Why Working With Influencers Isn’t Always a Good
Idea
Influencers are opinion leaders on social media platforms that have a loyal audience from thousands to millions of people. Influence marketing strategy is one of the most effective digital channels of promotion. It is a great way to improve brand awareness and raise your products to the top positions in niche markets.
Even if it is just an Instagram post, celebrity endorsement can influence followers’ views, actions, and decisions. Similarly, a micro-influencer can create a stable positive image of a product in the consumer’s mind just by writing a blog post.
Nevertheless, like any other work that includes people and new technologies, influencer marketing has its risks and pitfalls. Let’s find out why it is better to give an influencer marketing strategy a second thought and prepare a marketing risk plan.
You Cannot Control the Content
To be clear, you can indeed have control over the posts directly connected with your brand’s marketing campaign and even set strict requirements or general guidelines. But the rest of the feed belongs entirely and utterly to the content creators.
For that reason, it is essential to choose influencers and brand ambassadors scrupulously, considering their reputation, relationships with other brands, and previous marketing campaigns. Do not forget you have no control over anything that happens next, so you will have to put a lot of trust in the influencer you chose to work with.
Why is that so important? Because right after a successful collaboration, people will start associating your brand with the influencer and their further actions – controversial or not – and that may significantly affect your image.
No matter what Logan Paul’s net worth is now, his past actions have brought the backlash experience to the brands he worked with as well as platforms he used, and this background is not going anywhere.
Indeed, some brands accept that working with controversial influences and sensationalists has its benefits, such as greater attention or even attracting a larger audience, but is it the desired image you want your brand to have?
Mismatch With the Environment
Something like that happens when you neglect the differences between the audiences of micro-influencers and celebrities. It turns out they require entirely different approaches. Companies should take the evaluation of the specifics of the environment seriously.
What content is the audience used to? What are their restrictions, wishes, and requirements? Brands that do not listen to the influencer’s recommendations about how their audience can perceive the content with integration are more likely to fail and lose the opportunity to engage the target audience.
Therefore, making sterile and detached from reality content is a mistake. Any attempt to hide an ad under the creator’s personal opinion can lead, at least, to a loss of customer loyalty and worsen the attitude towards both the influencer and the brand.
Guidelines are sacred for any brand manager and marketing team, but not always and not all standards can comply, so you need to assess the risks associated with this in advance.
Copy-Pasting
There are unpleasant situations when influencers come to the essential part of their job- social media posts. Some of them just copy-paste the message and publish it without double-checking. It is not a very common thing, but everybody immediately knows when it happens. It is not too bad, but it will surely erase the effect of sincere celebrity endorsements.
Unfortunately, it happens even to the best of us (we all remember Naomi Campbell’s Instagram post from 2016), but it is quite hard to determine why. Indeed, it can be chalked up to carelessness or celebrities just being too busy to pay attention to such details. But it can also mean a lack of effective communication between the brand and the influencer. Thus, it is crucial to watch the influencer marketing campaign at every stage and keep in mind that there are some things in life you cannot be protected from.
Lack of Experience
Today, brands are more likely to invest in working with micro-influencers – people whose audience may not exceed five thousand followers. Most of them are lifestyle bloggers who may not be familiar with specific marketing terms and measures, so you should not expect them to be entirely devoted to working on a marketing strategy together.
Failures are also possible during working on projects together. You can get your way perfectly well with contractors of any size, but if you don’t find a common language with the micro-influencer, they can quit in the middle of the project. Thus, an essential aspect of working with influencers is to keep in mind that you are working with a real person, not a B2B contractor. You should identify any possible risks, adjust your communication style, and look for non-standard approaches.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing is tricky and sometimes brings unpredictable responses, so the company must find safe ways to use this channel. It does not matter whether you work with an influencer who has a million followers or a few thousand – their review matters for their fans relatively the same.
Working with influencers will mostly depend on every person’s attitude to the product, experience in digital marketing, and character traits like reliability, professionalism, and neatness. The entire campaign’s effectiveness can depend on one particular person, and the sooner you realize it, the more likely you are to succeed.
