Are you seeing a 600% return on your influencer marketing investment? If not, you may be making one of these five common mistakes.
1. Choosing the Wrong Influencer
Nothing will tank a strong outreach campaign like picking the wrong influencer. Your influencer should be your ideal customer. They should personify the customer profile you created when you branded your business and developed your product.
Let’s say you want to market a new craft beer. It’s a killer hoppy IPA. Your team came up with an edgy, memorable name and a logo design that looks great on hoodies. You reach out to an Instagrammer with a big following who agrees to share your product. He’s got a hipster beard and full sleeve tats. He vapes. He must love IPAs, right?
But what you didn’t realize is he’s better known for craft cocktails. When he promotes your beer, it strikes a bitter chord with his followers. Your investment fizzles to nothing.
However, don’t swear off influencer outreach!
A great brand strategy looks at the bigger picture, examining an influencer from all angles to find the best fit.
2. One and Done Campaign
Your perfectly chosen influencer shared on-point content about your product or service, but you aren’t seeing profound results. It probably doesn’t mean outreach isn’t for you. Rather, it’s that you need to plant yourself more firmly in your buyer’s mind.
Today’s consumers must filter through so much noise. They won’t be convinced by just one single mention of your product. You need more than one video, more than one blog post. More than one Who from Whoville chanting “We are here! We are here!” (Dr. Seuss knew a thing or two about sticky content.)
You need more touch points.
Begin to warm up your new potential audience into seeing the need for your brand with a serialized strategy. Give them time to get to know you a little more. Don’t expect sales to increase because of one mention from Kim K or Elon Musk. Instead, focus on solving a problem or addressing a pain point.
Slow but constant exposure is key here!
3. Making a Popularity Call.
Are you only looking at the number of followers an influencer has? Sure, the Kardashians and Mark Cuban have millions of followers, but are they the best choice for promoting your product?
Probably not.
The best influencer is not the person with the most followers, but the person who represents your ideal customer.
After all you don’t need everyone in the world to see your brand, just your future customers.
What you don’t want is someone who is known to share “just anything.” They come across as less than genuine and their recommendations are taken with a grain of salt. You should really be looking for an influencer who will increase your visibility and drive sales.
How do you find these people?
Look for those who have built a connection with their audience. Pay attention to their engagement levels — and also to the quality of those engagements. Are they getting comments and likes just because they’re asking for them? Or are people legitimately interested in their opinions?
An influencer who actually has influence over their audience will be the one to take your campaign to the next level.
4. Creating Your Strategy Around Your Influencers
A solid understanding of your brand and your customers should always be what drives your marketing strategy, influencer selections included.
Choose influencers to match your brand strategy, not the other way around. In other words, if your audience is mostly on Twitter, you need an influencer who tweets with the best of them. If your buyers are researchers, choose an influencer known for in-depth reviews on their blog. Have a younger audience? A YouTube reviewer may be the way to go.
Don’t get stuck trying to base your company’s strategy around a celebrity’s skill sets.
Choose influencers who can best amplify your brand voice.
5. Letting Influencers Run the Show
You found the perfect influencer. You gave them your product. They love it. They know which links to share out. But it’s not enough to simply throw product or money at them and let them do their thing.
(Of course you don’t want to stifle their creativity or style. That’s why you picked them in the first place. It’s what their followers love about them.)
Instead, give them a strategy. They’ll be thankful for the direction and it will make sure you both know the goal of each post you work on together — whether it’s raising awareness, promoting a new product/event, or driving sales to your store.
Keep your brand strategy at the forefront of your outreach initiatives and your influencer campaign will knock it out of the park!
(by Monika Allen & Janine Silver)