10 Influencer Marketing Trends You Need to Know in 2024

Are you an entrepreneur starting to build a digital marketing strategy for your apparel business? Or maybe you’re an up-and-coming trendsetter trying to figure out how to make money as an influencer? Either way, whether you’re looking to collaborate with influencers or become one, it’s important for you to be in the know about the latest influencer marketing trends.

The world of influencer marketing revolves around social media platforms, so marketing trends can be quite unpredictable and change quickly. To help you get a sense of where the influencer marketing industry is going this year, we’ve compiled a list of the 10 most important influencer marketing trends.

But, before we dive in, let’s explore why you should care about influencer marketing.

Why keeping up with influencer marketing matters

Many people make the mistake of underestimating or dismissing the influencer marketing world as something unserious. The truth is, it’s a very real and lucrative industry and, like any other industry, trends have a lot of say in who becomes successful and who doesn’t.

If you’re a business owner thinking about collaborating with influencers, it’s important for you to be in the loop about influencer and content trends. This way, you’ll be able to make smarter decisions about what kind of influencers you want to collaborate with and how to best get your brand messaging across. Plus, if you’re keeping up with trends, you’ll likely get a better return on your investment, or ROI, on your sponsored content campaigns.

Source: Pexels

And if you’re planning to become an influencer, these marketing trends will be your bread and butter. One thing is to keep up with trends on social media platforms, but it’s another to be in the know about what’s happening in the business. When you stay on top of news in the influencer marketing world, you’ll have extra time to prepare for any upcoming or potential changes.

So, let’s take a look at everything you need to know about the most important influencer marketing trends of 2024.

Influencer marketing trends for 2024

The world of influencer marketing can change pretty quickly. In this list, we’ll take a look at some of the key trends you need to keep in mind for 2024.

Micro-influencers take the lead

Nowadays, you don’t need hundreds of thousands of followers to make an impact. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Over the past few years, social media influencers with fewer followers have consistently shown higher engagement numbers than influencers with a huge audience.

Micro-influencers, also sometimes known as nano-influencers, generally have somewhere between 100 and 10K followers. Macro-influencers, on the other hand, have anywhere between 500K and 1M followers. A Fohr x Later report reveals that nano-influencers have a higher post-reach rate than larger influencers—33.8% for small influencers as opposed to 10.1% for larger ones.

The same goes for engagement rates. The higher the follower count, the lower the engagement rate. It’s because a smaller influencer will be able to create more targeted content that caters precisely to their audience. Plus, small influencers tend to interact with their audience way more through replies, polls, direct messages and more, which has a good impact on engagement rates.  

Source: Later

So, when you’re looking for brand influencers to collaborate with, don’t immediately aim for the big names. Look for smaller creators with more targeted audiences. It’s almost certain the payoff will be better.

AI is here to stay

AI is taking over the world, so it’s no wonder we’re starting to see AI show up in the influencer marketing industry. Many influencers already use ChatGPT in their marketing efforts since it’s very helpful for planning campaigns, creating content, or analyzing insights. But that’s just the beginning. In the future, AI is poised to become a much larger part of influencer marketing, and we might even start to see more fully AI-created influencers popping up on social media platforms.

The concept of AI-created influencers can seem somewhat strange, but it’s nothing new. In fact, fictional influencers have been around for a while. One of the earliest forms of what we now think of as AI influencers is Lil Miquela. While not technically made with AI, Lil Miquela is a social media personality created all the way back in 2016 as a fictional CGI character.

Over the past few years, Lil Miquela has seen considerable success as a model, singer, and social media influencer. She’s even been featured in campaigns of famous brands like Prada and Calvin Klein.

Source: Instagram

Building long-term partnerships between brands and influencers

Which is better: simple influencers or brand ambassadors? Brands nowadays are leaning towards the latter. Businesses are increasingly looking to foster long-lasting relationships with influencers, rather than paying for just one or two influencer posts here and there.

Strong, long-term partnerships between brands and influencers are beneficial to both sides. The influencer will get a brand partner they can rely on for future promotions and whose audience aligns with their own.

The business owner, on the other hand, will be certain that their key messages are communicated well by an influencer who knows the ins and outs of their brand messaging. Plus, when the target audience sees their favorite influencer return to a certain brand time and time again, it’s more likely that they will see the brand promotion as authentic and trustworthy, rather than just another ad.

Consumers care about authenticity

In the age of social media and digital marketing, users crave authenticity more than ever. If you’re planning on becoming an influencer, or collaborating with one, it’s important to keep this in mind. In the current influencer landscape, the most successful creators are generally those who are able to relate to their audiences.

We already talked about nano and micro-influencers taking the lead when it comes to engagement rates. One of the main reasons why is that these smaller creators are perceived as more reliable and trustworthy by their intended audience. Their posts don’t feel like glossy paid ads, but instead, they’re real, authentic, and relatable.

What does this mean for you? If you’re a business owner, it means you should focus your marketing efforts not just on influencers, but also on employee and user-generated content. You can look for inspiration from other creators or brands. For example, check out our Printful IG account—we post lots of user, influencer, and employee-generated content.

Source: @printful on Instagram

Amplify influencer content reach with paid ads

Over the past few years, online businesses have had some ups and downs with paid advertising. While the general trend is that businesses have begun to allocate more funds for influencer marketing at the expense of paid advertisement, the two can actually work well in tandem.

Source: Pexels

It can be a tricky thing to master, and success definitely isn’t guaranteed. But, when it comes to the world of influencer marketing, paid advertisement can get you the kind of reach that organic and traditional advertising never will. So, it’s definitely worth a try.

Where’s the party at? Linkedin!

You wouldn’t really expect LinkedIn to become the top spot for influencer marketing, would you? Well, surprisingly enough, it has. For a long time, LinkedIn was a place for job ads or career networking, but now it’s becoming indispensable for digital marketing specialists who work with B2B audiences.

As the influencer marketing world becomes more agile and targeted, you can expect LinkedIn to be the platform where brands connect with other businesses through the use of B2B influencer marketing.

Brace yourself for live shopping

It’s about to get real lively out here. One of the upcoming influencer marketing trends for 2024 is live shopping. The concept of live shopping is nothing new; many content creators have been at it for a while now, doing live shopping livestreams where viewers could ask questions about the product and receive their answers right away.

An example of this is social media personality and singer Addison Rae, who did her first YouTube live shopping event back in 2022. Framed as a GRWM (Get Ready With Me) video, Addison Rae showed off products from her beauty line.

Source: @Addison Rae on YouTube

But what started as a pandemic-era necessity is sure to become a top influencer marketing trend going forward. Nearly every major social media platform currently offers a live streaming option, so even micro-influencers without a lot of budget or support from marketing agencies can get in on the live shopping action.

Cross-channel marketing is the future

Gone are the days when content creators were just YouTubers or only Instagram influencers. In the current influencer marketing landscape, every successful creator has to know how to get their message across all platforms. They have to be Instagram and TikTok influencers, as well as YouTubers all in one.

So, brands seeking to work with influencer content have to know how to leverage that content across multiple channels. When repurposing content, it’s best to have marketing strategies for each platform, because not everything will work the same. What’s great, let’s say, on TikTok won’t necessarily work as well on Facebook because the audience is likely to be a bit different.

Influencer educational content is king

According to Internet Marketing Hub’s influencer marketing report, 42% of respondents said they favored influencers for educational how-to content and tutorials. Partnering with influencers for educational content on how to use your products facilitates a mutually beneficial relationship that’s great for influencer marketing strategies. 

For example, a ton of influencers have made educational content about how to use Printul, our print-on-demand platform. It means their channels get more exposure from our audience, and we get increased traffic from their subscribers.

Source: YouTube

Keep in mind that if you’re a business owner working with an influencer on educational content, it’s extremely important that the influencer understands instructions and delivers them perfectly when creating content. Otherwise, you might end up mucking up your influencer campaigns by having them release content that isn’t correct.

Gen Z and influencer marketing are like two peas in a pod

When it comes to demographics, it’s probably no surprise that the generation that trusts influencers the most is Gen Z. According to one study, 45% of European Gen Zers said they wanted to purchase a product after seeing an influencer wear it. In comparison, only 18% said they take style inspo from their friends.

However, while Gen Z has a great deal of loyalty to their favorite creators, they’re also not an easy demographic to connect with. When working on influencer campaigns, creators have to stay true to their values and be prepared for criticism.

A good example of a Gen Z-oriented influencer marketing campaign gone wrong is the ASOS employee-generated content campaign ASOS Insiders. This campaign was initially started pre-pandemic and the idea was simple: to turn employees into influencers. ASOS selected 36 ambassadors to promote the brand’s products on their Instagram accounts, with links to each product.

Source: ASOS

When the campaign was relaunched this February, it faced major backlash for its lack of diversity and it appears that ASOS quietly abandoned the project. This means that if you want to market to GenZ, you better know your audience like the back of your hand—what they like and what they dislike.

Source: @asos on Instagram

Why working with influencers is a good idea

If you’re a business owner reading this and thinking: “OK, sounds nice, but influencers only work with the big companies, not little ones like me,” then think again. Collaborating with influencers isn’t just for large, global enterprises; even small or new businesses can benefit from a collaboration! Let’s go over a few reasons why influencer marketing can help your business.

Trust and credibility

Young businesses all need one thing: credibility. That’s why it’s so important to get reviews, and why you want content made by customers. Those things make your business seem professional, real, and reliable. If you collaborate with an influencer, no matter how niche and small they are, you will quickly earn the trust and credibility of their audience.

Brand awareness

Working with influencers will do wonders for your brand awareness. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to bag collaborations with huge influencers with millions of followers—and honestly, you don’t need to. Even if you start your influencer marketing journey with nano-influencers, you’ll still likely get better results than with traditional marketing. What matters is that you have a unified brand message and know your niche well.

Cost efficiency

At the end of the day, working with small influencers will be much more cost-efficient than throwing your money into paid ads or other elaborate digital marketing campaigns. Even if your budget is small, influencer marketing offers a lot of flexibility in how you create your partnerships with other creators. So, even new businesses can get a good return on investment from the money they spend on influencer marketing.

Stay on top of ecommerce trends with Printful

OK, we’ve gone through our list of the top influencer marketing trends for 2024. But if you’re really serious about starting an influencer career or building your brand, you’ll need a lot more advice and guidance than just this article. Lucky for you, we’ve got plenty.

Find the latest trends

If you want to keep up with what’s happening in the digital marketing industry or just want to know all about the latest design trends, you’ll find all that and more on our Printful blog. Need a step-by-step guide on how to start selling on TikTok? Easy. Looking for ideas on how to market your products? Say no more.

Get valuable educational materials

We also offer more in-depth educational materials for new entrepreneurs. You can check out our Printful Academy for courses on brand building, digital marketing, and more. But if you’re looking for something more serious, check out our podcast Ideas. Fulfilled.

Build your business

Did you know you can upgrade your offering with Printful? Whether you’re an influencer looking to sell merch without any hassles or an entrepreneur seeking to scale your apparel business, we can help you with product fulfillment and shipping, so you can focus on what matters—building your brand.

Here’s how Bryson from Got Funny? used Printful to scale a side hustle into a booming business with 1M+ in sales in just one year.

That’s all, folks!

Remember: whether you’re planning to collaborate with influencers or start your own influencer career, it’s important to know your target audience well and foster long-term influencer partnerships. This will make your brand partnerships feel like they’re authentic and make them more attractive to target audiences.

Alright, that’s all from us for today . . . Good luck on your influencer marketing journey!