An influencer is a person who holds the power to affect the purchasing decisions of others because of his or her authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with his or her online audience. These people whether celebrities or millionaires, politicians or industrialists, tech experts or bloggers, have an active following on social media platforms with whom they regularly interact.
What is Influencer marketing? Influencer marketing is when a company partners with an influencer/celebrity to increase its brand awareness or conversions among a specific target audience.
In addition,
– In 2020, 7% of companies plan to invest a million dollars in influencer marketing.
– 89% of marketers believe ROI from influencer marketing is comparable or better than other marketing channels
What does Influencer marketing target?
– Lead generation
– Brand awareness
– Generate sales
Now that you are fully convinced to want to use influencer marketing; these are the important
rookie mistakes to avoid on your first attempt at Influencer marketing:-
1. Not having a proper goal
An influencer marketing strategy needs to be well formulated. Before you conduct social media, outreach and start working with an influencer, have a clear vision of the campaign in question.
Start out with setting a scalable goal for the influencer campaign – is it to generate leads, is it to increase brand awareness or is it to improve sales. Then put in metrics to evaluate engagement, website visits, sales numbers or whatever is the goal. Without a proper goal, you will never know what the real ROI of the influencer campaign is.
2. Selecting a quality and right-fit influencer
Different influencers attract different people. If you are a sports brand or selling health supplements, you may need an influencer who is an athlete. So, depending on your product and the audience that you want to tap in to, you will need to select the right-fit influencer.
Remember, the influencer is your company/brand face, so before you can start running your influencer marketing campaign, you need to have the right influencers. The influencer should believe in your brand/product and be able to engage his/her audience in the best way to convince them in the most effective and winning way.
3. Not wanting influencers to say it is a paid collaboration
Influencers can talk about your product or service but it is important that you check they are giving out the correct information about your product. As a company, you will prefer if an influencer sounds genuine while he is endorsing the product as if he/she is using your product /service. Of course, this may not be as easy. Most influencers are paid for their services and require to specify endorsements and sponsored content. There are legalities and rules for endorsements, to differentiate which posts are sponsored or act as an endorsement. Hiding your influencer relationship and not wanting to say it is a paid collaboration could your reputation in the long run. Today influencers are using #sponsoredpost, to show a paid collaboration.
4. Selecting influencers basis number of followers
A million followers were becoming a trend on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter. But how authentic are these numbers, how were they reached and how they will affect your target audience needs to be seen? It is important to see beyond just the number of followers and instead see how many are really active followers and how involved is your influencer in conversations with his active audience.
5. Quality over quantity
Often companies select an influencer based on his/her follower count. But let that not be the only criteria. It is important that the influencer is able to engage with the audience, answer doubts or queries, and comment where necessary on behalf of the company. The success of your influencer campaign depends entirely on choosing a person who has a positive relationship with the audience, and who has higher engagement rates. The influencer should be able to engage with the audience and motivate them in the direction of attaining your company/brand goal. Choosing a micro-influencer or macro influencer entirely depends on the product/service and the influencer marketing goal. Therefore, it is recommended to choose a specialist over a generalist influencer.
6. Approaching influencers in the wrong way
The one thing to remember when you get an influencer is that you don’t own him/her. As a company, it is extremely important that you and the influencer understand and acknowledge each other’s roles and work towards the same goal. The influencer has his/her own style creativity so don’t impose upon them. Collaborate and coordinate, try and trust, remind and remember. A successful influencer marketing strategy is a long-term relationship. Sometimes it is even suggested that once you have an influencer who promotes your business and gives the best result, use the approach the same influencer for your next campaign as they already understand your brand, and score high on reliability amongst their audience. Approach an influencer in the right manner giving them full power and authority to represent your product.
7. Sticking to just one platform
Companies often make a mistake going with an influencer marketing campaign on their most preferred platform. Haven’t you heard, never put your eggs in one basket? Yes, influencer marketing draws from it. To achieve success run the influencer campaign, on different platforms to reach out to new and different groups of people. Also, maybe your company presence is stronger on one platform while the influencers’ strength lies in another. It’s best to try out combinations to maximize traffic through different social media accounts.
With Instagram becoming synonymous with influencer marketing, with over 1 billion users, a fast-growing network of influencers, and millions of sponsored posts each year, it does not mean you stop here.
Like every marketing strategy, influencer marketing is also based on trial and error. It is thereby important that you research the influencer background and tone of voice, what kind of products he/she endorses, is he/she promoting competitors’ products, ascertain the kind of engagement they get on their posts, check how quickly and efficiently the influencer posts responses. Ensure your influencer is not just a number game with a million followers, but can sufficiently and positively take action to reach the goals. Use actionable metrics and not just vanity metrics to continually measure the results whether they are the number of hits or page views or time spent on your website, or a number of downloads, etc resulting in leads, referrals, conversions, sales, and higher revenue. Actual sales and the average time on a page are paradigms of metrics that are truly valuable.
