How Marketers Misunderstand Influencer Marketing

There’s no doubt that influencer marketing has become one of the most popular methods of digital marketing and marketing in general. It’s often the first method a marketer will reach out for when wanting to build positive awareness about a brand campaign, product or company. Once considered a ‘gimmick’ form of marketing, influencer marketing has grown in strength over the last decade and there are numerous influencer marketing examples out there to prove that this works, and it’s not going away any time soon. 

There’s no wonder why, there are numerous studies that show trust between consumers and brands is declining. Consumers are more willing to listen to people they actually have trust with (even if they declare that they have a relationship with that company). However, despite marketers coming up with sophisticated and sound influencer marketing strategies - they sometimes misunderstand what it is they are actually achieving. 

Unfortunately, many marketers still haven’t caught on and misunderstand quite what influencer marketing is and how it works. So at IMA, we have gone ahead and listed the top 5 reasons where we see marketers misunderstanding Influencer Marketing so they get a sound understanding of what it is, how to use it and what to expect.

1. Macro, Mid and Micro Influencers

It shouldn’t really need saying but not all influencers are the same. There are a whole range out there with a wide variety of relationships with their following. As a marketer it is up to you to understand that relationship. To do that? It’s worth following the influencer (as well as their followers) to see how the audience interacts with them. Do they leave lots of comments? Engage via direct messages and so on. Who and what else is the follower up to?

 A macro influencer, such as a celebrity might have a large following and can spread your message to a large audience with one single post but might not be able to create a lot of ‘willing’ customers.. On the other hand, a micro influencer might have a core group of followers that although aren’t large in numbers, they are far more likely to take action. Knowing what type of influencer to go for or how you can mix it up is going to play out in your overall success with the influencer marketing campaign. A message that might work well with a macro influencer might not work quite as effectively as a message amongst several micro influencers. 

Think about ‘message’ exposure too, will your target audience see your brand once or several times amongst different influencers? Do the influencers have crossover followers? If so, that’s much more likely to resonate with them to a point where they might be more likely to check out your brand and product compared to a follower who just sees you once.

2. Short Term Vs Long Term

Often influencer marketing gets misconstrued as being something you carry out to give a quick boost in sales and is more of a tactic rather than an overall branding strategy. An influencer can get a short brief with no context of what the marketing campaign is about. And the likelihood? It won’t provide a significant boost to brand perception or sales.

Instead, involving the influencer right from the start on what you are trying to achieve is probably going to play out a lot better with a longer term benefit. Why? Simply, the specific influencer knows their following better than anyone as well as what resonates with them. Carrying out influencer marketing with a long term approach is going to yield far better results than something off the cuff. 

Building a relationship between the brand and influencer is very much like building an indirect relationship with their entire following. The more you work with a set of influencers, the more endorsement of your brand that will come your way.

3. Influencer Marketing is Easy

With the recent popularity of influencer marketing (you can simply head to Google trends to confirm that), everyone has become more aware of the intricacies to it, including the consumer. Where it was once a simple game to play in its infancy - simply ‘gifting’ your product to a relevant influencer with a large following in return for a shout out - the need to have a sound marketing strategy behind it has grown tremendously.

You need to put the same (or even more) effort into the thought and execution of the influencer marketing campaign to truly resonate with your influencer’s followers (who are your potential prospects). It’s not simply about getting your campaign seen but also needs to incite action (even if that’s just a microtransaction such as an email sign up). Explore the range of influencer marketing examples we have covered to see which option could work best for your situation.

4. Trust in the influencer

Influencers are exactly that, influencers. They aren't marketers taking account analytics of their demographic, where they spend their money etc. They are more concentrating on what made them an influencer in the first place. Serving high quality content that engages. Whether that’s fashion, academia, sports, however they will know their audience and what resonates with them most (hence they have managed to build the following they have).

So make sure you take their opinion into account - ask them directly do they think the content piece will work? When is the best time to post? Should you follow it up with a certain caption? Of course, have your influence on the marketing piece and what you are trying to do - but this should be a collaborative project, this is what is going to yield the best results. Try to refrain from just outright ‘telling’ them.

5. What makes it an effective campaign?

One of the biggest misconceptions of Influencer Marketing is judging whether or not the campaign was ‘successful’ or ‘effective’? These are hard aspects to measure without appropriately setting up what you are trying to actually achieve beforehand. You need to understand the KPIs. And if you have just done this once, it can be hard to do. 

If your goal is solely to sell a certain product, then the campaign you create and the influencers you choose are going to differ vastly from a campaign set up to increase the number of email sign ups to go on a newsletter. You have to make sure that you have a clear idea of what it is the campaign is trying to achieve and how that fits into the larger picture (see point 2). 

A more appropriate figure that a brand should be looking at is the customer lifetime value combined with how ‘likely’ that customer is to refer another customer to you. If you did a brand campaign with a range of influencers that yielded 10 customers with a CLTV of $1,000 each and it cost you $10,000, you could be breaking even or you might have worked out that for every customer they are 20% more likely to refer another one. In this case another 2 customers at $1,000. Essentially, that campaign has in fact profited you $2,000. Be very careful about the metrics that you apply and think about the bigger picture.