Why These Challenges Rarely Get Talked About Publicly
Most public content about influencer marketing understandably focuses on the wins: the brand deal announcement, the follower milestone, the exciting collaboration. The harder, more mundane parts of the job, chasing down ROI data or fielding a wave of unkind comments, rarely make it into a highlight reel, even though they're a routine part of the work.
That gap between the public-facing version of the job and the day-to-day reality is exactly why it's worth laying these challenges out directly. Knowing what's actually involved ahead of time makes it far easier to build the right expectations and habits from the start, rather than being caught off guard once you're already in the middle of it.
Challenge #1: Finding Fake Accounts
Fake followers and bot accounts can quietly undermine your credibility with brands. When brands evaluate a potential partner, they check whether your followers look like genuine, engaged people or artificially inflated numbers, and it's easier to spot than most people expect.
Never purchase followers or engagement. Even if it provides a short-term boost, it creates a real problem down the line. Once your account grows large enough to genuinely take off, brands doing their due diligence can identify inflated growth, and no brand wants to build a partnership with a creator whose foundation started with purchased numbers.
Challenge #2: Measuring ROI
Measuring return on investment is consistently cited as one of the single biggest challenges in influencer marketing, both by creators and brands. Industry research puts the share of marketers who identify ROI measurement as their top challenge anywhere from roughly a quarter to well over half, depending on the specific study, which reflects just how widespread and persistent the problem is.
Part of the difficulty comes from fragmented tracking. Without links, discount codes, or Instagram's built-in link stickers, there's often no clear way to know why someone visited a brand's site after seeing your post. Using trackable links and codes consistently makes this significantly easier to demonstrate, both for your own understanding of what's working and for proving your value to brands.
Challenge #3: Internet Trolls
Trolling, defined broadly as posting inflammatory or provocative content specifically to get an emotional reaction, isn't limited to celebrities and major public figures. Influencers, and momfluencers in particular, are frequent targets, since personal, relatable content naturally invites more personal criticism.
It's worth knowing this exists before stepping into the space, not to discourage you, but so it doesn't catch you off guard. The opinions of people intent on tearing others down don't reflect your actual worth or the value of your content, and building some emotional distance from that kind of criticism is a genuinely useful skill for anyone in this field long-term.
Challenge #4: Rising Costs
Influencer marketing looked very different in its earliest days, when there were minimal costs associated with the role and no real standards around pricing. That's changed significantly. Business accounts, promotional tools, and professional expectations around content quality have all added real costs to what used to be a simple picture-and-tag exchange.
Filming time, editing, and the overall production quality expected of sponsored content all factor into what you should reasonably charge. As the industry has professionalized, pricing has had to catch up, and understanding your actual costs is essential to charging brands appropriately for the work involved.
Challenge #5: Social Media Management Across Platforms
New platforms and formats seem to emerge constantly. TikTok's rise pushed Instagram and Facebook to introduce Reels and Shorts in response, and Stories, once unique to Snapchat, are now standard across nearly every major platform. Layer in YouTube, blogging, X, and Pinterest, and the sheer number of channels worth maintaining can become genuinely overwhelming.
Being active across multiple platforms is generally worth it, but it needs to be planned around how much time you realistically have. Spreading yourself too thin across every platform at once tends to produce weaker content everywhere rather than strong content anywhere.
Challenge #6: Keeping Up With Trends
Trends move quickly and often unpredictably, whether that's a song, a dance, or a recipe suddenly everyone is posting about. Falling behind on trends can mean falling behind on relevance, which makes staying plugged into what's currently resonating a genuinely important, if occasionally exhausting, part of the job.
This requires consistent, active use of social media, which isn't always easy to sustain. That said, trend-following isn't the only path. Starting a trend yourself is also entirely possible, and doing something new can occasionally outperform following what's already popular.
Challenge #7: Competition
Competition shows up in every industry, but it has a uniquely personal edge in influencer marketing. Your direct competition can genuinely be your friends in the same space, and it's entirely possible for a friend to land a brand deal you were also pursuing. That's rarely personal. Brands are choosing based on fit, and sometimes your platform simply isn't the right match for a specific campaign.
Beyond your immediate circle, the field itself is enormous and only getting more saturated. Standing out matters more than ever, which is part of why leaning into your own story and authentic voice, rather than trying to blend into what's already working for others, tends to be the most sustainable way to differentiate yourself.
How Often These Challenges Come Up
How to Prepare for These Challenges
None of these seven challenges are reasons to avoid influencer marketing as a career. They're simply the parts of the job that don't get talked about as often as the exciting wins, the brand deals, and the creative freedom. Going in with a realistic picture makes the harder moments feel like expected parts of the job rather than unexpected setbacks.
Building good habits early, like using trackable links, avoiding purchased followers, and pacing your platform presence around your actual capacity, tends to soften most of these challenges significantly over time.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Buying followers or engagement to look more established. It creates a credibility risk that tends to surface right when you can least afford it.
- Ignoring link and code tracking. Without it, you lose the ability to clearly demonstrate your value to brands.
- Taking troll comments personally. Engaging with bad-faith criticism rarely helps and often makes it worse.
- Trying to be active on every platform at once. Spreading your time too thin tends to weaken your content everywhere rather than strengthen it anywhere.
- Underpricing your work as costs rise. Failing to account for the real time and production costs involved can leave you working for less than the job is actually worth.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is influencer marketing still a viable career despite these challenges? Yes. These challenges are real, but they're manageable with the right habits and expectations. Plenty of creators build sustainable, rewarding careers in the space despite, and sometimes because of, navigating these obstacles well.
What's the single hardest challenge for most influencers? Measuring ROI consistently ranks as one of the most cited challenges across industry research, for both influencers and the brands they work with. It's less about any one person's skill and more about the structural difficulty of connecting content to outcomes.
How do I deal with internet trolls without letting it affect me? There's no single fix, but many creators find it helpful to remind themselves that trolling says more about the person posting it than about them. Limiting engagement with bad-faith comments and leaning on supportive communities can help make the criticism feel smaller over time.
Ready to Navigate These Challenges With the Right Support?
Influencer marketing comes with real challenges, but you don't have to figure them all out alone. Having the right partnerships and support system makes navigating rising costs, platform management, and everything in between significantly easier.
momfluence connects creators with brands and resources built to support you through exactly these challenges. If you're ready to build a sustainable career in influencer marketing, book a call with momfluence and let's talk about what's next for your page.