The state of influencer marketing in Europe 2024 is a survey conducted by Kolsquare, a leading European influencer marketing agency. It provides a particularly interesting perspective on influencer marketing budgets, how influencer marketing is handled and its future trends. Besides, its comparison of Europe’s main markets for IM is clearly enlightening. It’s one of the first if not the first of its kind and it sheds light on the way that businesses are conducting marketing with Key Opinion Leaders, at least for business to consumers. One of the most striking takeaways from this study is the sheer size of the average European influencer marketing budget which is evaluated at a whacking €3.375 million annually.
European Businesses Spend nearly €3.5m Annually on Influencer Marketing
Methodology of the 2024 Influencer Marketing Survey
This 2024 European Influencer Marketing (IM) survey was conducted by Kolsquare and NewtonX. It involved 385 decision makers representing medium to large organisations across various sectors (Beauty and fashion, IT, SaaS and Telecommunications, Retail food and beverages, entertainment …). All respondents had more than two years of experience in influencer marketing. The sample is relatively large for that kind of B2B survey with five countries surveyed (France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom) and approximately 80 respondents in each of these countries.
The European influencer marketing landscape
Thanks to this survey, we now have evidence that the influencer market is really significant with €3.375 million spent on influencer marketing by European businesses annually, and Germany topping the list at €5.74 million per annum. Micro influencers (10,000 to 100,000 followers) being the most popular partners for the surveyed European businesses. Respondents’ expectations on growth are very optimistic with 54% of them expecting to increase their influencer marketing budget next year. Unsurprisingly, the influencer marketing landscape has shifted towards three main platforms: Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
More than ever, influencer marketing is here to stay with 27% of respondents saying that it will become more important in the marketing mix. And even 6% stating that it will become the most important part of the overall marketing spend.
UK marketers seem less prone to spend huge chunks of their budgets on influencer marketing with a yearly average of £848,000 (still a whopping €1.02 million!) Brands are also declaring that they will become more selective in the influencers with whom they work (56%). Ethics is topping the list of preoccupations in Italy and France, but less in the UK and not that much at all in Germany.
Indeed, Germany is described by Kolsquare as “the big spender”, but not very keen on ethical considerations. Unlike the French and Italians, who said to be prioritising corporate ethics when selecting influencers.
This emphasises a significant shift in the market, whereas four or five years ago we were stressing the fact that ethics weren’t really on French influencer marketing managers’ priority list.
Social network usage by marketers and Key Opinion Leaders
When it comes to social network usage by influencer marketers, the shift towards Instagram, TikTok and YouTube is significant. However, Facebook has not disappeared from the IM landscape completely, as it is still the platform of choice in the UK.
X has slipped down the ladder and further down one can find niche platforms such as Twitch, Pinterest, Snapchat and a flurry of Chinese platforms that are clearly less attractive to European marketers. What is surprising, though is that LinkedIn is definitely not part of this list, meaning that the survey is mostly geared towards Business to Consumer marketing. For all intents and purposes, one should emphasise once more that Business to Business amounts to approximately 80% of the production of wealth worldwide.
When it comes to size, One can spot a good balance of macro, mega, micro and nano-influencers in marketers’ choices of partnerships. Whereas patterns are relatively similar across countries, micro influencers definitely top the list in almost all of them.
One-Shot Versus Long-term Influencer Marketing Collaborations
It seems that in Germany and France businesses prefer to work in the long-term with Key Opinion Leaders. However, the structure is rather similar in all countries with a three-tier pattern: approximately 30% of collaborations with long-term partners, 30% for a mix of new and existing influencers, and another 30% of new kids on the Instagram block. This pattern varies slightly according to countries.
Content Forms: How the Brands Collaborate With Opinion Leaders
The variety of content types that is offered by influencer marketing is noteworthy, with sponsored posts and influencer events as well as product reviews topping the list. However, there are differences according to countries with sponsored posts not being very popular in France (only 23% of respondents vs. 58% on average across all countries).
Approximately one third of businesses are keen on performing co-creation with influencers and even nearly 25% of respondents are conducting product creation with them.
In conclusion
This study is instrumental in showing how pivotal influencer marketing has become in B2C marketing. Barring a few variations, one can say that IM patterns are relatively similar across the five main European countries surveyed.
Spending levels are stellar, with German businesses being on a buying spree. One can only hope that IM will help them fight the current economic slump in Europe’s biggest economy. France and Italy are keen believers in IM too. The United Kingdom and Spain are lagging a bit behind, or can be considered more reasonable, it depends on the point of view.
The most important indicator (KPIs) for influencer marketers is not the number of followers but the quality of the engagement. And as it suits B2C, it’s even shifting towards sales and conversions.
Last but not least, there are a number of challenges to influencer marketing such as striking the right balance between influencer freedom and brand control. A major issue we have consistently highlighted for the past 20 years we have spent in that domain.
It’s a significant pain point in most European countries and especially in France, where brand control is tightening on influencers.
Measuring ROI and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is on top of Italy’s list of issues related to influencer marketing.
Apart from that, authenticity and the quality and tone of voice of influencer content is definitely what entices European brands to work with Key Opinion Leaders.
What is also most striking is the significance of ethics according to countries. The results seemed very counter-intuitive to me but reassuring, with Southern countries showing a lot of concern for ethics compared to Northern ones.
About KolSquare
Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, a data-driven solution that allows brands to scale their KOL Marketing strategies and implement authentic partnerships with KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders). Kolsquare’s technology enables marketing professionals to easily identify the best Content Creators’ profiles by filtering their content and audience, and to build and manage their campaigns from A to Z, including measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors. Kolsquare was founded by Quentin Bordage in 2018.
The post Influencer Marketing: Average European Spend at €3.5m Annually appeared first on Marketing and Innovation.