There are few tactics in modern-day advertising that are as effective as influencer marketing. Even though it’s over a decade old, influencer marketing has only become commonplace recently, approaching an impressive $2 billion in revenue last year alone. It then comes as no surprise that 41% of marketers had a greater impact on consumers when using influencer marketing than when using other methods of advertising. Additionally, 32% of marketers claimed influencer marketing was necessary for the success of their campaigns.
If influencer marketing is so great, why don’t all marketers use it? The main reason many companies still avoid it is the challenges it comes with. It can be difficult to tell regular content apart from sponsored content in some cases, and the metrics it produces aren’t always clear. But the biggest problem that influencer marketing users experience is fraud.
Dishonest companies using influencer marketing as their main advertising strategy will pay consumers to like, comment on, follow, and promote their brand on popular social media platforms. Most of the time, these consumers haven’t tried the company’s products or services and are simply saying exactly what the company tells them to say. For a strategy that thrives on genuine recommendations of a brand, this is very harmful.
Fraud in influencer marketing happens more often than you may think. We forget that failing to clearly label sponsored content is also considered fraud, and over 100 large companies have been guilty of it in the recent past. To curb the incidents, the Federal Trade Commission sent warning letters to those companies and created stricter rules about sponsored content. Smaller companies aren’t exempt from these rules, of course, but it’s much easier for them to break them without suffering any immediate consequences.
Incentives for advertisers may help decrease the frequency at which this problem occurs. Allowing compliant brands to access advanced analytics to see the effects of their marketing efforts or giving them the option to push overtly labeled sponsored ads to the top of user feeds could be a better way of encouraging everyone to follow the rules. Instagram has already begun to test out this strategy, offering a Paid Partnership tag that gives marketers access to the advertisement’s reach and interaction data.
Follower fraud is harder to identify than unlabeled sponsored content. Both individual users and active companies on social media can enlist the help of an autobot for a fairly low price. This autobot selects a series of fake accounts to follow the user’s account, making them appear more popular than they really are. Unfortunately, this sneaky strategy is happening more and more as social media becomes the centre of the advertising universe. Although it’s difficult to spot, it can be identified by closely examining follower numbers in relation to content interaction rates and unusual comment patterns. Companies that are caught in the act are blacklisted by the platform’s advertisement administrators.
All marketers should be aware that while their competitors may appear to have a plethora of followers, there aren’t enough policing systems within social media yet to quickly spot fraud, meaning those followers could be paid for or part of a pod. A pod is formed when influencers team up and interact with each other’s content. The algorithm for Instagram in particular will favour this activity and show it to more users.
Pods aren’t all bad, but they can pose problems to companies that are looking for organic results. Their partners could be commenting on their posts to increase their own reach without necessarily approving of or agreeing with the content. This can lead to a change in the company’s audience type and greater costs associated with the pod partnership. If you choose to use a pod, be sure to carefully monitor the amount and quality of comments you give and receive to avoid skewing your results.
Although pods and autobots are not as easily tackled as missing sponsored content tags are, a few organizations have been trying. Fohr Card, for instance, created a follower health tool that skims through an influencer’s followers and labels them as active users, lurking users, or autobots. That way, companies wanting to team up with an influencer can avoid fraudulent ones outright. Though this tool helps, most fraud analysis still needs to be completed manually.
Until the fraud issues are dealt with, businesses can use different marketing strategies and consumers can keep an eye out for insincere companies. If you choose influencer marketing despite its downfalls, play it safe and aim for authenticity.
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