By Laura Desmond

The majority (80%) of marketers consider influencer marketing effective and 89% even find ROI from influencer campaigns comparable or better than other channels, according to new research from MediaKix.

The survey among 162 participants found that just 5% consider influencer marketing to be ineffective.

Another 71% consider the quality of the customers and the traffic coming from influencer marketing to be better than other sources, whilst just 6% disagreed.

Similarly, 89% of participants consider ROI from influencer marketing to be comparable or better than other marketing channels.

These campaign successes are also having a direct effect on marketing budgets with 65% of marketers planning to increase them in 2019 with just 2% considering a decrease. Meanwhile, 17% of companies are planning to spend over half of their marketing budgets on influencer marketing.

Instagram continues its top rank as the most important influencer marketing channel in the new year for 89% of marketers, followed by YouTube (70%), Facebook (45%), blogs (44%) and Twitter (33%).

Snapchat ranked as the least important channel having failed to catch up on influencer marketing by providing the necessary discovery tools.

Given Instagram’s dominance, it is hardly surprising that 69% of marketers are planning to spend the majority of budgets on the photo app.

Among the most important formats for influencers are Instagram posts (78%) and Stories (73%), followed by YouTube videos (56%), Instagram videos (54%) and blog posts (36%).

However, 61% of marketers admit that finding the right influencers is still a difficult process. The most commonly used methods include a social search (71%), platforms (43%) and influencers reaching out to marketers (42%).

Here, quality of content matters the most. In other words, marketers and companies searching for influencers tend to judge them not based on engagements, but quality of content (81%). Target audience (78%), on-brand messaging or aesthetic (56%), and budget (50%) also mattered.

Meanwhile, fraud and fake followers are a key concern as they can increase inauthentic engagement. Respondents considered finding fake followers (50%), social algorithm changes (49%), and building on always-on strategies (41%) to be the main challenges associated with influencer marketing in 2019.

Measurement continues to be an area of concern for 78% of companies.

Among the most highly ranked goals marketers tend to set for influencer marketing campaigns are brand awareness (85%), reaching new audiences (71%) and generating sales (64%).

Common influencer marketing measurement metrics include engagement, sales and impressions.

Interestingly, 96% of marketers do not believe that influencer marketing could be automated always retaining a human component. Just 4% considered the opposite to be possible in the future.