Now things get serious – because this is where the wheat is separated from the chaff. As promising as the advantages sound, the disadvantages of Influencer Marketing can be significant and cause lasting damage to your brand. The following challenges are real, costly and underestimated by many companies.
The most acute problem is oversaturation. "You open Instagram. Holy. You scroll through TikTok. Holy. You watch a YouTube video. Holy," Saska summarizes the situation.
Holy has great momentum right now - but they have to be extremely careful that it doesn't lead to massive oversaturation. They must not turn the momentum into the opposite and make their brand completely untrustworthy. This is the worst thing that can happen to you as an influencer brand.
The study “State of German Influencer Marketing 2025” shows that authenticity is considered the most important success factor at 70 percent (13), while at the same time market saturation is one of the biggest challenges. When influencers with completely different target groups suddenly all promote the same product, authenticity is lost.
Our recommendation: Secure the top performers and continue these collaborations with not too blatant penetration. Testing should be scaled back. Take a look: Does the target group fit? Does that fit the brand? High visibility is a result of performance and demand, not just omnipresence.
“I hold something up to the camera, then read the briefing half-heartedly and someone will buy it,” says Saska, describing the problem perfectly.
It's because of two points: The Creator who is unable to do a good placement. And the brand, which has the obligation to properly brief a creator - so that the storyline is right, it is credible, the product fits the creator, and the target group fits.
60 percent of brands cite measuring ROI as their biggest challenge (17), often due to a lack of preparation. When there are failures on both sides, it leads to half-hearted placements that hurt both sides.
The dating app example shows it clearly: A creator was approached even though she was in a relationship. The brand said, “Why can’t you be single?” This is not only absurd – it is bad for business.
61 percent of consumers believe that micro influencers create more authentic content (6). Communities have a keen sense of when a collaboration is not authentic. When you show attitude as a creator, it literally costs money - but it's exactly this attitude that makes the difference in the long term.
There are also positive counterexamples. Felix Vonderladen said in the podcast: "If a collaboration doesn't fit and I notice it during the first recordings, then I don't care how much money they pay, but then I cancel it."
That's exactly what it's about: It's the responsibility of brands to be credible and not to force creators to simply take the money. When in doubt, the creator damages his own reputation. 71 percent of influencers offer discounts for long-term partnerships (18), which shows that creators are also interested in authentic collaborations.
Untrustworthy campaigns have a long-lasting impact. Over half of influencers experience online discrimination (19). A fifth of consumers would be more likely to forego purchasing if influencers found themselves in negative headlines (20).
60.4 percent of brands manage campaigns internally (21), with the biggest challenge being a lack of tools and workflows. The complexity makes it necessary to either build expertise internally or work with an influencer marketing agency.
