Does this influencer marketing headache sound familiar?
You’ve invested in a handful of influencers for your product launch. They’ve booked the top fashion photographers. The images are exceptional—art you would hang on your walls. Your brand story never looked better and you netted a million views across all the social channels.
But sales are mediocre at best.
What went wrong?
Pictures don’t magically transform into sales. Successful influencer campaigns need more just than beautiful photos. Before you commission another influencer to share a photo of your product or service, do these four things.
1) Be exclusive
You’re not Nutella — you can’t make everyone happy. (Wait, are you Nutella? If that’s the case, give me a call!)
Trying to please everyone will make you so bland, you’ll please no one. It’s ok if your flavor isn’t loved by everyone.
Instead of trying to please everyone, target those who WILL love your product or service.
Choose influencers who are examples of your ideal customers. Selling lotion to Millennials? Better go with someone other than Claudia Schiffer and a platform besides Facebook. Selling expensive jewelry to Baby Boomers? Hope you weren’t thinking of soliciting Taylor Swift on Snapchat, even though she has millions of followers, your ideal audience most likely are not one of them.
You have to know your audience and speak to their wants and needs in a way that will resonate with them. It’s equally important to pick a platform they populate, otherwise your message, no matter how spot-on it is, may never even be seen.
Which leads me to my next point.
2) Clarify your message
Have you ever watched an entertaining ad and then realized you had no idea who the company was? Or how about the ad where the company is all in your face — but you realize you’re not sure what they’re selling or why you should care.
Both the “who” and the “why” of the ad must be clear or it is a waste of your resources.
This happens in influencer campaigns more than you’d think. Influencers aren’t always marketing pros, so you need to give them a nudge in the right direction. Make sure the pictures are telling a clear story while keeping your brand front and center.
Don’t lose sight of who you are and why you’re reaching out. This is where an effective strategy is key: to make sure your message is clear and ticking all the right boxes.
3) Saturate—don’t OVERsaturate
Multiple exposures to your brand is 100% necessary—but there IS such a thing as too much. You don’t want to be like an overplayed hit song that people come to hate!
Take those detox teas you see all over the internet as an example. They started as a nutrition secret, something fitspos swore worked to give them their envious physiques.
Initially, companies saw a big boost in revenue from young men and women looking to emulate the svelte stars. But once fistpo fans saw the detox teas “recommended” all over the place, they felt like their role models sold out.
Perceived “Influencer Sell-Out” is a huge issue for both you AND your influencer. When an influencer is no longer seen as a trusted friend sharing their favorite products, but as a salesperson, they’ll lose followers. Losing followers hurts them — and they won’t want to partner with you in the future. Your brand loses credibility because it’s seen as one that will pay for positive press.
So how could the detox teas saturate social media without overdoing it? They could’ve focused on a few KEY influencers, establishing how the teas fit into their healthful lifestyles. They could have shared that it was just one component in the star’s fitness regimen, forgoing the hard sale.
4) Tell them what to do next
Leave them with a strong call to action. Otherwise, your new audience may like your photos and captions, but sadly just move on.
If you’re not driving traffic (in store or online), collecting leads (and funneling them into an email campaign), and getting people to engage with you and TRY your products, then what is the point?
When done effectively, influencer marketing is the most powerful form of marketing.
I’ll leave you with this example of a good call to action:
If you’re not seeing the results you’d like to see from your influencer campaigns, contact me. We’ll talk about how YOUR brand can be the next one I drive up over $20K in post-holiday sales with each micro-influencer.
(by Janine Silver with Monika Allen)