Influencer marketing is extremely effective, and it looks like it is not going to slow down anytime soon. Whenever you open Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, you will notice influencers from various walks of life working to promote different services/products. Quite surprisingly, they seem to be bringing in a big number of buyers/users.
In this regard, you might be wondering what makes an influencer marketing campaign successful? Well, the answer is simple. The best businesses/brands have figured out what the most common pitfalls are. While defining their strategy, these businesses avoid some common mistakes and use the best practices. Nevertheless, it is not rocket science! And, we are here to help you with that.
Firstly, why are influencer marketing campaigns so important?
When planned properly, influencer marketing campaigns can significantly improve the reputation of a brand. Ultimately, the prime goal of these campaigns is to generate heavier traffic and to convert a bigger proportion of the traffic into long-time customers.
Now, there are several reasons why influencer marketing is so effective. These include:
A big number of users have ad blockers installed on their browsers
Potential customers trust an individual’s word of mouth more than advertisements by brands
Many consumers rely on social media to make buying decisions
Marketers claim to have achieved better customers via influencer marketing
What rookie mistakes should you avoid for your first influencer marketing campaign?
Your brand’s reputation and the image is your most important asset. At the same time, influencer marketing is the key to develop a long-lasting impression on your target audience. But there is a catch! To get the best results, you must avoid several rookie mistakes that new brands are likely to make.
To help you out, we have listed all of these mistakes below.
1. Not having a detailed plan
Well, making a detailed plan for the campaign is the first and most important step. You should consider it as a prerequisite. However, starters often spend weeks designing a template alone, which can easily be found on the linkr platform.
At linkr, we help you set up your first influencer marketing campaign within 5 minutes through powerful ready-made templates.
These templates cover every small detail and provide you with a guideline to follow. At the same time, the custom campaign wizard gives you even greater creative freedom and control. All in all, we speed-up your campaign setup process so that you can jump ahead to the sweet part right-away.
2. Getting fooled by the follower counts
A big number of businesses target influencers slowly based on their follower count. While it sounds logical to say that higher the followers, the better. However, this is not always the case.
Of course, the number of followers does matter. And, you should focus on that. But, engagement rates probably matter even more than the follower count alone. This is because ideal influencers will not only have a big audience belonging to your market but will also have an actual 'influence'. Essentially, ideal influencers engage and motivate their audience on a very wide scale.
To make your job extremely easy, linkr offers a next-gen creator identification tool that connects you with the right influencers based on your segment/industry. These influencers are hand-picked, not solely based on their follower count, but also based on their actual 'influence'.
3. Using only one social media platform
Have you ever wondered why many brands fail to get enough attention despite having a great influencer marketing plan? Well, this is because they stick to one social media platform only.
Chances are that despite being present on multiple platforms, you will have a greater number of followers on one particular platform. Naturally, you would want to focus more on THAT particular platform. However, this would simply limit your focus and prevent your business from reaching out to different groups of people.
4. Not calculating IMV and ROI
Nowadays, influencer marketing campaigns are far more effective as compared to traditional advertisements. However, to have a successful campaign, you must know how to calculate the ROI (return of investment). This way, you will know exactly how much you need to spend to get the desired results.
At the same time, IMV (influencer’s media value) is yet another concept that can help you determine how effective your campaign is. Essentially, IMV determines the amount of money that you would spend in other solutions, to achieve the same results generated by your current influencer marketing campaign.
5. Letting the content go unmonitored
We do understand that you and your influencer may develop a level of mutual trust. Regardless of that, it is extremely important to check the quality of each post. After all, influencers are just humans too. And like everyone else, they may also make mistakes at times. These mistakes can be as small as forgetting the hashtag or accidentally advertising other services in the post.
Ultimately, unmonitored content will have a detrimental effect on your overall campaign. This would also include constant surveillance of analytics such as impressions (in the case of Twitter) or the overall increase in your profile visits.
Quite luckily, the linkr platform features a very robust analytics tool, which constantly tracks your performance while helping you keep an eye on the budget.
6. Treating collaboration as a single deal
So, you have just had a very successful campaign with a couple of influencers on your side. Now, you may want to find new influencers for the next campaign. Does this sound like you? Well, this is a mistake that many new brands/businesses make.
Trust us! It is not practical to find new influencers for every campaign, no matter how desperately you want to widen your company’s relations. What if a new influencer does not end up as a good fit? So, for as long as your existing influencers are bringing you great results, stick with them.
Conclusion
When managed correctly, influencer marketing campaigns can bring great returns to a business. However, for that, it is extremely important to remember the common rookie mistakes that we have listed above.
