The public fascination with how other people go about living their lives is what has ultimately fueled the rise of the now multi-billion dollar influencer industry. A speedy rise in the number of social media platforms has bumped up the need for content and content creators. The content creators who over time build up a steady, loyal following on social media are whom we call influencers.

They’re called influencers or social media influencers because they influence i.e. impact the decision-making process of a rather large part of the global population, including and especially the decision of what to buy and what not to buy. They help businesses sell their products and widen their reach to the audience. This, in effect, has laid down the foundation of influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing exhibits the combined effect of old and new marketing strategies, propelled by the ultimate decision-making weapon: celebrity endorsement. In other words, it is the ultimate marketing strategy used by businesses to drive sales!

However, as it turns out, not many people believe that the content created and promoted by influencers is instrumental in their purchasing decisions. So while influencer marketing may be an excellent way to create brand awareness, is it enough to secure sales?

Here are two main reasons why we believe that influencers may not be enough to sell your product:

Loss of Credibility

Suppose you have collaborated for an ad deal with a YouTube influencer.

They’ll review your product, sing a few praises, put a link in the description and boom – suddenly people will begin checking out your product. However, if this is the primary method of how people visit your website to check out your product, then it means that your product has not yielded any organic searches and the visits to your site have been solely through a social media platform. This can prove to be detrimental to your SEO ranking.

The credibility of your business relies on SEO ranking. Ranking well in organic searches will build trust, get your site – and ultimately your product – more traction and help you build credibility amongst searchers. Influencer marketing takes away the element of credibility from your business.

Skepticism on the Consumer End

You design a product, place it on the market and get an influencer to do the bidding for you. They put up your product on their channel, get people interested and soon visitors begin checking out your product. So money well spent, right? Well, no. The ultimate purpose of marketing is to hike up and maintain your sales. This may not happen when you’re facing skepticism from the audience, birthed by the idea that you paid someone to endorse your product.

It is extremely important to build your advertising campaign on strong CTAs that prompt people to buy your product. But how are you going to get your message across to the audience if the CTA itself is questioned and doubted on consumer-end?

This is why, if the influencer faces a significant amount of backlash for their endorsements, your product could garner attention for all the wrong reasons. So yeah, money wasted.

Takeaway

As we come to conclude our discussion, our readers must realize that influencer marketing is not always a hit amongst the audience. It can potentially fail or backfire (which is worse), just like any other marketing campaign, which brings us to the crux of this discussion: always have a backup plan.

Our advice is, in addition to collaborating with an influencer, hire a marketing agency that will help you develop authority on search engines and have a presence on sites like Instagram, Facebook and Google.

Author:- Ms. Neha
Dated:- 21/02/2020