Preceding the 2017 trends, 2018 influencer marketing trends have witnessed a major shift in the first 3 months. Here are the 4 forecasting trends that SKYPERRY thinks brands should keep an eye on.

MAKING MONEY FROM SOCIAL NETWORK

After work at a bank, a good-looking credit officer named Tien gets dressed up to go to an intimate nightclub. He frequently goes to the club with different groups of friends. Whenever showing up there, the frequent clubbers jazz the club up with dynamic energy which makes them become the spotlight.

Having a large network as well as so many followers on social media, Tien has been chosen for an influencer marketing campaign for that bar. According to the terms of cooperation, Tiến is given a budget for parties with his friends at the nightclub. In exchange, Tien is obliged to commit to the number of new friends that he brings to the club every month, the number of check-in, and stories posted on Facebook. Besides, it is their responsibility to make the nightclub looks more exciting and festive.

This influencer marketing strategy aims to attract more new customers to experience the club while it is recently quite unknown among the community. For that reason, the lifestyle of KOLs and the strength of their networks are more considered than the engagement rate on social networks when the club recruits influencers. Therefore, the club requires the chosen KOLs to have not only a good job but also a modern and dynamic lifestyle.

However, this is not the most interesting part of the story.

Taking advance of his large network of friends and bank customers, Tien gets paid by helping people in his network to book tables at the nightclub. Tien’s friends are taken to the nightclub, shared clubbing experiences as well as advised on the best drinks to drink. Thanks to that, friends, have become frequent customers of Tien and always get their tables booked by Tien to have a VIP corner. The nightclub earns more than 5000 USD per month from Tien’s network. Continuously, many of Tien’s friends are introduced to join the cooperation with the nightclub.

EARNING FROM SHARING PERSONAL EXPERIENCE 

At 11 pm, Trang – a 30-year-old model is wearing a pajama while life-streaming her night skincare routine on Facebook. She is introducing the product’s use, revealing her skincare tips, and answering fans’ questions about beauty concerns. The product’s name, prices, and shopping guidelines are listed in the caption of the live stream.

Trang is an attractive mom with a strong personality and straightforwardness who represents for typical modern mom nowadays. Her followers are those who find their lifestyle similar or at least admire Trang’s lifestyle. When influencers and their followers share a common lifestyle, selling products that are suitable for the community becomes much easier.

Trang shares her personal experiences with products frankly and faithfully. Thank that the sales turn out a beauty and skincare tip sharing among women who have similar lifestyles and trust each other. This is the way Trang becomes a social influencer having a large number of loyal customers on social networks.

AFFILIATE MARKETING – INFLUENCER MARKETING INTEGRATION

Despite the rising of affiliate marketing in VN, just a few KOL is participating in this it until now for 2 reasons. Firstly, earnings from affiliate marketing are too low to compare to earnings from sponsored posts by brands. Secondly, affiliate marketing runs more appropriately on WordPress or other website platforms while most influencers nowadays are active on social networks.

However, don’t be upset. The future of influencer affiliate marketing is not as bleak as it seems. Here is the reason: Influencer marketing is facing its own problem: higher engagement but a lack of proven effective results. To deal with this, clients would seek solutions helping them to calculate the effectiveness of every dollar spent on KOLs. Integrating performance-based marketing into influencer marketing would be one of those solutions.

The integration only succeeds when affiliate marketing supports the development of influencer marketing instead of only focusing on getting as high a conversion rate as possible. Some ideas for how affiliate marketing can support influencer marketing will be come up with in our next blog.

THE FUTURE OF SELLING THROUGH INFLUENCER NETWORK 

Influencers will take advance of their social network to make profits. They will be united into a powerful network that connects directly to the brands. This network will be an ideal choice for entire new brands or products whose phase of consideration plays an important role in the customer journey.

For the brands, sorting out those KOLs having a suitable social community for the products as well as building and managing influencer networks for selling will be their priorities in 2018.