An essential communication tool, advertisers have now understood the challenges of influencer marketing. But to succeed in your influencer marketing campaign, you must still understand the risks! Knowing the pitfalls and dangers of influencer marketing will help you to enhance the full potential of your campaign, and will subsequently optimise your ROI.
The risks of influencer marketing, for the brand
1. Make sure the influencer has a good reputation
Influencer Marketing relies on mobilising an influencer as a means of communicating about a brand. If your influencer doesn’t reflect a good image or their reputation on social networks is impacted by incorrect content, the ramifications for your brand will be negative.
Yet, it is not easy to get a global view of all of the content that influencers have published on their networks. To avoid any scandal, and therefore a negative impact on your business, it is recommended that you use a technological tool such as an influencer platform which, thanks to monitoring, is able to anticipate potential problem in advance.
2. Beware of "Serial Brand Influencers"!
When you choose your influencer, it is important to look at their collaboration history. Beware of “serial brand influencers” that accumulate too many partnerships. Your campaign risks lacking credibility among their audience, or even going unnoticed.
All the more if the influencer has already collaborated with a competitor of yours! There too, a technological platform lets you study the market to avoid this classic digital influence pitfall.
3. Protect yourself with a contract
One of the main risks of an influencer marketing campaign is that the influencer does not meet their commitments concerning the promotion of your products and/or services: delayed schedule, non-compliant content, pure and simple cancellation, etc.
To avoid incurring these risks, the best solution is still to formalise your partnership by signing a contract. Several key themes such as the remuneration or system must be tackled to ensure that both parties are protected.
The risks of influencer marketing, for the influencer
Influence campaigns can also present risks for the influencer. The loss of credibility is the main one. Associating yourself with brands can lead to the Key Opinion Leader losing credibility and appearing inauthentic by their community.
Authenticity and transparency being the two qualities that subscribers look for in influencers, it is highly probably that their fans no longer want to listen to what they’re offering.
This can also be caused by a bad choice of partnership. Natoo has conducted campaigns against foie gras. It would therefore be wrong of her to associate with a brand of pâté.