Warning: Failed Influencer Marketing——Not Every Influencer Is A Good Brand Ambassador

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Influencer marketing has come as a buzzword among marketers as a main strategy to resort. But not every influencer is suitable to be an ambassador for brands and not all influencer marketing campaigns are going to bring huge traffic to brands as we expect. 

In this article, NoxInfluencer influencer marketing academy is going to offer several features that failed influencer marketing campaigns and teach you how to select those influencers who can bring guaranteed marketing effects.

According to the data from ResearchAndMarkets, global influencer marketing platform sector is predicted to see a spurt from USD 24,076 million by 2025 from 2020’s USD 6,015 million. Influencer marketing is a variation of celebrity-endorsement marketing because influencers including YouTubers and TikTokers wield stronger influence now.

Rapid development of social media platforms, ranging from YouTube to Instagram, has made marketers’ battlefield undergo a great shift. Since 2011 when Facebook pioneered in the social media news feed, by which Facebook defeated Myspace, social media platforms started appealing to advertisers to run ads out there.

While a decade ago, social media marketing activities were limited only to celebrities and a few dedicated bloggers. Around ten years on, as an established form of online marketing, influencer marketing has come as a buzzword among marketers as a main strategy to resort. Especially amid the outbreak of Covid-19, influencer marketing obviously has hit its strike. Those who have been heavily affected by the pandemic started to carve out a place by adopting innovative strategies on YouTube and TikTok to recover in the red.

Certainly, seeking those influencers with a huge following to utilize their content-creation and impactful messaging seems a feasible way for marketers to promote products.

However, don’t misunderstand that all influencer marketing partnerships have sameness with a result of success. Collaboration with wrong partners will devastate both influencers and brands. With it in the mind, not every influencer is suitable to be an ambassador of brands and not all influencer marketing campaigns are going to bring huge traffic to brands as we expect.

Despite the lucrativeness of influencer marketing by so many glorious cases of influencer marketing, we still need to learn some failed cases as a lesson to avoid burning our fingers when dealing with influencers. Absence of sufficient YouTube video analytics, all-around YouTube marketing stats research, and right influencer marketing platform all make it easy for marketers to fall into these influencer marketing traps.

Failed Influencer Marketing Feature 1: Bad Sales Capability

Essentially, the ultimate goal of marketing is to sell products out or convince audience to pay. Same with influencer marketing, influencers engaging with brands are helping to promote products in a role of a salesperson, which is a highly professional job. That is to say, influencer marketing entails influencers to be qualified salesman with adequate sales skills, especially in the campaigns of live-streaming marketing.

And we all know only with either rich sales training and experience, or natural sales talent, can a salesperson bring great sales outcomes. So are influencers. Most influencers are good content creators, but not necessarily good marketing genius. Some influencers don’t even have any basic selling skills. How will followers trust this endorsement?

When influencers are doing marketing for brands, their followers are no longer fans, but customers. And influencers are not creators anymore, but a salesperson with a keen intention to sell products. Influencer marketing is in essence a sales activities and the sales rules must be observed. Otherwise, opposite outcomes will be achieved in influencer marketing campaigns.

From this perspective, we can know it is important to conduct brand promotion analysis before marketers launching influencer marketing campaigns. By brand promotion analysis, the historic marketing performance of an influencer can be analyzed, such as how the promotion-videos’ conversion rate or engagement rate was. And a right influencer marketing analytic tool with powerful stats competence can help marketers sweep the board.

Brand Analysis of Youtuber

Failed Influencer Marketing Feature 2: Out of Character

Do you know the most key elements to be a successful influencer?

Some influencers go viral and capture a huge following by the content they create or the character image they have built before followers. Simply put, people follow these influencers, not for the person behind the screen, but for the character shown to them by influencers. Followers want to see the content consistent with the character set by influencers. One marketing campaign, which makes influencers out of character, is enough to damage influencers.

For example, there was a notable influencer marketing campaign carried out by Snickers in 2012. The traditional slogan of Snickers, “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” was used to promote their brand when collaborating with Katie Price and Ian Botham.

However, most of Katie Price’s previous tweets were far away from politics but fashion. But she started posting tweets involving politics and economics in this campaign. Similarly, Ian Botham who mostly talked about cricket started tweeting about learning the cello. This content was weird to their followers they seemed out of character. Some people also speculated that their accounts might have been hacked. Since these posts very not very forthcoming about their advertorial nature, the legitimacy was also questioned.

Even Advertising Standards Agency of UK intervened to investigate this advertising campaign. Though the campaign was cleared, the brand and the influencers’ public images suffered.

When we seek influencers to partner with, having a deep analysis of their audience, demographics, and interests is of importance to establish a better connection with your audience. In marketing, number is truth. And if you have an influencer marketing platform that covers most social media communities, including YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, a comprehensive analysis of all influencers can be made for influencer marketing preparation.

Audience Analysis of Youtuber

Conclusion

Influencer marketing is not that easy. Influencer marketing is not simply finding an influencer with a massive following and paying to post a promotion video for you. Well-prepared influencer marketing campaigns with thorough research, sophisticated influencer analytic tools, is a better way to run your marketing more smoothly. Keep in mind that not all influencers are suitable to be a brand ambassador.