For many influencers, the COVID-19 crisis has been challenging. For others, it’s been an opportunity.

Despite everything, it has been great to see our clients build their engagement and followings during the crisis. Yes, many people have more time on their hands and so are turning to social media, but influencers still need to post authentic content to build trust with an engaged audience. It’s not about posting for the sake of it, but creating content that is genuinely going to improve someone’s day. Our fitness clients are great examples of this, live streaming workouts and workshops that are helping people through the crisis, attracting new audiences and gaining huge followers.

Our clients aren’t simply growing their followers. We're pleased to say they are growing their bank balances. This is possible because long before the crisis, our clients realised there could be another, more profitable, means of income generation than endorsing 3rd party products. Instead they turned their personal brands into highly successful businesses.

Our clients’ brands have seen a 135% increase in revenues and a 156% increase in profits from sales that were driven by social media advertising in March 2020 compared to the previous month. April’s figures tell a similar success story.

But what of the mainstream influencer economy? It’s easy to find a hundred stories of influencers losing out on lucrative partnerships due to the crisis. Marketing Week reports 86% of marketers are now delaying or reviewing marketing campaigns. Influencer marketing is undoubtedly taking a significant hit.

Maybe influencer marketing won’t be mainstream for much longer. It certainly shouldn’t be in our opinion. By partnering with Genflow, influencers earn three times more selling their own products than they did by endorsing products on behalf of brands. And they get the freedom to be truly authentic and focus their creativity on their passions while doing so.

More influencers are coming round to this way of thinking. Since the start of lockdown in the UK, we’ve signed up 13 influencers as clients. That’s absolutely unprecedented.

But we see the crisis as an accelerant, not a catalyst, as this shift in the influencer economy is not new.

Genflow has since helped over 50 influencers launch their own brand and sell a combined £25m / $30.5m of products across seven core industries, from beauty to fitness apparel.

We are proud of what we’ve achieved and there’s more to come.

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