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Influencer marketing is always a collaborative effort â and itâs much easier to collaborate when the people youâre working with understand your challenges, goals, and pain points.
And so, in the name of strengthening relationships, I asked a ton of pro influencer marketers two important questions:
đ What do you wish your managers understood about your job?
đ What do you wish influencers and creators understood about your job?
Hereâs what they told usâŚ
4 Things influencer marketers wish their managers understood
1. Influencer marketing takes longer than you think
Above all else, influencer marketers want their managers to understand that influencer marketing takes a long time.
(At least, it does if you want to plan and execute effective influencer marketing campaigns.)
Some managers expect influencer marketers to do it all in a matter of days, from building a strategy and creating a brief to finding, vetting, and reaching out to potential campaign partners â never mind sending interested influencers your product, gathering live influencer content, tracking results, and more.
Of course, we know thatâs unrealistic.Â
As Fernanda Marques notes, a great deal of work goes into managing effective influencer campaigns.
If only you had an influencer management tool that could save you time!
2. Not all results are measurable
Measuring the results of influencer marketing efforts is a challenge for many brands.
On the one hand, your manager expects watertight figures for the direct ROI of your latest campaign. But on the other, you know that the true impact canât always be reported through influencer marketing KPIs and metrics.
Namrata Thakker was one of many respondents to note that influencer marketing results are more nuanced, spanning beyond mere numbers.
Similarly, plenty of professional influencer marketers wish their managers would be more patient about generating results.Â
As with all promotional campaigns, the whole point of influencer marketing is to make money. But, as Lucy Sergeeva points out, influencer marketing isnât like a button you can switch on and off.
Which brings me to my next pointâŚ
3. Influencers are real people
Admittedly, your managers are ultimately interested in driving revenue.
But they need to understand the humans on their team arenât walking, talking Facebook Ads Manager accounts. You canât just set your campaign objectives, type in your credit card details, and watch the results come pouring in.
To be clear, this isnât to say that influencer marketers arenât valuable. On the contrary, your work offers a ton of benefits social ads canât provide â like the credibility and social proof of having a trusted expert recommending your product.
But to make that happen, you have to invest serious time and effort into building trusting relationships with your influencer partners. Greta Zacchetti explains the high level of emotional intelligence required to get it right:
Managers need to acknowledge their teamâs soft skills as assets too, even if itâs tricky to assess a direct ROI from them.
4. Influencer marketing doesnât exist in isolation
Managers can sometimes be guilty of siloed thinking. To understand whatâs working (and what isnât), they look at the direct results generated by each channel without considering whatâs at play on a broader scale.
However, as Nacho Selma points out, influencer marketing doesnât happen in a vacuum.
For instance, you might have recruited an influencer who perfectly fits your brand and audience, and worked with them to come up with just the right creative angle. But if your brandâs website looks untrustworthy or your checkout breaks on launch day, youâre not going to hit your sales goals â and thatâs not on you as an influencer marketer.
In a similar vein, Michael Todner says he wishes managers understood that influencer marketing isnât a magic bullet.
If only managers understood those four gems above, theyâd have an easier time leading their team of influencer marketers and getting results from their campaigns.
Now letâs look at how collaboration could be improved from the influencer partner side.
7 Things influencer marketers wish influencers and creators understood
1. Deadlines matter!
As an influencer marketer, you understand that your influencer partners are busy people â but thatâs no excuse when theyâre late to share your content.
Fernanda Marques is one of many respondents who wishes more influencers understood the importance of deadlines.
Of course, sometimes influencers canât hit deadlines for reasons beyond their control. In that case, youâre not going to write them off as a partner â provided they keep you in the loop.
Which brings me to the next pointâŚ
2. Proactive communication helps everyone
Clear, proactive communication is an essential element of any high-performing influencer campaign. It keeps projects on track and ensures everyone is on the same page.
So itâs no surprise that plenty of respondents â including Leslie Belen â wish influencers understood the value of a timely email or phone call.
Cheyanne Pettyjohn adds that itâs always better to talk through a problem or challenge â even if itâd be easier for the influencer to bury their head in the sand.
Similarly, even if a creator simply doesnât want to work with a brand, influencer marketers would appreciate a quick email saying âthanks but no thanks.â
So, better to take two minutes to respond with âthanks but not right nowâ and leave the door open for a future collaboration.
3. Influencer marketers work hard, too
Influencers and creators might get to travel the world for free and receive a constant stream of gifts, but the trade-off is often a serious lack of work-life balance.
Sure, your job as an influencer marketer might not be quite as intense â but itâs certainly not easy, and as noted above, your work takes time. To that end, many of the influencer marketers we surveyed say they wish creators would appreciate just how hard they work.
For instance, Zuzana JiĹĂÄkovĂĄ says influencers sometimes forget that marketers have a wide range of priorities.
Several respondents also note that whereas influencers are always on, being an influencer marketer is more of a 9 â 5 job. Ultimately, creators should remember that influencer marketers are working hard for everyoneâs mutual benefit.
4. Brands care about results
With a regular paid partnership, influencers earn their fee whatever happens with the campaign â which means they might feel somewhat disconnected from how the content actually performs.
On the other hand, influencer marketers always care about the results because theyâve got targets to hit!
Again, many respondents say they wished influencers would be more understanding about the importance of results. For instance, Lucy Sergeeva has noticed that influencers can get a little prickly when it comes to sharing campaign stats.
If you donât want to have to reach out to influencers for campaign stats, effectively bypassing the prickly convo, Modash has this cool thing called Event Mode, youâll love it.
Event Mode captures every piece of content an influencer posts during your campaign period. So if they forget any tags or use the wrong ones, weâll still automatically add it to your campaign. No need to worry about under-reporting!
(You can even try it for free by creating a Modash account.)
5. Every brand has a chain of command
Even if youâre a one-person influencer marketing team, you rarely have full control over every decision affecting your campaigns.
Often, youâll have to run decisions past multiple internal stakeholders. And even if you donât agree with their decision, you still have to find a way to make it all work.
Thatâs fine â itâs your job, right? But some of our respondents feel creators donât always understand that an influencer marketer is part of a wider organization, and that there are factors they canât control. Fernanda says:
So say it with me once more, with feeling: âevery brand has a chain of command!â
6. Brands donât have unlimited budgets
In an ideal world, brands would have the money to pay whatever the influencer wanted â just think how easy negotiations would be!
But this isnât an ideal world, and you donât have an unlimited budget to work with. Many of the influencer marketers we surveyed, including Valerija Somi, say influencers donât always appreciate their budgeting constraints.
Generally speaking, our respondents wish influencers would be more open to negotiating fees â such as accepting a hybrid influencer and affiliate marketing model, in which they earn a lower flat fee plus performance-related bonuses.
7. Creativity isnât the only consideration
Creative control is another common influencer marketing challenge.
Youâd love to give your influencer partner the freedom to express themselves creatively. But, as Athira Aravind notes, itâs not your only concern.
Want the inside scoop on influencer marketing in 2025?
Want the lowdown on how other influencer marketers are crushing it in this space? Then our free newsletter, Return on Influence, is exactly what youâve been searching for.
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đ Negotiating Instagram partnerships
đ YouTube creator pricing
đ Usage rights
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