Influencer marketing continues to be the top marketing tool for brand marketers. It has been growing consistently for many years, and experts believe it will grow even faster in the coming years. Since the space is evolving rapidly with new social media platforms, different content formats, and changing user behavior, brands and influencers are trying their best to capture the attention of their audiences. However, many myths still surround influencer marketing and are causing a roadblock for brands to leverage their potential completely. In this blog, we will discuss the top 5 influencer marketing myths that need to be busted in order to educate brands and marketers.
The number of followers determines the influencers’ influence
This is one of the most popular myths regarding influencer marketing among brands and audiences that the influence of a creator is determined solely by the number of people who follow them and everything else is secondary. But this is not true. While influencers with a large following are beneficial to promote mass brands, there are niche product categories that require specialized creators that can constantly deliver authentic and creative content. Therefore, going just by the influencer’s number of followers will not be the proper criteria for selection. Instead, what determines a creator’s influence is the engagement rate, audience profile, content frequency, and reach, along with the number of followers. So, if an influencer has fewer followers but a high engagement rate on their post than someone who enjoys a large following with less engagement, brands should take their chance with the former, which is more likely to succeed.
Influencer marketing is expensive
The best part about influencer marketing is that it can be undertaken by brands of all sizes and that too within their marketing budget. So saying that influencer marketing is expensive cannot be far from the truth. If brands collaborate with mega-influencers or celebrities with millions of followers, the remuneration can run into thousands of dollars and sometimes even millions. But there are nano and micro-influencers who charge significantly less but do the job efficiently for niche and specialized brands. So it depends on how much brands want to spend on influencer marketing campaigns.
As a matter of fact, most big brands have also started to collaborate with hundreds of small influencers who deliver significantly high ROI compared to a few mega-influencers. And if brands are on a very tight budget, they can use product seeding techniques where they can send out free products to a carefully selected group of influencers to make them try the products and post about the item on their social media channels in front of their large following. In other words, the brands send out these free products to the influencers to generate word-of-mouth referrals and get genuine, relatable organic content that resonates well with the followers of the content creator.
Also Read: These tips will help brands improve their relationship with influencers
Influencer marketing only builds brand awareness
While initially, influencer marketing was primarily used by brands to increase awareness, it has come around in a big way in the last few years. Today, it will be completely wrong to say that influencer marketing only helps brands increase awareness about their products because influencers assist organizations at every stage of the consumer buying journey – product discovery or conversion. With various content formats like live commerce, social commerce, product unboxing and reviews, blogs, affiliate links, and promo codes, creators have become a mainstay for brands to sell their products. And as mentioned above, their efficiency can be easily tracked to give a complete picture of their performance and ROI.
Measuring influencer marketing ROI is difficult
There is a widespread belief that measuring the impact of an influencer marketing campaign is very difficult, and most of the time, it is not possible to accurately monitor its outcome. According to leading research, more than 50% of marketers don’t even measure the impact of their influencer marketing campaigns. But with iConnect’s detailed analytics and influencer campaign reporting features, brands in MENA can easily track the campaign’s progress, ascertain influencers’ performance, and determine its success and ROI. Additionally, the platform provides a total breakdown for each influencer activity, like content posts, engagement generated, revenue, and conversion, so that brands can have complete visibility of the creator’s performance. Brands should be clear about what KPIs they want to track and use technology platforms to help them successfully measure those.
All influencers buy fake followers
Influencer fraud has been the biggest challenge for brands when onboarding the appropriate creator for their campaign because many influencers buy fake followers to boost their brand collaborations. But simply saying all creators buy fake followers would be going too far. Over the last few years, this phenomenon has come under intense scrutiny, and social media platforms have started identifying accounts with bot-generated following and flagging them, significantly reducing such cases. Influencer marketing platforms like iConnect let brands onboard from a vast network of vetted influencers who will take their campaigns to the most relevant audience and drive sales. Moreover, iConnect caps quality following & engagement at a minimum of 70%.
