From $20k to $40m in 3 years: The emergence of influencer marketing explained

Influencer Marketing has been around for some time now, but the online strategy is still evolving into what is becoming a new norm of product marketing. So what is Influencer Marketing and what is it all about?   

Influencer Marketing is a marketing tool where an ‘Influencer’, a person with a substantial social-media following, connects with a brand and shares their opinions about the product to their follower base through Instagram, TikTik, or Youtube just to name a few. The term ‘Influencer’ plays on the fact that they can influence the consumer behaviour of the base that follows them. Each Influencer will attract a different market segment depending on their unique qualities and attributes, which brands can subsequently utilise to find and market their products to their target market in a cost-efficient method.

The online marketing tool has distinct advantages over other traditional marketing strategies. Being able to increase brand awareness within a brand’s target market segment ensures that companies don’t waste their money marketing to consumers who will never buy their product. The technique also allows brands to leverage the trust between the Influencer and their followers which is already established. Consumers are also more likely to actually look at the ad than other forms of social-media marketing instead of just scrolling past because it doesn’t look like an ad in the traditional sense, mirroring a friend sharing their experience with a great product. 

So just how lucrative can the results be? HiSmile, a teeth-whitening product company operating out of the Gold Coast, grew into a company recording yearly revenue of over $40m in just three years. The Founders used $20k of their personal savings to engage regional Influencers with smaller bases, continually reinvesting revenue into more Influencer campaigns. HiSmile now spends $10M on social-media marketing per year and has engaged celebrities like Kylie Jenner and Conor McGregor to endorse their products.

The tool is only becoming more popular as more businesses adapt their marketing strategies. From 2017 to 2019, the industry more than doubled in size from an estimated US$3B to US$6.5B (Statista 2020). With estimates the industry will be worth up to $15B by 2022 (Business Insider 2020), it cannot be denied that Influencer Marketing is a highly popular marketing method for many companies around the world. 

At present, there is one influencer marketing company listed on the ASX – Crowd Media (ASX: CM8).