08/06/2018

Influencer marketing has become a hot trend and is in every marketer’s wishlist.

With the influencer marketing strategy, companies/brands find it convenient to optimize the social space. Social media influencers can help share your brand message to a broader, yet personalized audience. Yet, there are a couple of mistakes marketers keep on making while doing influencer marketing. Let’s have a look, what are they-

Know 7 influencer marketing mistakes and learn how to avoid them effortlessly-

Why is Influencer marketing a big deal?

The stats here convey the importance of influencer marketing strategies.

Businesses are making $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing.

59% of marketers intend to increase their influencer marketing budget in the next year.

67% of marketing and communications professionals engage with influencers for content promotion.

Social Networks Influence 74% of Consumers’ Buying Decisions.

Influencers in the 10k-100k follower range offer the best combination of engagement and broad reach.

Mistake 1: Not having a specific goal

Having a specific goal plan is as important in your influence marketing as it is in your business. Not having specific goals is one of the most common mistakes brands make when executing the strategy.

So, before you do social media outreach and start working with an influencer, first clear your vision about the campaign. Set up your measurable and realistic goals and be decisive.

You have to ensure that you and the influencer can work towards reaching defined goals. You have to think of how influencer marketing can increase brand awareness, attract new target audience and increase your brand’s social media presence.

Mistake 2: Not doing your research

Before you can start initiating your influencer marketing campaign, you first need to find the right influencers.

Not every influencer is right for your brand. You need to find the right influencers who are making difference in your niche area. So, you have to do your research first.

When you run a campaign, that influencer becomes a face of your brand. It means your company name is associated with their actions for the extent of the relationship. It’s always important to follow and engage with the influencer before you select, get to know their content and what their audience loves. This will help you visualize how you can work and team up with them to achieve your business goals.

BuzzSumo is an effective influencer marketing platform that lets you conduct thorough research about potential influencers.

Mistake 3: Aiming only on follower number

Choosing a right influencer to collaborate with your brand is more than just the number of followers they have.

It’s about collective interests, demographics, market segments, and more intangible variables such as attitudes, self-image and proficiency in a specific field.

Influencers are targeted by brands mainly because of their follower count. Hence, it is easy to say that the more followers, the better. But it’s not necessary.

Yes, follower count matters but the success or your campaign mainly depends on choosing the perfect person for the work.

So, you need to dig deep and look for engagement rates, shares and comments. The research shows engagement levels really fall dramatically as follower numbers rise. The right influencer is one who motivates and engages their audience.

Mistake 4: Hiding your influencer connection

You can approach an influencer promotion in two basic ways. Either you pay them or earn their influence for your product.

If you are paying the influencer, they need to proclaim that connection. If they don’t, you are both risking your names and threat losing your followers’ trust.

Famous Instagrammer Nanda Weskott creates sponsored posts for Levis. She features some of the cloth in her Instagram shots and puts their product in front of her followers.

In each post, she is tagged as a “Paid partnership with Levis Cologne, Germany”, indicating the relationship. This is the ideal way to do influencer marketing.

Do not hide your relationship with influencers. And make sure that influencers don’t hide your relationship. When your followers know that, it will destroy your authority.

Mistake 5: Not giving a clear briefing

It’s always important to clear your outlook with the influencers. Not giving clear briefing or expectations can ruin your relationship with the influencer.

Ensure you enable the influencer know the outcomes of your campaign and business, and what you’re trying to accomplish by this association.

If an influencer promotes your brand handle and campaign hashtags, they know all about the basics. And, if you’d like their post, gives them a thumb up.

They’ll never know if you can’t tell them, and it’s important to be open – transparency and honesty is the key.

To make sure influencers are clear on your expectations is to send them a campaign brief during your initial meeting.

Mistake 6: Short work deadlines

Creating good content takes time. Time is important in order to get the right outcome of the collaboration. Brands are mostly not aware of how time-consuming is the process.

Running the campaign by pressurizing the influencers into providing only affects the quality. It only affects the influencer’s creativity and ability to create great content with high relevance.

It also excludes mistakes such as wrong links, hashtags, mention of brand etc. It is essential that brands take their time to develop a good brief and give the influencers time for groundwork.

Mistake 7: Considering your business can’t value from influencer marketing

If you avoid influencer marketing because you think our business does not need that, it’s your big mistake.

Small businesses can see high ROI from influencer marketing if it is done correctly.

Influencer marketing is all about trust.

A valuable influencer is someone who’s built and developed their “identify, like, and trust” factor and established themselves to their audience. Small businesses can knock into that on a micro-influencer level.