Influencer marketing doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon. It seems like wherever you look, there’s another ‘influencer’. While this is an extremely popular marketing method today, it also has many problems. Here are the problems plaguing influencer marketing, and why it’s such a risk.
A High Follower Count Doesn’t Prove That Someone’s An Influencer
You can buy ‘followers’, ‘likes’ and just about anything else these days on social media. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have measures in place to try and counteract these fakes, but they can’t keep up and eliminate them all. You need to do a lot of research on the influencers you’re potentially going to work with, to make sure their followers and their interactions are genuine.
Measuring The Results (Including ROI) Is Nearly Impossible
It’s very challenging to gather relevant and informative stats on influencer marketing’s impact.There’s no clearly defined way to track conversions or any other important marketing statistics when you use this marketing method. How can you tell if you’ve gotten a good ROI if you can’t measure the results?
Fake Influencers Pretending To Be Brand Promoters Are Prevalent
It’s not just follower counts, likes, etc. that can be faked; many people are desperate to be influencers because they liken it to being a celebrity of sorts. It’s common to see these fake ‘influencers’ pretending that their posts are sponsored. They purport that they are brand representatives, being paid for advertising products or services. It’s easier than you think to mistake a fake influencer for a genuine one.
It Is Extremely Time-Consuming To Vet Potential Influencer Partners
There aren’t many tools available to help you make the process of weeding out fake influencers a quicker process. If you want to make sure that someone is a genuine influencer, it takes a lot of hours of research. You need to wade through their followers, who they follow, and many of their interactions to determine if they are legitimately an influencer.
Influencer Marketing Has Many Issues, Which Is Why We Don’t Recommend It
There’s a lot of work and time involved with influencer marketing, even before you’ve engaged an influencer. Why expend large amounts of effort and potentially waste a lot of time and money for no guarantee of any meaningful return. Not being able to measure your ROI means that you can’t analyse your results and make changes to your strategy for next time.
If you’re looking to step up your marketing game and had been considering influencer marketing, hopefully you now want to go in a new direction. The team at MacZin Digital Marketing can help!
We will develop a marketing strategy that elevates your business to the next level without relying on gimmicks like influencer marketing.
