A new study from influencer marketing agency Linqia has found brands are turning to influencers as part of their post-COVID-19 recovery.
The research surveyed 59 marketers on how COVID-19 had affected their business.
It found that although 64 per cent of marketers are now working with a decreased digital marketing budget, for 60 per cent influencer budgets have remained the same or ever increased following COVID-19.
“Influencer budgets haven’t been impacted the same way as overall digital ad spends, possibly due to the effectiveness of the content influencers produce,” said Linqia.
“71 per cent said it can make a positive impact for their brand. And 63 per cent believe that the content is strong enough to use in other channels – including TV.”
Around half (41 per cent) of marketers said they were planning to run an influencer marketing campaign in the next two months, as businesses look for ways to recover from recent events.
Of those people, 25 per cent plan to use more influencers than they would have previously.
Although influencer campaigns have traditionally been promotion led, the focus will now be on reputation, according to the report.
63 per cent of respondents revealed they will be using influencers to create the right creative and message, 17 per cent said awareness and 21 per cent said engagement.
There were no respondents planning to use influencers for sales.
As for the channel, Instagram is still the most popular platform for influencer campaigns, although TikTok is continuing to grow.
Instagram was the most popular channel (91 per cent), followed by Facebook (49 per cent), TikTok (39 per cent), Pinterest (26 per cent), Twitter (19 per cent) and Snapchat (seven per cent).
