While it may come as no surprise that 98% of marketers said that COVID-19 changed their marketing plans, the majority of marketers (71%) feel that influencers have the power to make a positive impact for their brand. This is according to the latest study from Linqia.
Influencer budgets haven’t been impacted the same way as overall digital ad spends, possibly due to the effectiveness of the content influencers produce. Once quarantines are lifted, 74% of marketers plan to activate influencer as much or more as they did pre-pandemic.
The report found that 67% of marketers said their overall digital marketing budgets have decreased in Q2 due to the pandemic, but only 41% said the same for their influencer budgets. In fact, almost 60% said their influencer budgets would stay the same or increase.
At the time of the survey (May 2020), about half (41%) said that they were planning to run an influencer marketing campaign in the next two months. And of those that are planning to run an influencer campaign, 25% plan to use more influencers than what they typically use. Interestingly, the purpose of their influencer campaign is to convey the right message, and none selected that the goal will be to drive sales.
Platform strategies
Marketers are evaluating a number of platforms right now to leverage during COVID-19 and Instagram came out top by a mile at 91%, followed by Facebook at 49%. TikTok came in third at 39% but only 11% actually have a strategy for TikTok.
Although everything is constantly changing, at the moment, it is certain that influencers are a powerful tactic in any marketer’s toolkit because of the way they can convey a brand’s message (if done correctly, of course). You can view the full report here.
