Influencer marketing has run rampant in recent years on social media. only a few swipes and you are presented with an influencer trying to sell you on some product or service. While many of these are labeled explicitly as ads utilizing FTC rules, there are many that walk the line or outright violate these rules.
While you may experience these ads in your own personal life, business owners and marketing managers see countless “influencers” soliciting their places of business to try to drum up advertising opportunities and get free stuff to review. This post is meant for those business owners and marketing managers to give them some valuable information on why to stay away from this form of advertising in 2023.
Disagree? At Least Read This!
While I very much disagree with small businesses using influencers for their marketing efforts, influencer marketing can be beneficial for businesses if they follow some best practices, such as:
- Choosing influencers who are passionate about your product or service, and who have an authentic connection to your brand.
- Aligning your goals and expectations with the influencer, and measuring the return on investment of your campaign.
- Avoiding harmful influencer marketing techniques, such as using fake followers, buying reviews, or endorsing products that are unethical or illegal. Look at the other products or services that they are promoting, are they legitimate products and services? Would you like your business associated with those products and services?
In our experience with small businesses and the analysis we have done with the influencers they have used, influencer marketing is messy and can open your business up your business to
Reason #1: Legal Questions
While this post is not meant to be taken as legal advice, we strongly recommend that you stay away from social media influencers so that you don’t get into the legal murkiness surrounding influencers. You may have already seen the information surrounding Kim Kardashians’s recent SEC settlement but here is the post that she put up that got her into legal trouble. You can see that the only thing that marks this as an advertisment is the #AD, Which is not an acceptable solution in that it is easy to miss. You can read the full FTC guidelines here if you are interested in reading more.
Kim Kardashian is not alone in this kind of practice, this kind of post is everywhere on social media. From a public relations standpoint, you do not want to have your brand associated was the situation that turns into something like this. Arguably one of the reasons why many influencers bend and outright violate the rules is that there hasn’t been a high profile enforcement like we are seeing now with Kim Kardashian.
Reason #2: Cost and Effectiveness
From being on the receiving end of many of these influencer solicitations for us and our clients, the rates influencers quote are very much out of line with what official advertising costs are on social media. Kardashian was paid $250,000 for her crypto story post. $250,000 can go a long way with a strategic social media ad campaign. Even a $500 “shout out” to 10,000 followers (which is a rate that we have seen with an influencer) is way out of line with going rates in pay per click ads that can get you direct access to a customer that’s ready to buy now.
Part of the reason why influencers have been pushing lots of crypto ads has been the difficulty in getting crypto ads approved and a long standing policy of crypto ads being outright banned by many platforms. Some brands use influencer marketing as a way to sidestep policies banning their products from being advertised on the platforms which adds to some of the controversy regarding influencer advertisements.
Ignoring the possibility of potential violations of a product or service, influencer advertisements usually have a high cost with a lack of clear accountability in terms of results. Just because an influencer has 10,000 followers does not mean that your message will be seriously considered by the 10,000 followers on their profiles. This is why it is important to clearly vet an influencer and have effective tracking and analysis in place to compare the results to other marketing channels you are using. We very much urge our clients to consider other means of advertisements like search engine optimization and paid search ads first before considering something like influencer marketing.
Using Influencers to Sell Your Products… The Real Cost
Even if you found a reputable influencer with a group of followers that are exactly within your target demographic and audience, a huge question comes up in if your business support that kind of influx of traffic and new customers. Oftentimes, business owners and marketing managers view influencer marketing as a way to fast track and skip major steps in the growth of a business. Typically, the slow and steady growth allows time for small businesses and startups to assess whether or not your product or service is fulfilling customer needs and if changes are needed. One thing that you do not want to do is create a bad reputation for your brand quickly with a large following of online social media users.
Let’s Talk! Schedule A Free Strategy Consult
We provide free consultations for people interested in growing their brand online. Give us a call or request a free consult here.
