The Lion's Den
The Lion’s Den: Common Influencer Marketing Problems (and the Solutions)
The Lion's Den
Influencer Marketing has been seen as an experimental marketing activity. Despite this, in recent years, this practice has become more sophisticated, also following the requests of customers who are increasingly informed and trained on the subject. Many brands are already aware of the crucial role that influence and authentic reviews play on social networks and consider them powerful levers to act on.
The most attentive customers consider Influencer Marketing as a strategic investment of their budget. Although this form of marketing draws the brand and the customer to a whole new level of closeness, this does not remove the challenges that surface once in a while. So, what are these challenges, and how can they be solved? Keep reading to find out.
Difficulty in measuring the impact or ROI
Many marketing gurus say influencer marketing is a fantastic approach to boost reach and engagement. True. However, over a third of these marketers cannot evaluate the impact of influencer marketing on their campaigns. And that’s because, being a relatively new marketing strategy, there hasn’t been a distinct indicator to measure its ROI like traditional marketing.
While evaluating the success of digital advertising is relatively simple, determining the ROI of influencer marketing is difficult using any direct approach. Therefore, the most practical way to measure your influencer marketing ROI is to match each campaign to a particular goal. What do you want to achieve with this campaign? Wider reach? Engagement? Conversion? Sentiment? Depending on your goal, the metric for measuring your ROI would differ. Once that is clearly stated, businesses can monitor particular criteria or trends based on the clearly defined goals.
Knowing the difference between the types of influencers
Not until recently, the term influencer marketing was a vague reality and an option no marketer wanted to bet on. Thanks to marketing evolution and the impact of the pandemic, influencer marketing is now a reliable strategy. However, even now the industry has gained much recognition, not everyone understands the different types of influencers. For example, contrary to popular opinion, influencer marketing does not always entail using celebrities to promote products.
Now they’ve been categorized into nano-influencers, micro-influencers, macro-influencers, even mega influencers. It’s important to understand these categories of influencers and which would work best for you considering your budget and target market. Right now, the buzz is around micro-influencers because of their closeness with their audience and authenticity.
Influencer accountability and compliance
Another significant challenge is the difficulty of monitoring content creators. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for an influencer to fall short of a marketer’s expectations, dramatically reducing the collaboration’s efficacy. This weak accountability and non-compliance occur in just about any niche of the market. Some creators can slip through the cracks or publish mediocre work even with large fees and early payments.
How to handle this? Before you launch your influencer marketing campaign, the first and most crucial thing you should do is set clear directions for content creators to ensure everyone is on the same page. Make them understand the big picture: campaign objectives, the type of visual content you want to see, and so on. Also, familiarize them with the minor details
Deciding the level of control on your influencers
Speaking of accountability, this is another challenge that is supposed to be a provision for compliance and accountability. Yes, it has been established; influencers are professionals, experts in their various fields —no doubt about that. And while brands respect this, there’s often some contemplation on how much freedom they can allow their influencers.
This concern is somewhat justifiable because you wouldn’t want your campaign to fall short of expectations. So, brands are often stuck between deciding the level of control or the extent of creative freedom to allow. How can you solve this? Besides having a mutual understanding with your influencers about goals, making clear your brand tone and all, brands have also found an easy solution by co-creating content with their influencers—a brilliant approach that keeps the content on-brand while still giving off that authenticity.
Algorithm updates on social platforms
With every algorithm update comes a little panic among influencers and marketers, especially. The initial panic if the update would affect the campaigns already or the adaptation to it. In fact, social algorithm updates have been pointed out as a factor to be put into consideration when developing an influencer marketing strategy.
This challenge is certainly one beyond anyone’s control, so instead of panicking, you could focus on how these changes are impacting your campaign and adjust to it. If for anything, these updates are made to improve user experience and it could also be an opportunity for you and your influencers to level up your creative game and strategy.
Final thoughts
The most challenging aspect of influencer marketing is finding the right influencers that align with your brand values and goals. Imagine the long hours doing industry research, reaching out to influencers, securing the partnership; this can be quite daunting. But you don’t have to go through all these. At Lionize, we help you find the best influencers that perfectly fit your brand and budget.
For Brands
We’ll help you find the perfect partners for your brand. Let our network of limitless Influencers build brand awareness and drive your digital traffic goals.
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For Agencies
Finally, a platform that removes the heavy lifting of Influencer campaign management. Free your time to focus on your client’s creative strategy.
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