Why Influencer Marketing is the Wild West – and How To Fix It

First Note This: With the holidays around the corner, InfluencerNexus will be offering pro bono consulting sessions and influencer campaign auditing calls for targeting holiday buyers. Schedule it HERE , unless you hate extra sales.

Now, virtually every brand I speak to is either A) confused about how to track, assess, and scale their influencer marketing program, or B) has no idea how to start an influencer marketing program that effectively boosts the brand and produces sales simultaneously.

And yes, your brand can and should do both.

But here’s where most brands get stuck: influencer marketing is an unregulated, chaotic (but effective) strategy with no real standardization across the board.

Lack of Standardization:?

• “Best practices” vary wildly from brand to brand

• Reporting and important metrics are different across agencies and brands
• Every agency has a different way to “measure” the effectiveness of influencer programs or campaigns
• Influencers charge wildly different rates, and the brand often has no idea if the cost is justified (we’re talking Gen Z and Millenials making up their own prices. Yikes.)

Proliferation of Fraud:

• Influencers can spend less than $50 to increase their following via bots by 50-400%
• The same concept applies to engagement fraud. Influencers pay for bots to increase their engagement across posts
• This leads to an upside-down ROI for brands: if 50% of an influencer's followers are fake, the brand just lost 50% of their marketing spend
• Either brands are unaware of it, or agencies representing the brand are doing sloppy work and allowing this to happen

Lack of Transparency:

• Not all influencers are transparent about their brand partnerships, leading to issues of authenticity and trust
• If an influencer is promoting Y protein brand, and Z protein brand wants exclusivity, influencers can avoid disclosing their partnership with Y brand.
• The result? Both the brand and influencers brand reputation suffer

Putting a Stop to the Wild Wild West

Here are a few of the steps our influencer agency takes to address the lack of standardization currently at play. Feel free to copy and paste this process for your brand.

1. Built and enforced internal guidelines for imperative metrics across differing campaign types

2. Established standardized contracts for paid ads boosting, organic influencer partnerships, paid influencer partnerships, usage rights, and so on.

3. Intensive influencer audit process across every brand we represent and their influencer partners

4. Intensive influencer audits for brands' current and past influencer partners

5. Set reporting standards on a bi-weekly or monthly basis so our brands constantly see the effects of their influencer program across set measurements

6. Clear standards across “how to pay influencers and how much” so that our team can seamlessly vet out the best/most valuable influencers for our brands

It Doesn’t Need to be a Guessing Game:

If your influencer program is even somewhat a “guessing game” across strategies, you should probably revisit the “How to Ptut a Stop to the Wild Wild West” section.

Or schedule a call with our agency to do it for you: Book a Pro Bono Influencer Audit Call