As a marketing manager, you have the best sense of what is going on with your influencer marketing practice. Your responsibilities are to manage and grow your influencer programs, and we understand that is no easy task. In our experience, we’ve found that influencer teams typically have a major bottleneck that prevents them from continued growth and achieving their goals: internal buy-in. In this blog, we will explore the typical objections that come with internal buy-in and the best ways to overcome them or more simply, how to get your boss to invest in influencer marketing.

To make this section as tangibly useful as possible, we went through our conversations with brands and marketing managers to identify the most common objections to investment in influencer marketing. Outlined below you will find the objection, questions to ask your boss, and the resources you need to combat that objection and properly convey the value of influencer marketing.

 

Objection 1: “There Is No Budget”

A budget objection can feel like an insurmountable obstacle in an influencer marketing conversation. For marketers, lack of budget may seem like a non-starter, but before you throw in the towel, there is some more information to discover.

Questions to ask your boss: 

  • Where is the money going? 
  • Is lack of budget a choice or necessity? 
  • Are there places we can save budget or cut back? 
  • What needs to happen to lock in the budget?

 

Based on the answers you receive, there should be some more clarity on why you don’t have the desired budget for influencer marketing. With that in mind, as long as your budget is not zero, your next step is to efficiently allocate your existing budget. Depending on your goals, focus on the line items below to effectively distribute your budget: 

 

Objection 2: “Influencer Marketing Is Not a Priority”

Many marketers feel like they have to fight to prove the value of influencer marketing. For a business to make the decision to no longer prioritize influencer marketing, there may be external factors at play. For this objection, you need to get a better understanding of what has taken priority over influencers with the following questions:

Questions to ask your boss: 

  • Have other marketing items taken priority? 
  • Are you scaling down or eliminating influencer marketing? 
  • What would make it a priority?

 

Oftentimes when we hear this objection, leadership has decided that other marketing items are adding more value than influencer marketing. In many cases that decision is misguided by a lack of understanding of how influencer marketing impacts every stage of your marketing funnel. 

 

Objection 3: “Poor Influencer Program Performance”

There are many factors that play into the performance of influencer marketing programs. If your performance is lacking, your first step should be to look back at the goals of your campaigns. As highlighted in the previous objection section, the utilization of different strategies and influencer personas must be focused depending on whether your goals adhere toward the top or bottom of your funnel.

Questions to ask your boss: 

  • What were our goals? 
  • Why was performance poor? 
  • What metrics were performance based on? 
  • Do we have benchmarks for performance? 

 

In analyzing these questions, you may find that the influencer marketing strategies you employed did not correlate to the specific goals you had in mind. Here are 5 common influencer marketing mistakes, if any of these apply to your team they are likely the reason for your lackluster performance. Alternatively, this objection may have manifested from the way your team communicated your performance. As essential as the performance itself, the way in which you report influencer activities is critical to leadership’s perspective on performance. 

 

Objection 4: “Influencer Marketing Doesn’t Have Proven ROI” 

Many marketers believe that influencer marketing is only effective in driving awareness. Fortunately, we have several examples of brands who have achieved high ROI on their campaigns to debunk this myth. 

If your boss doesn’t believe influencer marketing has proven ROI, it is likely that they have not committed to a fully integrated strategy and have only leveraged strategies that affect the top of your funnel. You want to learn about how your boss has used influencer marketing in the past and if gaps in those programs lead to a lack of conversions.

Questions to ask your boss: 

  • How have you used influencer marketing in the past? 
  • Is your competition investing in influencer marketing? 
  • What are the goals of your influencer programs?

 

This ROI myth stems from the power of influencer marketing. As influencer marketing is a powerful tool to drive awareness, this is often misunderstood as its sole purpose. A core goal of Mavrck is to show brands the versatility of social proof programs that drive conversions.

 

Conclusion

It is unfortunate that fighting for influencer marketing is a challenge some marketers are faced with. However, influencer marketing is a proven method for brands to rise above the noise and connect with their audience. The best way to own these objections is to utilize the power of our complete resource on this topic and be sure that your boss will invest in influencer marketing.