Influencer marketing can be a really fantastic low cost way of improving brand awareness, but only if it’s done right! There are some big influencer marketing mistakes and pitfalls that lots of brands struggle with and these can lead to disappointing results and lowered ROI. We’ve investigated these mistakes so that you can prevent any blunders – read on to find out the 10 most common mistakes and how to avoid them.
Top 10 Influencer Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
1. Blowing Your Budget Too Quickly
Working with smaller influencers and content creators over a longer period can be much more rewarding than working on one short project with a more popular influencer. This type of marketing doesn’t need to be expensive if you choose your content creators well – blowing all of your budget on a really short campaign is an easy mistake to avoid!
This doesn’t mean under-paying influencers or entering hard negotiations, but payment doesn’t have to be in the form of money. For example, you could offer a selection of your products instead.
Focusing on smaller low cost campaigns is a good way to get started in influencer marketing so that you have real data to build upon as you step up your efforts.
2. Choosing The Wrong Influencers
Choosing an influencer whose style and ethos matches that of your brand is as important as checking their metrics. You need to ensure that their content is relevant to your target audience and that they post about brands and products similar to yours, otherwise you might not see any real results.
Make sure to thoroughly research potential influencers and content creators before collaborating by looking at all of their channels and their metrics too. When looking at stats, don’t focus on followers or reach, but instead look at engagement and click-through rates – this is what will bring your campaign great results.
3. Viewing Influencers As A Surefire Way To Get More Sales
Influencers’ social platforms aren’t direct sales channels, and looking at them like this is one of the top influencer marketing mistakes. Working on a campaign with influencers and creatives should be seen more of a way to communicate your brand values and showcase your products.
Many small businesses are disappointed after an influencer marketing campaign that they didn’t receive a big spike in sales, even though they generated more traffic. However, with this type of marketing you can’t expect overnight results – influencer marketing is a great way to build trust and brand awareness among potential customers, which will make advertising campaigns more successful in the long run.
4. Not Having A Specific Brief
Being vague in your brief will make it harder to measure results from a sponsored post, video collaboration and other types of content. If you don’t effectively communicate what you require, the style and message might not be properly interpreted by the influencer.
This is a common mistake, but one that’s very easy to avoid. Make sure to set out your brand requirements and any key information clearly in writing to ensure you’re both on the same page!
5. Choosing The Wrong Social Network Or Platform
Do your homework on each platform and look at audience metrics. For example, if an influencer has a huge social following but only a few blog followers, sponsoring a blog post will make a dent in your budget without bringing you much value, unless it is already proven that those followers click through to the influencer’s blog. Where you post is often just as important as what is posted!
Similarly, if you want to work with an influencer on a set of Instagram photos, ensure that their audience is likely to engage with this type of content. If the content creator tends to get the most views and click-throughs from their stories, then static photo posts might not be the most effective way of communicating about your brand.
Doing this research for every idea and influencer will help to make sure that content is seen by the largest number of relevant followers and that the campaign adds value for your brand.
6. Commissioning Just One Piece of Content
As we have mentioned in a previous post, audiences are getting much more savvy about sponsored content as we move into an age in which they can control the type and amount of adverts they see. Working on just one post or video with an influencer is a big influencer marketing mistake – one post is often not enough to give your campaign traction and prove to followers that the content creator has a genuine interest in your brand and products.
Because of this, collaborating over a longer time period and working on content that spans more than one post can be much more rewarding and valuable for your business.
7. Trying to Control the Whole Process
Gone are the days when brands would write a blog post or finish a photo shoot and send completed content to influencers for them to post. The style of writing, look of images or tone of a video is what has made an influencer popular and works for their audience – by trying to control these things, you can make the content look inauthentic.
It’s definitely a good idea to set out your requirements, but allow the influencer to use their own creativity and you’ll see much better results in terms of engagement.
8. Not Keeping Track of Results
This is a vital part of an influencer marketing campaign! You may want to spend all your time researching influencers and working with the influencer to get the content perfect, but if you don’t measure your results then your hard work might go to waste. How will you know whether anyone is even seeing your content?
In order to move your campaign forward, and to learn what is working and what isn’t, you need to see the cold hard stats. This doesn’t need to be a difficult process – just a few key pieces of data will give you numbers that you can compare as you move your campaign along.
9. Not Researching Who the Influencer Has Worked With Before
This is a step that a lot of brands miss out, but when you’re working with big influencers you need to find out who they have worked with in the last year and who they’re currently working with.
If the influencer is being paid by a competitor with similar products, this is going to create conflict in the content that they’re producing as they try to promote both brands simultaneously. On the flip side, if the influencer has recently worked with a large unrelated brand, your products might not be relevant to what their followers want to see.
Audiences change, just like the interests of influencers. This means that it really pays to ensure that your brand will be relevant and that now is the best time to work with a particular person.
10. Not Sharing Content
If you have worked hard with an influencer to collaborate on great content centered around your brand which is in line with your values, it makes sense to share it on your own social channels!
Re-post, re-tweet and blog about the images or videos that the influencer has created – this is appealing content which will help to build trust in your brand among your own followers.
Keeping these influencer marketing mistakes in mind when considering who to work with and what type of content you’d like them to produce can really help to elevate your campaign and ensure that you see the best results possible!
Do you have any extra tips you’d like to share?
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