships are required for long-term success.

Collectively found that 60% of repeat influencers saw improved or consistent engagement rates between their first and second posts in the campaign. Additionally, repeat partners who posted three to four times saw two to three times more relevant comments on their final posts compared to their first posts.

New and niche platforms will present growth opportunities

Instagram was a mess in 2022. TikTok is at risk of getting banned in the US (we hope it doesn’t, but there’s a real risk). And Elon Musk acquiring Twitter has been nothing short of a disaster.

As a result, there’s been a huge migration to LinkedIn and a rise in new social networks, decentralized platforms, and niche communities (e.g., Mastodon, Hive, and Torum).

While no one platform has skyrocketed like TikTok did, marketers are starting to take notice of new growth opportunities for creators and brands.

For example, Rand Fishkin from Sparktoro recently posted the blog, Why Marketers, Creators, and Brands Should Start Using Mastodon ASAP.

Fishkin’s reasons included an analysis that shows Mastodon’s traffic surges every time Twitter has a meltdown, how it’s easiest to build a following at the start of a network’s growth curve, and engagement rates are high.

Read more over on BANKNOTES!

Was this email forwarded to you?

Subscribe today to be the first to get all of BANKNOTES' amazing content right to your inbox.

SUBSCRIBE

30 Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know

SEO Journal has a great piece about content marketing statistics that all marketers should make themselves aware of.

Just a few are:

• Content marketing generates three times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing but costs 62% less (Source: CMI)
  
  
• 61% of B2C marketers in CMI’s 2021 study said their 2022 content marketing budget would exceed their 2021 budget.
  
  
• 22% of B2B marketers said they spent 50% or more of their total marketing budget on content marketing.
  
  
• 72% of B2C marketers expected their organization to invest in video marketing in 2022. (Source: CMI)

Find all of the stats here.

Why Mobile Marketing Is Growing So Fast

According to a recent writeup in Forbes, the mobile marketing market was expected to reach $102 billion in 2022, with a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 22%.

"According to Statista, the percentage of retail sales conducted on mobile went from 3.5% in 2018 to almost double that, 6.9%, in 2022 and is expected to reach more than 10% by 2025," Forbes states.

So how do marketers get a piece of that mobile pie? Well, video is key!

"Videos have been exploding all over the internet. One of the major sub-trends in video is the popularity of short videos on apps such as TikTok. Mobile marketers are tapping into this trend with video ads and short educational videos. It's also possible to send customers videos via MMS (multimedia messaging) as long as they've given permission."

Read more over at Forbes.

Creator Corner: Meet Keith Lee

Doing good for the world is always the best policy. It’s Keith Lee’s policy, too, and he’s using food reviews to leave his mark on the world.

Keith recently blew up after posting a review about a struggling pizzeria in Las Vegas. Frank’s Pizzeria in Las Vegas sold more chicken wings the day of Keith’s review than it did over the previous couple of months. Talk about influence. Keith has found the secret sauce: entertaining videos, stories that pull on your heart strings and a TikTok community that wants to see him win. His most recent success? Landing his own Chipotle quesadilla after getting their attention last week.

Follow Keith:

• Instagram
• TikTok

‍