Influencer marketing has seen a huge success in promoting the business of both start-ups and global brands. It promises you an appropriate platform to reach new audiences, boost your ROI, increase conversions, and amplify brand awareness. However, several misconceptions about launching a top-notch influencer marketing campaign can invite common mistakes that might affect its performance.
So, let us help you go through a checklist of the do’s and don’ts of influencer marketing campaigns. Here we go with the bullet points that you need to keep in mind always:
- Identify the right influencer: It is very important to choose the right influencers to partner with. Assure that their followers are a mutual part of your market so that your messages are delivered to people who are interested in the services you are willing to promote. Take your time and make the right choice for your brand.
Make sure to find an influencer who is an active user and posts regular content. It is also necessary to source such an influencer from the sea who is connected with their audience. - Give space to creativity: Influencers are known for their authenticity and are liked by their audiences for the same. So, whenever you feel like giving guidelines to them, ensure enough to respect their creativity and content space.
Offer a neat space to your influencers to enable successful collaboration with them. - Set your goals beforehand: Before you go to seek an influencer, decide your goals for the campaign. It will also help you to streamline your efforts and enhance your influencer search. You can target on:
- Brand awareness: People must identify your products to increase their sales. And, influencers can be a great help regarding it as their followers rely on their reviews or suggestions. You can give wings to it via giveaways, brand mentions, and product reviews, etc.
- Social engagement: When you shake hands with an influencer, your brand gains the highlight of their audiences. They might enhance post engagement or eventually, become your follower too.
Your campaign can also have more goals than above. Whatever matters is that you are clear on your objectives right from the out front. - Offer something exciting to your influencers:Simply building a relationship with the influencers is not enough to create miracles. Most of the influencers need something tangible. So, you can either sign a donation on their name or manage something parallel as helping them with more enhanced exposure or even inviting them for an interview might work well.
- Set specific influencer guidelines: Look out for the ways that your influencer attempts to reach out to his/her following. Be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any medium, make guidelines to ensure your way of promotion. Don’t overlook the tagging as it is bound to generate maximum exposure.
- Promote influencer content:It is a game of pressure for the influencers to drive traffic on their messages. You can do a task of appreciation for the influencer you admire and share their content on social media platforms to promote their talent. Don’t forget to tag the influencer so that it brings your dedication to his notice.
Repurpose the content of the influencer across several marketing channels after the campaign is finished and showcase your consistency. - Never spam the influencers:You should not get obnoxious about partnering with your influencer. It is good to show some patience and wait for the reply to your e-mails from the other side. Influencers are busy individuals and they might take time to reply to you. So, it is safe to send them a follow-up mail only after a week if you did not receive any answer from them.
Don’t weigh pushiness on the same scale as persistence. And, let it go if you face resistance. - Don’t ignore micro-influencers: It is widely believed that large numbers tend to create bigger impacts but it does not always hold. The engagement rate of micro-influencers is quite greater than that of macro-influencers. Few reasons behind this factor are:
- Better availability: Micro-influencers are not dramatic when it comes to projects from start-ups or smaller brands. Since they are in the early hood of their development stage, they are flexible.
- Great affordability: Micro-influencers offer affordability because of the smaller size of the audience. Very often, some partnerships can be built on goodies or freebies too.
- A suitable audience: Micro-influencers celebrate the crowd of more focused audiences. They hold expertise in nurturing close-knit tribes that ultimately help them to generate more engagement.
- Proper authenticity: These individuals are looked at as ordinary people because of the fewer number of followings. As a result, it becomes relatable for their followers to approach them.
- Don’t trust solely on the influencer: Don’t take your influencer as a finished product but only as a part of your campaign. If you solely depend on the influencer for everything, you might face an unsuccessful campaign at the end. So, you must build the influencer network and alongside, also find publications that eyes on the engagement of your influencer. This way, you not only rely on them for the buzz but also reach them to seed your marketing campaign.
- Don’t focus on quantity but quality: Aiming for a wider customer reach is an effective way to scale your marketing campaign. However, people will not always resonate with your content just by taking a glance at it. It needs a creative and thoughtful brief along with several iterations that produce a high-quality content influencer.
- Don’t mislead the audience: Try not to give multiple CTAs to the audience but focus on a single action per influencer. If an influencer persuades the followers to download your app, purchase your product, etc. in a single post, all the effort goes in vain. Only a split second is available on social media to grab the attention of your audience, which one must not let go of.