Influencer marketing is an extremely powerful tool for brands looking to reach their audiences in a more authentic way. The right influencer can help you boost brand awareness, build trust with consumers and drive sales in a way that traditional advertising often can’t. When done well, influencer partnerships can create high quality content that turns followers into customers.
However, if we’re being real, it’s not always smooth sailing. As a marketing lead, you’ve probably faced (or lucky for you, dodged!) some of these all-too-common influencer marketing nightmares. Let’s break them down and, more importantly, check how to avoid them!
Let’s imagine the following scenario: your brand sells high-end luxury skincare and you choose a viral comedy creator known for meme-driven content. You ask them to create a video but, because your brand doesn’t align with the content of that chosen influencer, the campaign ends up confusing your audience, leading to damaging brand perception and failing to reach KPIs.
How could you have avoided this? Well, alignment is key. Before launching any campaign, make sure your influencer’s content style, audience and brand values match your brand or the goals of the campaign you’re launching. Start by researching the influencer, including content analysis and audience insights to guarantee they are the right choice for your specific needs.
Keep in mind: strategy and partnership alignment are key.
Now, let’s think about a different scenario: you partner up with an influencer for a product launch, only to see them posting competitor content days before your campaign. Turns out, the contract you signed with the influencer didn’t include exclusivity terms and now you’re scrambling to do damage control.
Just like with every type of business, remember to set clear game rules from the start. Contracts should cover exclusivity, content timelines and other campaign deliverables.
Keep in mind: A good contract safeguards a successful collaboration for both parties.
You invest €50,000 in an influencer campaign and it gets thousands of likes and comments, but when the campaign ends, there’s no clear sales impact.
While it’s good that the campaign reached a lot of people, these so-called vanity metrics such as engagement and likes, wont pay the bills, at least immediately, and sales are very hard to attribute. In order to avoid this, you must set up trackable links and unique discount codes, so sales can be attributed to a campaign or the influencer in question. By using different tools to track conversions you will be able to prove the ROI of your influencer partnerships.
Keep in mind: if it’s not measurable, you won’t know the impact.
Another example: you partner with a trendy influencer, only to have old questionable tweets resurface right before your campaign launch. Suddenly, your brand is caught in a PR crisis and customers are boycotting your products. This is any brand’s worst nightmare. Although it can be hard to track the entire content someone has posted, you should try to research them as much as possible by analysing their social media history and potential red flags. Just like mentioned on the first challenge, you should google them, check reddit and mentions to see what they’ve promoted before and check if that aligns with your brand, not only for matching purposes but also to avoid any potential reputation risks.
In addition, don’t forget to ensure all influencers disclose paid partnerships properly (#ad, #sponsored) to avoid regulatory issues.
Keep in mind: Make your due diligence by thoroughly researching the selected influencers.
Last example: you launch a new skincare product and work with multiple influencers. One focuses on its scientific ingredients, another calls it “magic in a bottle” with no explanation and a third compares it to a budget drugstore dupe. Message consistency matters, otherwise, your audience may get confused.
You can avoid this by providing influencers with clear messaging guidelines, key talking points and creative direction. This doesn’t mean every influencer should say exact same thing, as authenticity is key. However, each influencer should create content that feels true to their unique audience while being aligned with company goals.
Keep in mind: Consistency is key so provide clear guidelines while allowing creative freedom.
To sum things up, influencer marketing can be a game-changer when done right. The secret? A solid strategy, the right partners, clear agreements and measurable goals. The more you prepare, the fewer nightmares you'll have to deal with.
Written by
Sofia Häggqvist
publish date
April 15, 2025
Reading Time
4 min
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