Common Mistakes To Avoid When Starting An Influencer Marketing Campaign
More businesses than ever are choosing influencer marketing over more traditional marketing.
They make this choice because influencer marketing allows companies to build long-term relationships with their customers and effectively track results. However it’s not always easy to get it right, and there are common Influencer marketing mistakes that brands make. When planning influencer marketing campaigns, the main mistake that people make is assuming that it will work like traditional marketing. Conventional marketing campaigns are successful if they immediately generate sales. In influencer marketing, this is important, of course, but what’s more important is the quality of the developed long-term relationships. When brands build genuine long-term relationships with customers, the benefits are realised throughout that relationship, not just in the immediate aftermath of the campaign. If you want to make the most out of your influencer marketing campaign, you should avoid these common influencer marketing mistakes.
Coming off as salesy
We’ve all grown up having advertising targeted at us, which means we can tell when someone is making a sales pitch. Generally, we don’t like it.
The primary reason that people follow influencers is that they are interested in what they have to say. If an influencer deviates from the content that we love to promote products or services too often, we’ll soon stop engaging with them.
It’s crucial that influencers only make recommendations for products or services that are genuinely valuable. They should also use direct recommendations sparingly.
A better approach is for influencers to include products within their content naturally. For example, a dancer might create a video that features them wearing the clothing they are promoting.
Not knowing how to measure success
As with any marketing campaign, you must have KPI’s in place so that you can measure how successful your influencer campaign has been.
The mistake that a lot of brands make is trying to use the same KPI’s as they have used for more traditional marketing campaigns. But, as we’ve already said, influencer marketing is about the long game, so measuring success on immediate increases in sales probably isn’t the right way to go.
Focus your KPI’s around impressions for each post and how well the audience is engaging. It’s also essential to find a way to keep a record of sales generated by the influencer that didn’t come directly from the post.
EAEO are experts in influencer campaigns. We will draw on our experience to help you to design KPI’s that are an accurate representation of the success of your influencer campaign and how it’s benefitting your business.
Not giving it enough time
Influencer marketing is a long term investment.
The idea behind creating solid relationships with your customers is that they will become repeat and hopefully lifetime customers because they believe so strongly in your brand. But, as you might expect, building these relationships takes time.
It can be tempting to expect considerable increases in sales after just one sponsored creator post, but this is unrealistic.
Creating an influencer campaign means building a strategy to be implemented forging the relationship between brand, influencer and audience.
Brands being overly prescriptive
If you’re choosing to work with a creator, it makes sense to give them the freedom to be creative. It’s what they do, after all!
When brands dictate precisely what a creator should say, it often results in content that feels false and won’t resonate with the audience.
A better approach is to work with your influencer. First, help the influencer understand your vision, what your business is all about and what you want the audience to know. Then step back, and allow the influencer to craft the message.
Working in this way means that you’ll end up with a campaign that feels authentic and connects with the audience.
Pairing influencers with the wrong brands
Influencer marketing is powerful because influencers have a great relationship with their audience. Influencers can use this relationship to introduce a brand to hundreds of potential new customers.
However, the introduction won’t result in new customers if the influencer’s audience isn’t interested in the business.
Influencer marketing works best when the influencer and the brand have shared goals or values. Ideally, the influencer’s audience will be the brand’s target customer base. That way, when the influencer recommends the brands products, the audience already has an active interest.
How we can help you!
We can help you to avoid these Influencer marketing mistakes. Our experience in creating strategies, building relationship and running campaigns mean we can identify exactly what your brand needs. In addition to this, we use our bespoke analysis to identify the best Influencers for your brand!
At eaeo, we’re experts in pairing your brand with influencers who will resonate with your target audience. If you would like to find the perfect influencer to represent your brand, please get in touch. We’d love to help.