8 KOL Marketing Trends Predictions for 2019!

There is a proverb in English, "There is no happiness without a price." The same is true for KOL marketing in 2019. Even if there will be some costs and pain in the process, as the industry becomes smarter, more measurable, more robust and more profitable, the prospects for KOL marketing are limitless.

Here are eight predictions for KOL trends in 2019, from Edward East, founder and CEO of KOL marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy.

1. KOL marketing will eventually take its place in marketing

Various institutions, clients and platforms are working hard to solve some existing problems in the industry, such as how to quantify and eliminate fake fans and win customer trust.

At the same time, the client will monitor to ensure that these issues are addressed throughout the marketing plan rather than after the marketing campaign. In addition, with the influx of new influencers and a large amount of funds, KOL marketing will also begin to make greater use of models such as email marketing, online marketing and content marketing.

2. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will become the driving force of KOL marketing

Artificial intelligence and machine learning will become the first solutions to improve measurability, discover ROI and fan authenticity. From image recognition to eliminating fake followers and spam bots, to determining marketing effectiveness and language processing, artificial intelligence and machine learning will be widely used in 2019.

Last year, Billion Dollar Boy’s product StoryTracker used artificial intelligence technology to help brand users search, save, download and analyze Instagram dynamics, which basically eliminated the trouble of people manually tracking marketing activities and saved a lot of time, money and energy.

3. Instagram’s trend of eliminating fake fans will bring huge changes to the KOL marketing industry

For brands, this trend is definitely beneficial.

The brand's marketing engagement will simply depend on the quality of the updates posted by the influencer and the size of their audience. The elimination of fake fans will hit a large number of fake influencers, but it will also allow brands to have greater confidence in their investment in influencers.

4. Internet celebrities will continue to launch their own brands, and the scale will also be larger

In 2018, many forward-thinking influencers found great success by launching their own brands, the best examples being bloggers Arielle Charnas, who launched Something Navy with Macy’s, and Natalie Off Duty (Natalie Suarez).

Natalie Off Duty is also a product of cooperation with Inspr. The original purpose of establishing Inspr was to help these Internet celebrity partners. The market situation in 2019 will be more suitable for influencers to cooperate with large companies to establish their own brands or launch a series of products.

5. Small brands will give influencers a portion of their shares in exchange for their publicity

Research has found that 75% of brands invest in KOL marketing, many of which are smaller brands looking to build a loyal customer base as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.

However, in the traditional investment model, it is increasingly difficult for these small brands to get help from top influencers, so the brands will sell part of their shares to these influencers. This trend is still in its infancy, but in 2019, as the influence of influencers increases, this trend will become more and more obvious.

6. Internet celebrities will focus more on building their own websites, reducing the risks of Instagram interface changes

Blogging is back. As influencers increase their profile and fan base, they also move their work to their own websites or blogs, which gives them more freedom, room to innovate, and control, while reducing their reliance on mainstream platforms and their ever-changing interfaces.

7. Create your own team

For those influencers who haven’t fallen victim to fake followers, their work opportunities continue to increase, and the production value of the content they post continues to increase, so they will treat themselves as an agency and hire their own production teams to cope with the increasing workload.

The demand for people with diverse backgrounds will increase

As with other areas of marketing, clients are looking for a more diverse range of influencers in their campaigns, and this trend is already evident in the market. This will bring about changes in the demand for talent within the entire industry, as traditional KOL marketing can no longer meet the brand promotion needs.

Source: White Whale Out to Sea