Why Cranking Up Influencer Marketing Won't Guarantee More Sales

Whenever you see a brand (especially your competitors!) collaborating with your favorite, popular influencers, do you ever think to yourself, "If I could just get a few of these influencers to promote my brand, sales would go through the roof!"

Or may be your boss recently called you into their office and said, "Let's sign up 20 more influencers this quarter to promote our products. We need sales.” You might find yourself nodding along, thinking that more influencers, or more popular influencers would mean more exposure and, ultimately, more sales.

It's a tempting thought.

But can you really boost sales simply by amplifying your influencer efforts — reaching out to twice as many influencers, increasing budgets for campaigns, asking influencers to post about your products weekly instead of monthly, etc.?

The prevailing myth: More influencers = More sales?

It's easy to see why brands fall into the trap of boosting influencer marketing to get more sales. They look at influencer marketing like a simple math equation —

More budget = More influencers = More reach = More sales.

If you have the $$$, why not pour into influencer marketing and get sales?

Some brands even treat influencer marketing like a faucet they can turn on and off as needed. Need a sales boost for the holiday season? Get as many influencers as you can get quickly to post about your brand multiple times a week until you get the sales you want. Want to push a new product launch? Time to partner with popular influencers and flood social media with their posts!

This approach might seem logical at first glance. After all, influencers have large, engaged audiences who trust their opinions. So why wouldn't their promotions lead to immediate sales? Let's look at a couple of reasons.

Why scaling influencer marketing doesn't guarantee increased sales

Relationship-based influencer marketing

On the surface, influencer marketing looks like a relationship between influencers, and their audience but it is also based on the relationships between influencers and brands.

Relationship-based influencer marketing puts people first. It treats influencers as humans, not just numbers or tools for sales. This approach values the long-term benefits of working with creators over quick sales from a single post.

Influencers need to trust that the brand will deliver on its promises, be it product quality, timely payments, or creative freedom. Similarly, brands need to trust that influencers will represent them accurately and positively. You can't force or artificially accelerate these relationships, as they take time to develop and nurture.

Quality over quantity

Increasing the number of influencers or sponsored posts won't necessarily lead to more sales.

When brands rush to work with tons of influencers, they often they often deviate from their original criteria for an ideal creator.

In this hurry, brands might partner with influencers who don't really understand their product or don't have the right audience. These mismatched partnerships rarely bring in sales. Instead, they eat up your team's time and energy.

Scaling influencer marketing isn't just about increasing the number of influencers or sponsored posts. It's about finding the right influencers who align with your brand values and can genuinely connect with your target audience.

Long-term strategy

During the holiday season, brands rapidly scale up their influencer marketing efforts. They often rush to partner with as many influencers as possible. This approach typically involves reaching out to influencers with large followings, creating hastily planned holiday-themed content, and offering higher payments for fast turnaround. But once January hits, they drop the relationship.

This short-term approach treats influencers like temporary promotional tools instead of long-term brand storytellers. The most successful holiday campaigns are built over time as audiences see repeated, genuine exposure to your brand.

Audience fatigue

When a brand partners with too many influencers at once, it creates a flood of sponsored content that makes the target audience suspicious. They might wonder, "How is it possible that all these different people with different styles and interests all love this one brand so much?"

It starts to feel less like genuine recommendations and more like everyone's reading from the same script. The magic of influencer marketing — that feeling of getting a tip from a friend —disappears. This overexposure can lead to audience fatigue. Rather than building interest and trust in the brand, it can push potential customers away. They might associate the brand with annoying, repetitive advertising rather than quality products or services.

Delayed gratification

Hundreds of 'gurus', and influencer marketing tool companies out there'll tell you that influencer marketing will get you more sales, instantly.

But here's a bitter truth that will actually help you bring in sweet money in long-term —

Influencer marketing boosts your brand's image over time. This improved perception can lead to more sales eventually. However, these results aren't immediate or easily linked to specific campaigns. The process is slow, but it can be more valuable than quick sales boosts.

People might see an influencer post, then Google your brand later, or walk into a store and buy your product. That sale might not be directly linked to the influencer campaign in your tracking. Someone who sees an influencer post might not buy your product, but they might tell a friend about it who does end up buying. This word-of-mouth effect is powerful but hard to measure.

Influencer marketing can have a lot of benefits that don't show up immediately in your sales figures. For example:

• Your brand could be seen as more trustworthy or desirable.
• You'll have authentic content for your social media, without overpaying for professional shoots.
• Influencers might provide detailed reviews for your landing pages.

It's about playing the long game and understanding that not everything valuable can be measured in immediate dollars and cents.

What should you do instead?

These words from Jeff Bezos about Amazon's long-term mindset ring just as true for effective influencer marketing —

"If we have a good quarter, it's because of work we did three, four, five years ago. It's not because we did a good job this quarter."

The brands seeing real success from influencers — like Obvi, HexClad, or Wild — are the ones playing a sustainable long game and not focusing on immediate sales. When we say can't directly control sales from influencer marketing, that doesn't mean you're powerless. There are several things you can control, and these are what you should focus on:

1. Choose the right influencers: You can control who represents your brand. Focus on finding influencers whose values align with yours, regardless of their follower count. Use SARAL to find your ideal influencer, in minutes.
2. Build genuine relationships: You can control how you interact with influencers. Treat them as partners, not just advertising channels.
3. Create quality content: You have control over the context you provide to influencers and the guidelines you set to help them make genuine, yet brand-aligned content.
4. Set clear expectations: You can control the terms of your partnerships. Be upfront about what you expect and what influencers can expect from you.
5. Measure what matters: Shift your focus from immediate sales to metrics that indicate long-term success, such as brand awareness, audience growth, and engagement rates. These are indicators of a healthy, growing brand that will pay off in the long run.

The tool that supports your long-term strategy

Implementing a sustainable, long-term influencer marketing approach requires the right tools and processes. You need technology that helps you efficiently identify, onboard, and manage invested influencer partnerships at scale.

That's where SARAL can help. With SARAL you can:

• Quickly find the ideal influencers for your brand. No more endless Instagram scrolling, which means reduced time and resource wastage, positively impacting your ROI.
• Send products to multiple influencers at once, generate tracking links, and monitor the effectiveness of your campaigns.
• Manage communication with multiple influencers using automated and broadcast emails.
• Monitor and analyze online conversations about your brand with its social listening feature.
• And do so much more…

SARAL — an all-in-one influencer marketing tool

Stop settling for short-term flings that waste your potential - instead, build an army of loyal, invested influencers who authentically amplify your brand year-over-year with SARAL. Try it for free for 7 days to see the impact for yourself.