Influencer marketing platform provider TapInfluence has released the results of a study surveying how marketers and influencers work together, where and how investments in the field are progressing, and how to accommodate the category’s growth.

“Influencer marketing is promising in its ability to drive community engagement and peer-to-peer action,” says Brian Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter, a technology research firm that collaborated with TapInfluence on the study. “As marketers experiment with digital influence, naturally there will be many mistakes made and lessons learned. We all have something to learn. And we can do that by understanding the world of influencer engagement through the perspective of influencers themselves. We set out to do just that in this study and the results are compelling and revealing.”

Prominent factors in the category’s growth are challenges to expand investment. TapInfluence reports that in order to expand investment, corporations and brands need to better understand their own internal structures to support these efforts, listen to the influencers themselves and access metrics on campaign ROI. Its research found that 65 percent of companies spend less than $10,000 per influencer marketing campaign, and 54 percent of marketers cite lack of assigned budget as an internal challenge towards greater adoption of influencer marketing

TapInfluence attributes these issues in part to fragmented departmental ownership. Research shows that 28 percent of brand respondents put ownership of influencer marketing under social marketing, however 16 percent put it under marketing communications and only 14 percent had a dedicated function. Furthermore, 56 percent cited internal concerns around influencer marketing being new and unproven as a challenge towards great investment.

“Influencer marketing is evolving fast, making it an even greater challenge for brands and agencies to effectively capitalize upon. The legacy form of this market, which was the exclusive domain of celebrities, is dead; from its foundational ‘ashes’ has risen the most powerful marketing channel of the 21st century that is delivering on the promises long made by social platforms and content marketing,” says Promise Phelon, CEO of TapInfluence. “With Altimeter we’re hoping to accelerate the maturation process of this field, encouraging marketers to get to know influencer needs better and define strategies that will lead to long-term relationships and material ROI.”

Download a copy of The Influencer Marketing Manifesto here.