Is Influencer Marketing Worth Investing In?
The influencer marketing game has spent the last decade going from strength to strength and is now an established discipline in its own right.
Many full service marketing agencies offer influencer marketing services as standard alongside the likes of PR, digital marketing, and design. But, with challenges in the industry concerning ethics and AI changing the game altogether – we’re asking is influencer marketing still worth investing in, in 2025?
What Are the Challenges of Influencer Marketing?
Recently, influencer Mia Zelu went ‘viral’ for amassing nearly 200,000 new followers after a series of Wimbledon posts. The only problem? She isn’t real.
The controversy surrounding the now infamous ‘AI influencer’ brings into question the authenticity of influencers, and how genuine, trustworthy creators are being gazumped by make-believe accounts. Plus, the brands that partner with them.
The debacle reinforces how important it is to invest in a trustworthy influencer marketing agency, with experience and relationships with real accounts, that’ll save your brand from potentially being pulled into a scandal.
Influencers have also come under fire in recent years for not divulging paid partnerships, with the ASA (Advertising Standards Agency) finding earlier this year that 34% of ads haven’t been disclosed as such. That’s why, at Leopard Co, we put contractual obligations in place with all our partners to remind them of the guidelines around ethical influencer marketing.
Between ethics and AI, influencer marketing can be a minefield, but one that, with the right agency, is still with navigating in 2025.
Why Is Influencer Marketing Still Worth Investing In?
Because, we still say yes. Influencer marketing is still worth investing in. Now more than ever, in fact
With ad expenditure expected to exceed £1bn by the end of the year, and nearly 70% of all consumers saying they trust influencer recommendations – the market is brimming with opportunity.
Here’s our top four reasons why we still continue to bang the influencer marketing drum.
1. Consumers Trust Influencers
The whole point of influencers is that they’re influential. There’s heaps of data to back up that consumers trust creators as much as ads and content they see online. Some even more so.
Working with reliable, vetted influencers will gain you true endorsers of your brand, and ones that will share the word to an engaged audience that they’ve created.
Though reach may be smaller than more traditional mediums such as TV advertising or OOH, the engagement and impact is likely to be much more targeted and therefore, better.
2. There’s Several Platforms to Engage With
Influencer marketing is possible in almost every industry. This is helped along the way with the number of creators across different platforms.
Whether it’s YouTube, popular for long-form content that can give a deep, in-depth endorsement of your product, or TikTok, which is proficient in reaching large amounts of people in fun and creative ways – the abundance of platforms makes influencer marketing accessible for most businesses.
A competent marketing strategy will help you decide which platforms you want to be on and why. Then all that’s left to do is to get out there.
3. TikTok Is Growing Rapidly
With nearly 40% of the UK population actively using TikTok, and ads and in-app shopping extremely commonplace on the platform, investing in TikTok influencer marketing should be considered in almost all strategies in 2025 and beyond.
The platform presents immense opportunity amongst many industries, thanks in no small part to the chance of videos going viral, and the high level of app usage across the UK and the world.
If you had an opportunity to show your business off to 2 billion people. Would you let that pass you by?
4. There’s Top-Notch Martech in The Industry
Despite the aforementioned qualms with the industry around authenticity and ethics, there’s martech to combat it.
At Leopard Co, we invest in a Meltwater tool called Klear which vets influencers and ranks them on their genuine engagement (eradicating influencers who ‘engagement farm’ with other influencers) and helps us to match brands with creators that will genuinely impact their business.
Investing in this sort of martech not only shows that we’re a great agency to partner with for your campaigns, but also that this influencer marketing is still worth investing in. Because we do.
Influencer Marketing Statistics 2025
Don’t just take our word for it though. Here’s some of the latest influencer marketing data to reinforce why it’s well worth investing in.
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75% of people use social media for purchasing advice, according to LinkedIn
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66% of brands are using TikTok for marketing, according to the Influencer Marketing Hub
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Google searches for ‘influencer marketing’ are up 400% since 2016, according to Adobe
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45% of ‘Gen Z-ers’ trust influencers over celebrities, according to The Drum
How To Get Started in Influencer Marketing
Whether you’re a B2B or B2C brand, influencer marketing may well be the strategy that’ll elevate your brand. But with thousands upon thousands of influencers in every industry – it’s not always easy to navigate.
Reach out to us and ask us about our influencer marketing experience, our little black book of the best industry-specific influencers out there, and our tried and tested campaigns that always pack a punch.
And for more insights on influencer marketing and more, head to our blog to hear more from our team.