Influencers’ sway over consumer spending has soared in recent years, driving many marketers to fork over thousands of dollars for testimonials from social media stars. But the majority of consumers are just as, if not more, likely to make a purchase based on a social media post from an unfamiliar creator as they are an internet celebrity, according to a new study.
“The New Rules of Influence,” a new report from social media and influencer agency Blue Hour Studios, revealed that 80% of U.S. consumers would buy something on social media based on a “random piece of content” from a creator, regardless of follower size. And that’s not just true of internet-obsessed Gen Z consumers—the agency’s survey spanned 1,000 U.S. consumers aged 18 to 60 who spend an “average” amount of time on social media, said Matt Higgins, VP of strategy at Blue Hour Studios, a division of Horizon Media.
That statistic reflects a broader influencer marketing trend, one that many brands have yet to adapt their creator strategies to, Higgins told Ad Age. While marketers have overhauled their organic social media strategies to align with the algorithm shift driven by TikTok’s rise, few have extended that approach to their influencer strategies and continue to focus on follower count when choosing creator partners, he said.
Today, “the majority of the people that are seeing your content, whether you’re a brand or an influencer, aren’t following you,” Higgins said. But, he said, brand clients continue to ask the agency to “present influencers for approval based on their followership,” even though “what brands care about is the performance and viewership and engagement, so the follower count no longer matters once we’ve started the work.”