The 13 Influencer Marketing Trends You Need to Know in 2025

I’ve talked a lot about influencer marketing over the past several years. In my book, “The Age of Influence,” I discussed the reasons why influencer marketing has become an increasingly important way to reach potential customers. And at the same time, certain types of influencer marketing can help your business with PR and even employee recruitment.

Why is that? Because people have gotten tired of hearing nothing but self-serving shameless plugs from brands. While there is still a place for these, people increasingly demand authenticity from brands and individual users alike. Additionally, with today’s busy schedules, it’s more important than ever to provide value for your audience’s time.

With that said, the practice of influencer marketing has changed since 2019 and 2020, when I wrote that book. For that reason, we need to look at the current influencer marketing trends if our campaigns and techniques are to remain successful. Let’s take a look at why influencer marketing is effective and what trends we can expect to develop over the next year.

How Does Influencer Marketing Work?

Influencer marketing is a process whereby brands incentivize social media influencers to endorse their goods and services. There are several ways in which this can happen, such as sponsoring a video for a flat fee, providing an affiliate link, and even just providing a free product in exchange for their giving feedback.

Social media influencers are people on social media who have a lot of influence over their audience. The influencer will typically gain this status by creating content in a particular niche and gaining their audience’s trust. Over time, the audience learns that the influencer is an expert in a particular topic, has good taste, and is otherwise somebody that they should take seriously.

Two implement an influencer marketing campaign, brands will first find an influencer in their industry or niche. Then, is that they will reach out to that person for a partnership and make a deal with them. The idea is for the influencer to introduce a brand to their audience in a way that will generally influence them to buy or at least become aware of the product or service.

Why is this process so effective? Simply put, it’s the authenticity of an everyday individual talking about a brand that they love and that they think their audience would enjoy. This stands in contrast to the brand manager, who is only interested in selling particular products.

What are the Different Types of Influencers?

As we talked about influencer marketing trends, it’s important to realize that there are several different types of influencers. In this case, we will define types primarily as referring to the number of followers that they have. For this reason, some of the definitions will vary from what you’d first think when you hear the term.

Celebrity Influencers

Most of us hear the word celebrity and assume it’s somebody that appears on TV, acts in the movies, plays professional sports, or might be a politician. But that’s not the sense of celebrity that we are referring to here.

In the world of influencer marketing, a celebrity is any influencer that has more than a million followers on their primary social media network. So, if an influencer mostly creates content on Instagram, we would count the number of followers on their Instagram. We wouldn’t worry about how many friends they have on Facebook, for example, or on Twitter.

Macro Influencers

A macro influencer is someone who has between half a million and a million followers on their primary social network. Generally speaking, these influencers have a more engaged audience than their celebrity peers. One reason for this is that people will often follow celebrities just to see what they have to say, but they might not be interested beyond simple curiosity.

Often, macro influencers are mid-level industry voices or people who are very passionate about a particular topic. In more specialized niches, it may also be hard for an influencer to advance past the macro level. For that reason, a marketer may need to consider the audience size relative to the overall size of their market.

Middle Influencers

Next, there are the middle influencers. These individuals have between 50,000 and half a million followers. Typically, a middle influencer has been building their audience for a while and has become a trusted voice. However, their following is still not so large that they have a lot of people who are merely curious. Instead, middle influencers have a highly-engaged audience. Generally, middle influencers will remain a quality resource regardless of influencer marketing trends.

Micro-Influencers

At the top of the “small-time” influencer ladder, you’ll find micro-influencers. Marketers use this classification to refer to those who have 10,000 to 50,000 followers. Generally speaking, micro-influencers have very engaged audiences. That means that they’re often quite effective at driving sales because their followers are likely to take their recommendations. And while influencers with larger follower numbers also drive sales, it’ll be a lower percentage of followers.

As an added bonus, it’s usually very inexpensive to hire micro-influencers.

Further Reading: What is a Micro-Influencer and the 8 Benefits for Brands Who Work With Them

Nano Influencers

Influencers that are just starting to monetize their influence and master their content-creation techniques are frequently nano influencers. By definition, they have 1000 up to 10,000 followers, so they have a relatively small audience. And just like the next level up, their audience is highly engaged.

It used to be that nano influencers didn’t get any attention from brands. Their monetization options were pretty much limited to network-specific partnerships, Selling merchandise, and similar methods. However, one of the influencer marketing trends we saw over the last couple of years is that brands are realizing the value of a small yet engaged audience.

Further Reading: Why and How to Leverage Nano Influencers for Your Influencer Marketing

Is Influencer Marketing Effective in 2025?

Influencer marketing has been a highly effective way to boost sales, revenue, and brand awareness. However, it’s easy for people to question if this new technique will ultimately turn into nothing but the latest fad.

The statistics clearly indicate that influencer marketing will continue to be effective in 2025, and it will likely remain so, at least for the next few years.

One reason for this is that influencer marketing has proven to be a highly effective technique. In fact, the average business earns more than five dollars for every dollar they spend on influencer marketing. As a result, studies show that at least 89% of marketers have found influencer marketing is at least as effective at achieving brand objectives as other modalities.

Furthermore, influencer marketing is very popular with younger consumers, such as millennials and Gen Z. Not only do they perceive influencers as having a better knowledge of a topic than others, but they tend to trust product recommendations they receive on social media. In other words, their overall trust in influencers translates into action.

Finally, we should consider that influencer marketing has become very effective for B2B brands. In fact, some 84% of C-suite executives and Vice Presidents turn to social media for product advice in the B2B space. And in a similar vein, decision-makers prefer to check social media and review sites before they make a decision on which products to buy.

In other words, it’s safe to say that influencer marketing will remain an important technique for a long time.

13 Influencer Marketing Trends You Need to Know in 2025 and Beyond

Because influencer marketing is here to stay, it’s important to keep on top of influencer marketing trends. Few things are as bad in marketing as appearing to be tone-deaf when it comes to your audience’s needs and concerns. Almost as serious is a tendency to use an old, outdated methodology that is outlived its usefulness. Would you buy an old, worn-out suit for your job interview? I don’t think so.

1. Long-Term Influencer Partnerships (as Opposed to One-Off Campaigns) will be the Way to Go

Influencer marketing has been around for years now, but it is only in recent times that brands have started to take notice of the power of influencer marketing. In 2023, long-term influencer partnerships will become the norm as brands look to build stronger relationships with influencers.

While one-off partnerships will still stick around, brands are realizing that sale time is something that has to be considered while collaborating. In some cases, short promotional stints may not be as effective as a long-term promotional campaign with an influencer.

One example of this technique is the brand ambassador. Generally, brand ambassadors will work with a brand for years and sometimes even decades. A great example of this is Julia Roberts, who famously works with Lancôme to sell their perfume. Of course, industry figures with a significant social media reach are great choices for brand ambassadors.

2. Authenticity Over Perfection will be Key to Influence

Influencers will be more focused on promoting products that they genuinely care about to build credibility amongst their followers. One reason for this is an influencer’s need to guard their trusted status with their audience. As influencer marketing becomes more prominent, there are lots of brands vying for positive coverage from many influencers. The problem is that not everything is high-quality or works for a particular audience. Therefore, influencers will be more careful about their selections.

Sponsorship for the sake of it will no longer work well for brands. Not only will influencers be more likely to reject sponsorships for the sake of cash only, but audiences will become more aware of the money side of influence. This can lead to a loss of trust over time, especially if influencers aren’t careful about what they present to audiences.

3. Video Content will Get Bigger than Ever

With TikTok already giving tough competition to Instagram and Google, video marketing will continue to grow in popularity. Brands will leverage short clips for higher engagement and brand exposure to lure millennials and Gen Z.

How does this relate to influencer marketing trends? There are a lot of influencers that work on video-based social networks and who might work on video formats within mixed-media networks like Facebook and Instagram.

Of course, this trend will also change the balance of formats for actual influencer collaborations. For instance, we might see more tutorials that demonstrate products. Even TikTok, with its short-form videos, has a lot of tutorials. You’ll also see more visual representations of items that have been put in video format.

4. Live Shopping will Emerge as a Major Influencer Marketing Campaign Type

Popularized in China, we expect live shopping to become one of the more important influencer marketing trends. Although previous versions of this technique have had limited success in the West, Amazon, in particular, is emphasizing live shopping on its platform. Here, the idea is to have a social media influencer hold an event on Amazon for their audience.

Likewise, TikTok is trying to expand its live shopping feature beyond countries that use Douyin instead. That means the North American, British, and EU markets. It will be interesting to see if they can again duplicate their success in China.

Finally, Pinterest is moving beyond the traditional sponsored photo for influencer marketing and embracing new influencer marketing trends. As part of that effort, they have started offering video format Pins. In this case, Pinterest creators make a prerecorded shopping episode that offers discounts on name-brand products. There’s also a truly live video product in testing.

5. Nano and Micro-Influencers will Come to the Forefront

Nano and Micro-influencers may have a smaller following, but there’s no denying that they tend to have higher engagement and conversion rates. Advertisers will be looking more at engagement rates than follower counts before collaborating with influencers.

In some ways, this is a continuation of previous influencer marketing trends. As I mentioned above, it used to be that the middle influencers were essentially the smallest fish in the pond that could attract paid collaborations. However, brands increasingly realize that sometimes quality is more important than quantity, even when it comes to influencer-linked impressions.

Another factor here is that influencers with lower subscriber numbers tend to be inexpensive. Just as we pay more for premium ad space or a higher CPM to advertise on more desirable keywords, mega influencers and celebrities are often expensive. And in turn, we don’t get as high of a conversion rate. Instead, big names generate ROI by response volume. On the other hand, a micro-influencer who’s a major fan can convert a larger percentage of their following into customers.

6. The Growth of Influencer Marketplaces Supported by Social Networks

No longer do brands have to rely on commercial influencer marketplaces, where you could meet influencers in your desired niche. While these influencer marketplaces will continue to be relevant for a while at least, they are less important than they used to be. That’s because social networks have started maintaining their own private networks. These help the burden of influencer discovery and allow the site itself to be more of a one-stop shop.

As with the last trend, the Chinese are leading the way because TikTok was the first to introduce a Creator Marketplace. This effort from TikTok has taken off, and Instagram’s recent introduction of its own marketplace means that it will be easier than ever for any business to get started collaborating with influencers.

Further Reading: What is a Social Media Brand Ambassador and How to Leverage Them for Influencer Marketing

7. The Increased Importance of Acquiring First-Party Data for Greater Influencer Marketing ROI

First-party data is more important than ever. As the web goes increasingly cookieless, it becomes increasingly important for marketers to be able to get as much data about their customers as possible. Influencer marketing is no different, and the importance of data-driven influencer marketing will only grow in importance.

But how does that work exactly? Often, first-party data is self-reported by users. It’s also information that social perks gather themselves by analyzing customer behavior on their own website. In other words, first-party data does not include what you can gather from cookies spread all over the web.

Better yet, you don’t have as many privacy concerns to consider when using your own data.

Further Reading: How to Create an Influencer Program That Delivers Influencer Marketing ROI

8. TikTok will Rival Instagram for Influencer Marketing Budgets

Instagram has always been the King of influencer marketing, but TikTok is catching up fast, and might even surpass TikTok for the first time in 2025. One reason for this is that TikTok is very popular with younger consumers, who are also more video and social-media-oriented. And like any shiny object, TikTok has gotten a lot of attention from consumers and marketers alike.

With that said, TikTok has more content format restrictions than Instagram, such as not being able to use a still photo. Instagram want to go away anytime soon, it’ll just experience a slight change in role.

9. Affiliate Marketing Finally Becomes Recognized as a Critical Part of Influencer Marketing

I have always said that affiliate marketing is a type of influencer marketing. Brands are increasingly starting to realize this and take advantage of leveraging influencers as affiliates.

There’s a good reason for this. When an influencer gets paid for results, as you’ll see with an affiliate link, they tend to work harder at being persuasive. That helps more effective influencers boost their income. Conversely, brands will find that paying for results through affiliate links means that they don’t pay inflated prices as often, and they have an easy way to measure compensation that helps calculate ROI.

Affiliate links also have benefits for the consumer. They are unobtrusive and provide the convenience of customers not having to hunt for products. Really, this is one of the influencer marketing trends that provides a win for everyone.

Further Reading: Influencer Marketing vs. Affiliate Marketing: Which Is Right for Your Brand?

10. Employees will Begin to be Recognized as the New Influencers

In pursuit of authenticity, brands will use their own employees as influencers by promoting brand products on their personal social media handles. Because employees are consumers too and having employees promote your product can give your brand more credibility. And because they help make or sell the product in some way, it’s automatically something they believe to a certain extent.

You’ll also see this trend with recruitment drives. Watch a recruitment advertisement from large companies like Amazon, and you’ll often see them featuring real employees who love their jobs. This is especially effective when a company values its employees enough to provide great benefits.

11. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion will Become More Important in (Influencer) Marketing

This follows a general marketing and societal trend. These days, society is very concerned about companies providing equal opportunities to everyone. Whether it’s about racial justice, LGBTQ rights, or gender equality, companies want to project an egalitarian image. Many companies even feature veterans and people with disabilities.

How will this play out in practice? While it’s hard to guess every potential way that brands can express their inclusiveness through influencer marketing, it’s easy to imagine their engaging with influencers who are diverse in some way. In addition, some brands cater to minority groups, such as ethnic haircare. Here, an influencer from the target audience might do a tutorial or a modeling session. The idea, either way, is to connect with that audience.

12. User-Generated Content will be an Integral Part of Influencer Marketing

I hinted at this in The Age of Influence, but there might be a greater value in leveraging influencers for their content over their amplification, especially when you get to the nano or even micro-influencer level. When we look at my brand affinity model of influencers which is not based on follower count, every company has a potential army of influencers that are their customers.

Brand-specific content created by customers in the form of unboxing videos or branded hashtags will take precedence. Because user-generated content is more likely to be trusted by potential buyers, brands will leverage it to influence their target user base. Plus, UGC is infused with a creator’s unique style. Even if branding is incorporated, the variety and creativity can be refreshing.

13. 2025 will See Influencer Marketing Becoming More Collaborative

As influencer marketing becomes more professionalized, brands will start collaborating with influencers to create better campaigns. This will lead to influencers being able to share their expertise and experience with other brands. In many ways, this will be a nice thing to see because the collaborative environment helps everybody maximize the value of business relationships. And at the end, even consumers end up winning because they get the right products for the right price.

Further Reading: Influencer Marketing Strategy for 2025: A Comprehensive Guide

Conclusion

As you can see, many influencer marketing trends for 2025 or continuations of what happened in 2021 and 2022. The rise of TikTok and in-house talent marketplaces have disrupted the market that previously was dominated by a mixture of big tech and marketing experts. However, market disruptions mean that the process of influencer marketing has become more streamlined. In the end, it’s easy to see that influencer marketing will soon be bigger than ever.

Hero Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash