Influencer collaborations have emerged as a powerful strategy in the marketing realm. Brands are partnering with popular figures on the internet to get recognition to a greater mass. This approach effectively captures customer interest and generates sales, especially amid steep brand competition.
This is also helping the influencers because they get paid for promoting the brands. It's a mutually profitable arrangement for the brands and the creators involved.
However, it is not as easy as it seems, and often, brands fail with influencer marketing.
You enthusiastically start your campaign, expecting some additional return on your investments. But things don’t go as planned, and you feel like a failure. What causes the failure?
In this blog, we will dive into the most common reasons we’ve seen that influencer marketing campaigns fail.
Top Reasons Why Marketers Fail At Influencer Marketing
1. Partnering with the Wrong Influencers
An important aspect of influencer marketing as 49% of the consumers depend on recommendation from their favorite influencers. Forming partnerships with suitable influencers involves identifying well-recognized influencers to whom the target audience can connect.
To effectively choose influencers for your brand, you first need a clear understanding of your target customers' demographics.
An influencer brand promotion to an incompatible audience could be one of the reasons why influencer marketing campaigns fail for the brand. Here are a few things you need to check before collaborating with an influencer.
Signing Up Big Influencers
Collaborations with mega/macro-influencers with millions of followers can be costly and may not achieve the expected outcome. Also, Celebrity influences are not easily accessible and come with a hefty price tag.
Instead, partnering with popular micro-influencers is cost-effective, accessible, and offers higher engagement due to their authentic audience connection. They can draw more attention by going live and offering meet-ups and giveaways. Their followers listen closely, leading to better engagement than partnering with celebrities, making micro-influencers a better choice.
Wrong Influencer Niche
The initial step in connecting with the right influencers involves matching your brand with content creators within your industry.
The influencer’s image should align with the brand identity to yield desired outcomes. Yes, experimenting sometimes gives unexpected results, but it doesn’t have a chance when you are low on budget.
Incorrect Influencer Demographics
Influencer’s demographic needs to be considered as a deciding factor to determine if they are an audience fit. Same product or service partnered with different influencers has different results, which may vary with regions.
Influencer demographics should align with the target audience's age, location, interests, and purchasing power.
Many brands struggle with influencer marketing because they partner with influencers from different regions. This can lead to failure because the influencer’s audience doesn't align with the target market of the brand.
Influencer’s Influence on Different Social Media Platforms
Remember, not all influencers have the same impact across all social media channels. Hence, they don’t hold the same level of influence across every platform they are active on.
Someone might be more engaged on YouTube, while another could be more active on Instagram. Remember, each social media platform possesses its own distinct audience traits.
Ultimately, it depends on where your potential customers spend their time. Focus on influencers who can effectively connect with your audience on the appropriate platform.
2. Inefficient Influencer Recruitment Process
Many of the brand’s influencer campaigns simply fail because they don’t pay attention to the influencers influence, engagement and conveying power. As a brand owner, you should look for influencers with a good reputation, review their profiles and social media activities, and engagement. This can be time-consuming but important for hiring the most accurate influencer.
Avoiding comprehensive research before affiliation with influencers is one of the reasons why influencer marketing campaigns fail.
However, By joining TrueFanz you can find many influencers associated with the platform. This platform is designed to connect you with the influencers you require seamlessly for your brand promotion.
With a diverse array of influencers across various categories, your desired match is just one click away. Simplify your influencer marketing journey and leave a significant impact with TrueFanz.
3. Inadequate Influencer’s Engagement Rate
Despite all your efforts, if the engagement rate of your partnered influencers remains critically low, your campaign is doomed to fail. Brands often ignore this fact and partner with influencers who have a number of bot and inactive followers.
Inactive Influencers
You've successfully checked all the essential boxes and started the campaign.
However a small yet crucial factor can determine your campaign's fate– an influencer's engagement efforts.
If your chosen influencer fails to respond to comments and DMs linked to your campaign promptly, there could be a decrease in potential conversion rates. Some influencers have their social media accounts handled by their team and they often don't engage with questions or actively choose not to do so.
To overcome this challenge, allocating a dedicated resource is the only solution. You should have your own team who can manage the engagements and actively collaborate with influencers’ social media managers.
Fake Followers Count
Many influencers buy followers in an attempt to appear more influential on social media. However, partnering with them will never give you the desired campaign outcomes because of persistently low engagement rates. This is a fundamental cause of failure in many Influencer Marketing Campaigns.
This is why conducting thorough research prior to hiring any influencer for your campaign is crucial. Moreover, don't overlook the significance of evaluating genuine engagement rates. It is a deciding factor in influencer campaigns.
4. Weak Branding
Regardless of an influencer's caliber, if your brand doesn't meet certain standards, your campaign will suffer difficulties, and it’s inevitable.
It is crucial to maintain your brand reputation through all the channels– this includes your website as well as social media channels. If your brand’s online presence doesn’t look appealing, it can stop influencers from collaborating with you. After all, no one would be interested in endorsing a brand that seems unauthentic.
Unmarketable Services
Sometimes, businesses might not have a product or service that has recognition to potential consumers. It's possible that there isn't enough demand for what you're offering.
This is particularly important to consider if you have recently launched a new product. If this situation applies to you, you might want to approach your influencer campaign as an experiment for brand promotion. Meanwhile, you can think about refining your product based on the data collected from the market.
Less Brand Exposure
Not everyone buys something the first time they see it unless they really love the brand. Some things need more time to decide on, so buying them right away might not make sense.
Ask your influencers for multiple posts over an extended period for better results. Repetitive exposure generates audience interest and contributes to increased sales. When your campaign has a frequent viewership, it's more likely to achieve success.
5. Ineffectively Executed Influencer Marketing Campaigns
A reputed brand with amazing products teaming up with a pretty good influencer. After launching their campaign, something feels off – like it doesn't fit together.
Why do you think brands face influencer marketing struggles?
Various observations indicate that campaigns rushed into launch without the necessary attention often fail to achieve the desired outcomes.
Unclear Campaign Objectives
You should have a clear outline of your objectives before starting any influencer campaign. Otherwise, it would only lead to a failed association.
Are you aiming for increased sales? Are you targeting brand engagement? Or is it primarily for increasing brand visibility? What specific metrics are you targeting?
It's crucial to set achievable goals for influencers. Also, look for the influencer’s capacity on behalf of their follower counts and engagement rates when setting your objectives.
Wrong Scheduling of Posts
The upload timing of social media posts greatly impacts their interactions. Failing to consider timing might result in low engagements– leading to a failed campaign.
As per the study, the posts between 8 AM and 11 AM on weekdays are more likely to be visible, while posts on weekends get more engagement when posted between 6 PM and 8 PM.
You should follow any ongoing events, special seasons, or extraordinary occurrences that could influence your influencer campaign's performance. Schedule your post timing based on any additional external factors.
Choosing Inexperienced Influencer
Collaboration with an experienced influencer with a history of successful achievements provides an upper hand, as they are already familiar with the promotional content.
However, if you're collaborating with influencer who is comparatively new, you'll have to provide them with proper guidance to craft the content.
Making a choice between partnering with an experienced professional or giving an opportunity to a newcomer can influence how effective your campaign turns out to be. As a brand, if you fail to decide, you might derail your campaign.
Not Tracking The Campaign Metrics
Like all online marketing efforts, monitoring the performance of your influencer marketing campaigns is equally important.
Important KPIs like social media engagements, Click-Through Rate, organic website traffic and conversion rates should be checked periodically to understand the effectiveness of your influencer marketing campaign.
Measuring conversion or sales becomes essential to understand if the brand has achieved their desired goal through the campaign . Having a sound tracking system helps you understand the campaign's effectiveness and identify the obstacles. Unfortunately, many brands struggle and find it challenging to determine whether their campaign was a success or a failure just because they didn’t track the progress.
Unachievable Expectations
Setting unrealistic expectations always leads to disappointment. It's crucial to consider industry trends and practical influencer performance. An influencer with 1M followers doesn't guarantee your campaign will reach them all. Only 4-5% of organic followers engage per post. Don’t expect a miracle from day one.
When setting influencer marketing campaigns, focus on KPIs like impressions, engagement, CTR, and conversion rates to gain a realistic perspective.
Wrapping Up
Influencer marketing is an effective strategy for brand promotion and boosting sales.
However, it doesn't work like magic. The entire process asks for your time, attention, proper planning and resources. Despite the experience of marketers and influencers, mistakes are common. And failures or “learning experiences” will happen.
A broken hyperlink or wrong call-to-action can completely ruin your campaign. Unworthy partnerships, poor execution, and lack of authenticity are a few reasons why influencer marketing campaigns fail.
Addressing the obstacles that we have discussed above and taking proactive measures will increase the chances of a successful influencer marketing campaign.
Best of success!
