In recent years, and due to the rise of social media, digital influencers, and more specifically, Social Media Influencers have separated themselves as an authority in their respective field. This has created new ways for businesses to approach their marketing efforts.
While influencer marketing isn’t a totally new way of marketing, the impact of modern influencer marketing via social media has impacted modern marketing efforts tremendously.
Influencer marketing, however, doesn’t come without its own disadvantages. Simply put, while using influencers to promote one’s products or services has proven to be an extremely effective strategy, several mistakes can be made that will ultimately ruin the entirety of a campaign.
In what follows, we’ll be discussing the most common influencer marketing campaign mistakes and why you must avoid them. First, however, influencer marketing must be defined.
What is Influencer Marketing?
In short, influencer marketing is a collaborative marketing strategy that involves partnering with authoritative online influencers to promote a product or service. By taking advantage of these new-age experts, a business is able to capture audiences that would otherwise be unreachable.
Influencer marketing can provide quite the return on investment. That is, if the strategy is executed effectively. As mentioned, however, mistakes are commonly made in pursuit of influencer marketing efforts.
To ensure that you avoid the following mistakes, it’s imperative that you vet influencers for suitability to your business/brand, identify whether or not their brand is relevant to yours, and measure the quality of their engagement.
The following will be a discussion of the five (5) most common mistakes made during influencer marketing campaign efforts.
5 Common Influencer Marketing Campaign Mistakes
While influencer marketing campaigns are an extremely effective marketing strategy, if not executed properly and with intent, influencer marketing campaigns can drain a business’s budget, establish poor business relationships, and ultimately result in time wasted.
By avoiding the following mistakes, not only do you give yourself the best chance at success, but you create an environment suitable for long-term growth and great working relationships with the influencers you so choose to collaborate with.
However, beware! These influencer marketing campaign mistakes are common mistakes for a reason.
Below are the most common influencer marketing campaign mistakes:
- Working With Incompatible Influencers Irrelevant to Your Business
- Measuring Audience Size over Engagement
- Over or Under Compensating the Influencer(s)
- Not Allowing Creative Freedom
- Failure to Identify the Campaign’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Working With Incompatible Influencers Irrelevant to Your Business
While influencer marketing may seem straightforward, it truly requires a deep analysis of your brand identity and a research process that ensures a suitable fit for both you and the influencer that you choose to collaborate with.
Look, we all want to work with the Kardashian’s, the Drake’s, and the Charlie D’Amelio’s of the world. After all, they have hundreds of millions of followers. Isn’t influencer marketing as simple as paying those who have tremendous amounts of followers and letting magic run its course?
Although this would be extremely convenient, unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
Instead, it’s imperative that you find influencers that are relevant to your niche. Moreover, some influencers have greater engagement than others. If you work in the social media space, you know how important engagement is.
In other words, you may come across a relevant influencer that has more followers than the next. On the surface, you’d conclude that this influencer would be the better choice. Upon a deeper analysis, however, you may discover that the influencer with less followers has 5x the amount of engagement. This is the gold standard.
Influencers with high engagement offer greater conversions, thus ultimately providing your business with a greater ROI.
Choosing the influencer simply for their following is not the right way to approach your influencer marketing campaign. In addition, choosing an irrelevant influencer could be detrimental to your brand reputation.
Do your due diligence and opt for engagement and long-term fit over the quick and easy solution; You’ll thank yourself later.
Segway!
Measuring Audience Size over Engagement
Many brands and businesses presume that influencers with large followings are the key to a successful influencer marketing campaign. This couldn’t be further from the truth. While the ultimate recipe for success is finding a relevant influencer with great engagement and a large following, it’s not always that simple.
As mentioned in the first mistake, choosing an influencer solely based on their audience size could be a detrimental decision for your brand reputation and campaign success. Instead, seek influencers that are not only relevant to your brand and industry at large, but that have a loyal audience with high engagement statistics.
It may be a better choice to collaborate with the influencer that has a smaller following. Why? You guessed it! Because they have higher engagement! Remember, higher engagement equates to a greater ROI and conversion statistic. Audience size simply doesn’t guarantee the same results.
Over or Under Compensating the Influencer(s)
Choosing the most suitable compensation model for your influencer marketing campaign can be the difference maker between success and failure. In contrast, choosing the wrong compensation model is the fastest way to zero.
There’s a fine balance when curating a fair compensation package. While it’s imperative that you provide the influencer with a sufficient reward, it’s just as imperative that you manage your campaign’s budget.
While there are many types of compensation models, each with their own pros and cons depending on the type of campaign you’re running, it’s up to you to determine the most effective and efficient compensation model for your business and partnering influencer.
Below are the most popular compensation models when it comes to influencer marketing:
- PPP (Pay Per Post)
- PPC (Pay Per Click)
- PPE (Pay Per Engagement)
- Fixed Rate
- Free Offerings (Product, Travel, Resources, Experiences, etc.)
Not Allowing Creative Freedom
It needs to be understood that influencer marketing, especially in the digital world, is somewhat of a new way of executing marketing efforts. Traditionally, businesses and brands are used to having complete autonomy over a campaign’s execution. Today, however, it’s a little different. Here’s way:
Social Media has provided an environment for influencers to earn complete autonomy not only over their earnings potential but over their voice. This is why influencers have large followings and high engagement rates, because people relate to them on an emotional level.
As such, in order to execute an effective influencer marketing campaign, you need to allow for creative freedom. Providing an influencer with rigid, strict instructions will only create tension in the relationship. Moreover, it will result in an inauthentic promotion in the eyes of the influencer’s audience.
So, how do you avoid making this mistake? Provide the partnering influencer(s) with clear instruction, however, allow for flexibility and creative freedom in delivery. This will make the influencer happy, while ultimately resulting in a more successful, authentic campaign.
Failure to Identify the Campaign’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
As it has been identified already, influencer marketing can be an extremely effective marketing strategy. By avoiding the mistakes above, you’re likely to succeed. With that said, without identifying clear KPIs and campaign goals, how are you supposed to know when you’re successful or not.
So, when developing a given campaign, be sure to know what you’re aiming for, identify the KPIs that will allow you to measure success or failure, and write down specific goals that you want to reach.
Final Thoughts
By avoiding the mistakes discussed throughout this article, you set your campaign up for success. With an effective influencer marketing strategy that’s executed to perfection, you’re able to capture audiences you wouldn’t have otherwise been able to reach, build greater brand awareness, earn credibility in your industry, and ultimately improve your business’s bottom line.
Influencer marketing campaigns are a great digital marketing strategy that can return incredible value if done properly. Avoid these mistakes and you’ll be well on your way to reaching your KPI’s and achieving your campaign goals.
Who knows, you might even blow past your goals, reaching new heights that you never thought possible!
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