The Pros and Cons of Influencer Marketing

You are here to discover the benefits and downsides of influencer marketing strategy and we are here to help you decide to make the right decision. Discover the pros and cons of influencer marketing.

Many brands invest a lot of time and a vast amount of money into influencer marketing campaigns. The results show that it is usually worth the effort. Most of the research proves that this type of marketing is one of the most sustainable methods to build brand awareness, increase conversions, or establish brand authority. 

There is, however, the dark side of influencer marketing campaigns. As with every business decision, influencer marketing is not a solution for everyone. The pros and cons of influencer marketing are an essential factor to consider before you implement influencer marketing into your marketing strategy. 

In this post, we’ll explore the pros and cons of influencer marketing, so you could make an informed decision and draw all the benefits from your next influencer marketing campaign.

Before you read: perhaps you will be interested in our report on Top 100 Marketing Influencers. 

In this article:

• Did you choose the right influencers?
• The pros of influencer marketing
  • Influencer marketing does work
  • Avoiding pushy advertising
  • Influencer marketing saves time
  • Possibility to create brand ambassadors
  • Ability to raise brand awareness with a low budget
• The cons of influencer marketing
  • Influencer marketing takes time to set up
  • Tracking performance and calculating ROI is difficult
  • You need employees to connect with influencers
  • The campaign might be a failure
• Is influencer marketing worth it?

Read more: What is influencer marketing?

Did you choose the right influencers?

Before we delve into the nitty-gritty of the pros and cons of influencer marketing, let’s start with the fundamentals of every successful influencer marketing campaign — finding the right influencers to work with.

To find influencers, you need to listen what they are saying and what is being said about them.

That’s where media monitoring comes in handy!

In the project creation wizard enter the keywords you want to track. Look at keywords related to your business niche, brand, the name of your product, or service.

The tool will gather publicly available mentions regarding your topics. Media monitoring tool will calculate the share of voice of given public profiles. This will be an indicator of who is the most popular and trustworthy influencer you could work with.

Additionally you can read more tips on how to find influencers.

Without further ado, let’s dive deeper into pros and cons of influencer marketing.

The pros of influencer marketing

Let’s start with the positives! There are many advantages of influencer marketing. Thousands of small, medium companies and enterprises cooperate with Internet celebrities successfully. 

How Instagram influencers make their lives easier? Here’s our list of how brand’s reputation can be boosted with influencer marketing, and how you can attract potential customers to your company.

Influencer marketing does work

There are many studies examining the results of influencer marketing campaigns in different industries. The conclusions are clear – working with relevant influencers, if done right, will boost your sales. 

Not only does influencer marketing convert more customers (according to many studies influencers convert twice as much people as paid ads), but also those customers stay with the brand much longer. 

Influencers attract customers with much longer lifetime value than customers you appeal to via other marketing channels. 

In other words, you can build much more meaningful and stronger relationships by appealing to your customers’ via influencers. What’s more, you will establish the audience trust with authentic content.

Avoiding pushy advertising 

In essence, influencer marketing is an ad that doesn’t look like a paid commercial at all. 

Influencers’ content is not as pushy as a traditional ad, and, often, much better targeted. These factors will work to your benefit, as it’s just another advantage of working with influencers. 

That’s the main drawback of paid advertising – you’ll spend a lot of money on ads that won’t necessarily reach your target audience. 

Influencers know their audience well, and, therefore, they are able to provide exactly the content they’re most likely to interact with. 

And even though nowadays influencers are mostly obligated to mark sponsored content as such, social media users still prefer paid influencer posts to plain advertisements.

Influencer marketing saves time

This point is a result of at least two of the pros mentioned earlier. 

First of all, you don’t have to come up with content for social media platforms on your own. Influencers can prepare posts that will resonate with their audience and will align with their general online presence. 

Moreover, customers enter your sales funnel much later after contact with an influencer. That means they are much more closer to buying your product than customers attracted via other marketing channels. 

Possibility to create brand ambassadors

Social media marketing with the right influencer doesn’t have to be a one-off collaboration.

Online personalities love steady relationships with brands. One or two successful campaigns will positively affect your relation with the influencer. They will be more likely to recommend your products long after your campaign is over.

Brand ambassadors are especially precious. When one influencer endorses one brand constantly, their followers are more likely to become your regular customers.

This way, without a huge budget you can build credibility and target the right audience regularly.

Ability to raise brand awareness with a low budget

Ideally by creating a viral content with influencers.

A great influencer marketing strategies don’t require big budgets. If you do your research right and connect with the right influencer, you are able to save a lot of money on advertising.

Google Ads or Facebook Ads usually require much more money invested to attract potential buyers than influencers. Skilfully performed influencers campaigns will raise your brand awareness among a very targeted audience.

But be careful – a wrong influencer will only burn your money.

The cons of influencer marketing

Unfortunately, not everything is coming up roses when it comes to influencer marketing campaigns. There are some drawbacks, and you need to be aware of them. That will help you prepare for many obstacles on the way to a successful social media marketing with influencers. 

Influencer marketing takes time to set up

A successful campaign that serves its purpose takes time and effort to set up. 

You have to do your research and find an influencer that suits your brand, prepare terms and conditions of your cooperation, approve the content your influencer prepared, and measure the results of your campaigns. 

If you want to see the benefits of an influencer marketing campaign, you have to go through all this steps and that takes time. 

Choosing the wrong influencers will cost you a lot of money and you won’t target the relevant audience. That means the campaign will not be successful. You probably will still see a spike in traffic on your website, but it won’t convert.

Tracking performance and calculating ROI is difficult

Measuring the results of an influencer marketing campaign usually requires some additional tools. And you need to track the effects of the campaign; otherwise you just repeat some activities without knowing whether they work or not. 

One way of tracking your online campaigns is to create a dedicated, or so-called branded hashtag for every influencer you work. You’ll be able to track the hashtag performance among different social media channels and:

• measure the social media reach of influencer content
• measure the number and type of social media interactions
• estimate the number of positive and negative mentions for each hashtag;
• spot the most active locations of your new audience

Tracking the results will help you tailor your influencer marketing campaigns to your needs. You will know what type of content resonates best with your audience or which social media platform suits your business best. 

Tracking hashtags is made easier while using the right tools. Maybe you would like to try Brand24? We offer hashtag monitoring starting at $49 per month with 14-day free trial.

You need employees to connect with influencers

Whether you do it yourself or delegate the task to one of your employees, you need to put some time aside to prepare your influencer marketing tactic and monitor the results of the campaign. 

There are costs related to influencer marketing that you need to be aware of. Of course, the results might be justified by hiring another employee – just remember that the cost of influencer campaigns are somewhat higher than just influencer fee or the cost of your product or tool. 

Connecting with the right influencers is also a hard work. Some influencers now have their managers, especially if they have hundreds of thousands followers and don’t respond to everybody. It’s easier to get in touch with micro influencers (less than 50k followers on Instagram).

The campaign might be a failure

You can do the research, have great content prepared, avoid social media crises and still don’t see the desired results. 

Influencer marketing campaigns might do wonders to your business but they might also fail. In the meantime, your competitors could invest in a marketing channel that will yield more substantial results. 

To avoid such a situation you can do two things. First of all, diversify your marketing efforts. Apart from investing into influencer marketing strategy, explore other channels, for example, content marketing or community management. 

Secondly, and I cannot stress it enough; you should measure the results of your influencer marketing campaign. If you don’t see the desired results after a reasonable amount of time, you should intervene. 

Is influencer marketing worth it?

As with everything, there are pros and cons of influencer marketing. You can use the advantages to your benefit and counteract the disadvantages but you should to be aware of both. 

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