Many have come to know this time period as “The Age of the Influencer”. But millennials and Generation Z’ers are beginning to trust influencers less than they have been in past years. How could this be? Let’s take a look at why influencer marketing is starting to downward spiral.
Consumers Lose Trust in Influencers
Consumers may start off trusting influencers – after all, influencers built their brand following for one reason: authenticity! Majority of their followers follow them because they believe in what they have to say. But influencer marketing ruins this trust by casting an inauthentic light on an otherwise genuine individual. The fact is – most influencers don’t care if the companies they work with align with their personal values or morals – they just see a fat paycheck. So they say yes to all company offers and start getting paid for their work.
Who would turn all that money down? Most influencers won’t, but consumers will likely be negatively affected. Once they get a sniff of inauthenticity, they are less likely to believe anything the influencer says in the future. 61% of consumers have unfollowed an influencer because “they work with inappropriate brands” or “endorse too many products.” And 43% felt influencers are “often inauthentic” and “work with brands they don’t believe in”.
Brands Pick the Wrong Influencers
Does the Name “Fyre Festival” mean anything to you? The creators of Fyre Festival paid big money to fly out Kendall Jenner, along with Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, Hailey Baldwin, and many more celebrity influencers to the beach for Fyre Festival. Kendall Jenner reportedly got paid $250,000 to post just one Instagram photo promoting Fyre Festival. All of these women combined have over 120 million Instagram followers.
So why was Fyre Festival regarded as such a spectacular failure in influencer marketing? Fyre organizers claimed all 40,000 tickets would be sold by March 31. By April 27, when the first people started to arrive on the island, the fest had sold only 8,000 tickets. That’s less than 25% of the total available, and many of them sold at heavily discounted rates…after the influencer campaign failed to convert impressions into purchases.
What went wrong? Fyre had failed to pick the right influencers to promote the festival. Influencer marketing happens at the micro-level – influencers that have no engagement with their followers & no authenticity are bound to have dismal connections. This includes most celebrity influencers. From this failure, 94% of marketers stated they were “not likely” or “very unlikely” to seek out big-name influencers for promotions.
Hard to Measure the ROI of Influencer Marketing
Influencers with 50,000-500,000 followers can charge $2,500 for a Youtube video, $1,000 for an Instagram or Snapchat post, and $400 for a Tweet, while influencers with 3-7 million followers can charge $187,500 for a YouTube video, $75,000 for an Instagram or Snapchat post, and $30,000 for a Tweet. This is a very large investment, and most marketers expect to have a huge ROI on these posts. But it is not always as straightforward as that. There is no specific way to measure the ROI on influencer campaigns
It can be hard to improve marketing strategy without having some way to measure it — or even know if it’s working. 76% of marketers agree that one of the hardest challenges of influencer marketing is measuring the ROI.
So What Now?
Instead of beginning yet another inauthentic influencer marketing campaign, why not hand over the mic to your customers instead? Let your company be truly representative of all the people that believe in your brand. Contact us for any and all assistance with your marketing strategy. Check out our blog for more posts like this!
Sources:
www.medium.com/swlh/influencer-marketing-is-dying-and-you-killed-it-cda180832bc8
www.influencermarketinghub.com/no-fyre-festival-wasnt-an-influencer-marketing-success-and-other-lessons-from-a-disaster/
www.neilpatel.com/blog/is-influencer-marketing-dead/
www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2018/33333/the-influencer-marketing-revolution-macro-versus-micro-influencers-infographic
www.linqia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Linqia-The-State-of-Influencer-Marketing-2018.pdf
www.nytimes.com/2017/05/10/fashion/kendall-jenner-fyre-festival-pepsi-bella-hadid-influencers.html?_r=0