r5 Common Myths About Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a marketing tool that has grown immensely over the years. In 2015, a report showed that 73% of marketers had an allocated budget for influencer marketing. Since then, it has only grown and there are no signs of a slowed growth of influencer marketing in the near future.
As the influencer marketing industry has grown, some misconceptions and myths have appeared. These myths are not only circulating around the marketers themselves but also CEO:s and employees have gotten some things wrong. In this article, I’ll be tracking down 5 of the most common myths about influencer marketing and put them asleep forever.
1. Higher follower amount equals more influence
This can be true in some cases but most of the time it isn’t.
A lot of marketers and brands believe that the higher amount of followers an influencer has, the more impact the influencer will have. This is completely false.
The most important thing marketers should look at is the engagement. A person can have 1 Million followers on Instagram but only receive 10K likes on each post and get comments that show the influencer doesn’t make any real impact on people. Comments like “nice profile” “awesome pic” etc. are common “friendly phrases” that shows the influencer doesn’t really have a very big impact on its followers.
At the same time, a person can have 100 thousand followers on Instagram, receive 15K likes per post and receive a ton of thoughtful comments from loyal fans and followers that show a true impact by the influencer.
The issue here is that if marketers don’t know what they should look for when picking influencers to work with, there’s a big chance they’ll choose the influencer with 1M followers in a belief that they will get a better result when this may not be the case.
If you are a marketer or simply take care of influencer marketing but don’t know how to choose an influencer in order to generate best possible results – Veloce Network will help you. Veloce Network is a social media influencer directory that has gathered thousands of the best influencers in one place. Simply filter them based on your preferred criteria. All influencers are hand-picked which means they are the best of the best.
2. “Celebrities are influencers”
This is another common mistake that I hear all too often.
The main difference between an influencer and a celebrity is that an influencer often shapes the looks and shapes of a celebrity while a celebrity normally is built by a group and team which can make them very inauthentic.
While celebrities can help generate fairly great results for businesses, the price of a collaboration with a celebrity is much higher than a collaboration with an influencer if you take a look at engagement and results. Don’t get fooled by the numbers. To measure true impact, you have to look more deeply.
3. Influencer are “wear and tear” objects
This is completely false. Every brand that works with influencers should strive to build a relationship with influencer they work with. Influencers are people too!
The reasons to why you should strive to create the best relationships possible with influencers are many.
You might recognize yourself when a marketing campaign is formed and ready to launch but you don’t have any influencers to go to. This is a time where it is important to have built up strong relationships with influencers. Making campaigns on short notices isn’t always influencers’ favorite thing to do but if you’re asking influencers you’ve worked with before, the chances of getting them to help you are greater as they have respect and appreciation for you and your brand and want to see you succeed.
Another benefit of creating valuable relationships with your influencers is because they often have a large network of other people that might be valuable for your business. In fact, they might even be operating at brands you’d like to work with.
In addition, 71% of marketers believe that ongoing ambassadorships are the most effective form of influencer marketing.
4. Influencer marketing is only for brands with large marketing budgets
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
In influencer marketing, there are influencers for brands of every kind.
If you’re looking to partner up with celebrities such as Kim Kardashian but only have a small budget, you might be out of luck but something that small brands have realized the last couple of years is the results micro-influencers are able to generate.
Micro-influencers are people who have a relatively small following on social media with around 10-50K followers. While some brands ignore these with the argument that their following is too small, some brands are seeing micro-influencer’s true potential.
Ready Why you shouldn’t ignore micro-influencers
While micro- influencer’s following is relatively small, it is very targeted and their engagement often extremely high. In fact, micro-influencers with 50K followers can generate better ROI for brands than some influencers with 100K followers.
This shows just how important it is to pick your influencers very, very carefully and with Veloce Network – it’s easier than ever.
5. People don’t trust influencers
Because influencers have fans and not followers, the reality is actually the opposite of the sentence above in most cases. The people who are following the influencer often want to be like the influencer which means wear the same clothes, use the same products and drink the same protein shake etc. Influencers are called “influencers” for a reason – because they influence people’s everyday lives and decisions. Most importantly- their shopping habits.
According to Twitter, influencers are trusted nearly as much as personal friends. The reason to this is because influencers know how to engage with their audience and include them in an interactive way, while at the same time adding brand promotion in their posts in a non-intrusive way.
Influencers are extremely good at making brand-promotion look smooth and natural which also helps increase the ROI of a lot of influencer marketing campaigns.
