What is Influencer Marketing Fraud and How it Cost Brands $1.3 Billion in 2019
Influencer marketing is a big digital marketing trend that brands and marketers like to hook to, exploiting it for what they think is going to be massive ROI. They’re not entirely wrong on the expectation of ROI as study after study demonstrates how powerful influencer marketing is. In a sense, it’s a combination of a celebrity endorsement with casual word-of-mouth marketing. It works.
Unfortunately, this has also brought about the rise of fake influencers who will take your money and offer nothing in return. In fact, more than $1.3 billion in 2019 will be lost by brands investing into fake influences. Needless to say, influencer marketing fraud is something that’s running rampant in the world of social media marketing. Here’s a little more about where these fake influencers are coming from, how to spot them, and what to do to ensure your money’s spent well.
How influencer marketing works
Influencer marketing is centered around influencer. This is someone with a social media account and who is popular. They likely have a lot of followers, likes, shares, and are considered influential in their category of the market. These accounts are typically run by individuals. Sites such as Instagram and Twitter are swamped with influencers. You become an influencer once you begin accepting offers to promote other peoples’ products. So as a brand, if you jump to influencer marketing, you will pay a popular social account to post about your product or branding in order to show you to an audience you may not otherwise be able to access.
It’s easy to appear as an influencer
Though there are a lot of excellent influencer marketing opportunities out there, at a micro and macro level, there are still a lot of people who are hoping to appear as influencers. On sites like Instagram, you can buy followers and engagement. What this does is artificially inflate how popular an account is. Most people won’t be able to tell the difference. Thereby, they think they’re getting an influencer for their marketing dollars but what they’re actually getting is fake. This may become apparent when an influencer marketing campaign doesn’t generate any return.
How to spot fake influencers
Bots are rampant, as are fake followers. All accounts have them, regardless of whether they’re paid or not. It’s unavoidable. If an influencer pays for those bots or fake followers, that’s different. Red flags of fake influencers include if they have accumulated their followers very quickly, if certain posts have way more engagement than others, and if they have a lot of followers but comments and likes are hard to find. If you know what to look for, you can easily detect an influencer that’s not actually an influencer but it requires due diligence.
No guarantees
Just because your influencer marketing campaign doesn’t usher a return does not mean the influencer’s fake. Sometimes, brands pick the wrong influencer in the wrong category. Other times, a campaign simply doesn’t resonate with an audience. There are unfortunately no guarantees when it comes to digital marketing, social media, and working with influencers.
If you’re interested in pursuing influencer marketing, we recommend going with an agency experienced in how to maximize influencer exposure. Speak with digital marketing experts Unlimited Exposure today for more information on how an influencer may be able to help your brand reach new audiences, better leads, and more conversions.