Seven Common Influencer Marketing Problems and How to Avoid Them

If you want to work with influencers to market your goods and services, you must be super familiar and aware of the rules, laws, and regulations surrounding this marketing method. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, someone else has already invented it, and it works great. All you need to do is get familiar with what the ins and outs are.

 

Here are the seven most common influencer marketing mistakes to avoid and what you should do to prevent them:

 

Not Understanding Your Target Audience

 

This leads to picking the wrong influencer, and choosing the wrong platform and social media channels.

 

Not Providing Enough Resources and Information

 

Don’t expect the influencer to do the job without the proper information. While they are great at what they do, they need solid information from you first to understand the expectations and goals for your business.

 

Remember, they are influencers because they marketed themselves as the product. Therefore, they don’t know anything about your business and what content needs to be created to get the conversions you are hoping for.

 

Thinking Too Short-Term

 

It takes work to find the right influencer and even more time to keep them accountable. Due to this, you should always think about forming long-term partnerships with your influencer. Over time, they can become even more of an asset as they become experts on your brand, products, or services. When you show influencers you truly mean business and value them as humans, they are more like to stay accountable and meet all your marketing requirements.

 

Prioritizing Conversions Over Quality Content

 

While conversions are what you want, you can’t expect that without creating good content. The right content and the influencer that actually fits well with that content make the engagement rate you need to be successful with the campaign.

 

Not Calculating and Keeping Track of Your ROI

what is return on investment

Return of investment can be tracked and should be during the entire campaign and from the very start. While it is not as easy to determine, like regular social media ads or other similar online marketing, it can be done.

Focusing Only on Vanity Metrics

 

When you only think about how many people are following someone rather than their level of engagement, it’s easy to get tricked into working with them without realizing it. Pay close attention to all the metrics that matter.

 

Ignoring Federal Trade Commission Guidelines

 

Ignoring the law is not the best way to ensure that you get what you want. Familiarize yourself with these guidelines and stick to them no matter what you feel about them.

 

There are legal requirements to follow before you can safely post influencer content. First, you must legally disclose whether or not a post is sponsored, for example, and whether or not links are monetized in order to keep consumers aware.

 

Ensure you read the information provided by the FTC guidelines and get to know them so that you don’t make these types of legal mistakes. Otherwise, working with influencers is a very profitable joy that you won’t regret doing.

 

 

 

Four Influencer Marketing Myths Destroying Your Results

If you’ve been worried up until now about getting involved with influencer marketing, let me reassure you. There is no reason you can’t incorporate influencer marketing into your overall marketing plan regardless of your reach or budget.

 

Here are four influencer marketing myths stalling your results and hindering your ability to run and create a powerful influencer campaign:

 

You Must Have a Large Budget to Be Successful

Why Influencer Marketing Works

Unless you want to work with a mega influencer, you don’t need a large budget to get started or see results. A big budget doesn’t necessarily correlate to a successful influencer campaign. Choosing the right influencer with your specific and targeted goals in mind does.

 

Nano and Micro-Influencers Don’t Bring Conversions

 

Actually, nano and micro-influencers often have higher engagement rates. Virtually 22% higher than mega and macro-influencers. You may generate better results using smaller influencers than large ones.

 

High Popularity Means Instant Exposure and Success

 

The size of an influencer audience does not instantly equal success. Using audience size as your only or main factor to contract them is a major mistake. You should never discount influencers with lower audience totals as they can have a higher engagement rate than those with millions of followers. An audience can be bought, but engagement, the metric that matters most to your return on investment, is harder to fake.

 

Reach is More Important Than Relevant or Quality Content Creation

 

You must have relevant and quality content together to run a successful campaign. Again, just because an influencer has a high audience does not mean you will gain the same amount of reach.

 

Influencers that make the best impact create content their audience needs and wants. Meaning who they partner with should always be relevant, or they will likely ignore it. Their audience could also feel deceived or feel the partnership is ingenuine, further hurting your results.

Seven Influencer Marketing Campaign Types to Know About

When it comes to influencer campaigns, there are several types that you need to know about. Most people do a combination of these in order to help get the word out about their products and services. Mix and match as needed to develop a fun and effective influencer marketing campaign that works for your needs and the influencer’s needs.

 

The following are seven popular influencer marketing campaign types to learn:

 

  • Sponsored Content – With sponsored content, you simply pay the influencer to create a post, a video, or both that works to promote your product or service. The influencer will reveal to your audience up front that it’s a sponsored post. Depending on the rest of the deal, you can get a sponsored post starting at about 50 bucks and on up.

 

  • Reviews – One way to have an influencer recommend your product is by asking them to do an honest assessment of it. At the same time, they will provide an honest review. You usually pay a set fee for the review and offer a percentage of sales for their unique link.

 

  • Giveaways – You can also give the influencer a free product to give away to their audience as a way to boost your own sales. Usually, they’ll provide a review plus do the giveaway and have a link to those who want to buy.

 

  • Guest Blogs or Collaborations – Working with several influencers or doing a guest blog on an influencer’s website or channel, if you’re also a vlogger or blogger, is also a great way to use an influencer’s audience versa.

 

  • Platform Takeovers – Some people give the influencer the ability to take over their own platform to get the word out.

 

  • Product Seeding – Having an influencer simply wear your t-shirt, use your product, or otherwise show themselves using it without talking about it is product seeding. Again, you’re most familiar with this happening in tv shows.

The Keys to A Successful Influencer Marketing Budget

  • Ambassadors and Affiliates – Working with influencers as ambassadors and affiliates is a great way to work with them, too, because you won’t have to pay them until they make a sale with this method.

 

There are a variety of types of influencer marketing campaigns. The above are some ideas to try for helping you get the word out about your products and services.

Define Your Influencer Marketing Goals

 

A successful and sustainable influencer marketing campaign requires a plan to maintain focus and direction and identifying your goals. This means before you make any content and before you determine your campaign type and find your influencers.

 

If you do these steps before identifying your goals and setting proper key performance metrics, you are less likely to see appropriate returns. This is because the content and influencer you pick more than likely won’t correlate. Thus, wasting your time and other valuable resources required to run a positively functioning campaign.

 

Each goal you set will require a different type of influencer, budget, and resource needs and for you to produce a set of relevant and unique content. You can’t just use any influencer and throw out poor content and think it will work. Over time this will cause more work, confusion, and eat up at your profits and other resources.

 

  • Brand Awareness and Reputation – Your customers need to notice you several times before they feel safe enough to spend money. The more touchpoints you create using your content, the more notice you will get. Running a social media influencer campaign can make all the difference for your business.

 

  • Increased Sales and Leads – Another goal you can have with your influencer campaign is to make more sales. One way to do that is to use the campaign to build your e-mail list. One tactic is to offer the influencer a freebie to give away that only requires their audience to sign up for a newsletter. This act alone will increase sales today and tomorrow.

 

  • Higher Engagement Rate – Another goal is to increase your engagement rate. When you have more engagement and communication that is two-way with your audience, they get to know you better, and you get to know them better. When this happens, they will be more likely to accept your offers because your offers will be more likely relevant to them.

 

  • More Followers or Traffic – If you want more followers, more leads, more anything, you need more traffic. One type of influencer campaign you can do is designed to bring traffic to your site so that they see what you have to offer. Another option is to get them to another social media account instead, but it’s typically best to push traffic to your website.

 

  • Product Launches and Promotions – Using influencers to promote your next product launch or your sale on your products is a no-brainer. Influencers love to help people announce a new product to their customers because it makes them seem like VIPs.

Analyzing Business Models to See What’s Best for You

Remember when you create your influencer marketing goals not to skimp on your goal-setting process. Instead, use the SMART goal-setting process to ensure that your goal is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Then, you’ll never regret planning and implementing an influencer campaign that you’ve seriously planned out because you’re more likely to be successful and reach your objectives.

Putting It All Together And Developing A Routine That Will Keep You On Track

Over the course of the past six blog posts, we’ve talked about the importance of consistency and how it can help you grow your traffic, your subscribers, your customers, your product catalogue, and most importantly your income. Now it’s time to bring it all together and create a daily, weekly, and monthly routine that will keep you on track to continue to grow your business.

 

Any online business can be broken down into three different areas that need your effort and attention. They are traffic, list, and offer. You need visitors to your website. Then you need to convert those visitors into subscribers. Finally, you need to make those subscribers an offer so you can make money. Keep this in mind as you build your routine.

 

Do something every single day to send more traffic your way. This could be content marketing. It could be social media. It could be tweaking your SEO. Or it could be paid ads. Start by making a master list of things you can do to get more traffic. Pick things you can quickly do and rotate through one or more of them on a daily basis. Things that take a bit longer should become part of your weekly and monthly routine. For example, you may choose to learn how to run Facebook ads this month as one of your bigger projects. The most important part is to do things consistently to drive more traffic to your website.

 

Next, think about what you can do to get more subscribers. Adding an opt-in box to your latest blog post is a quick task that could go on your daily to-do list. Setting up a new opt-in funnel with a fresh lead magnet may make a great weekly project. Writing a book to tap into a new market via Amazon would be more of a project that takes a month or more. Come up with a variety of different things you can try, tweak, and do more to grow your list consistently.

6 Things to Include on Your Freebie Opt-in Page

Last but not least, you’ve got to make an offer. This could be something evergreen like crafting a new autoresponder email for your flagship product. It could be a daily task of running and tweaking ads. Or it could be a free SEO and social media campaign that you work on for a few weeks. Make a list of what you can do to get your offers in front of fresh eyeballs and get to work. And don’t forget to set aside some time each week to work on the next paid product as well.

 

Keep chipping away and continuing to build and fine-tune your routine. Your consistent efforts will start to pay off and more importantly, they will begin to compound as you get more traffic, grow your list by leaps and bounds, and add more products each new customer may be interested in. Keep at it. Consistency is the key to long-term profit.

 

Set Up A Product Creation Schedule For Yourself And Your Team

Let’s talk about money. More importantly, let’s talk about how you profit from your online properties. You do it through ads, by making affiliate sales, or my personal favorite – by selling your own products. Those products are what we’ll be talking about today. More specifically, we’ll be discussing creating information products consistently. Why information products? Because you create them once and sell them again and again. No supply line, no storage, no overhead. When you make a sale, it’s almost pure profit.

 

I’m going to let you in on a secret it took me a while to discover when I first started out. It’s much easier to sell an existing customer a second product than it is to find a brand new customer. It’s even easier to sell them the third, fourth, fifth one. You get the idea. That’s because you’ve done all the hard work of earning this person’s trust already and if you’ve done your job right, the first thing they purchased from you is already helping them solve their problem. That’s what information products are all about. Solving a problem. To create that next product, look at where your customers are at and think about what they need to do next. What’s another problem they will face and how can you help them solve it.

 

For example, your first product may be an eBook or course on setting up a WordPress site. Next, your customers may need to learn about creating content that attracts the right type of reader. And then they need to learn about traffic, and list building, and effective social media strategies. Each one of these could be a new info product or new content for your paid membership site.

 

Once you have an idea of what types of products you want to create, it’s important to get them out consistently. You want to have a new product out there for your existing customers to buy. Of course, you’ll also attract new buyers along the way who will then not only buy the new thing you’ve come out with but hopefully also some of the other titles and courses you have out there.

 

Start with a list of products you want to create. Do your best to estimate how long it will take you to create the product and all the infrastructure that goes along with it like a sales page, a download page, autoresponders, and solo emails to promote it, a promotion schedule, etc. Make a list of everything you need to do before you can launch this new product. Then get to work. Chip away at it every day and continue to consistently work towards each of these new product launches, adjusting your timeframe as needed.

Outsourcing: The Key to Success for The Life Affirming Entrepreneur

In the beginning, it will probably be just you working on this product creation. Maybe you’re hiring out the graphics. Put that on the schedule and communicate with your graphic designer early to avoid bottlenecks. As time goes by, you may choose to outsource some of the product creation. Maybe you’re hiring an editor to proofread your work. Or a VA to help with the setup, infrastructure, and customer service. Eventually, you may even hire some writers to create these products for you. As your team expands, it’s even more important to have a schedule everyone works off to make sure these new products come out regularly.

 

 

Struggling With Social Media? A Calendar And System Can Help

Do you have a hard time with social media? Either you aren’t finding the time to get around to posting regularly and getting discouraged by a lack of results you’re getting. You know what I’m talking about. You aren’t getting a lot of new followers on your page on Facebook for example and when you post something only a small fraction of those people see the post. It can be discouraging and feel like you have to pay to play by buying ads if you want your content to be seen. Thankfully that’s not true. What is true however is that consistency can help you grow your reach on any social media platform. It can help you with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and anywhere else where your ideal customers choose to hang out.

 

This brings up an important point. Before you dive in and invest a lot of time and effort on every single platform, take a look around. Where are your people hanging out? What media does your tribe prefer? For example, if you’re running a recipe blog, you have to be on Pinterest, and depending on your particular niche, you may also want a Facebook presence, including a group, and possibly a YouTube channel. If you’re into sourdough, you’ve got to be on Instagram… Do your research and do your best to determine where you want to be before you get started.

 

Once you have that figured it, it’s time to come up with a posting schedule. Remember, consistency is key. You’re better off doing fewer posts and shares more regularly than overdoing it and burning out. Start with a conservative number that you’re comfortable with across all platforms and write it down. For example, you may choose to do 5 tweets per week, 10 pins, 3 Facebook posts, one Facebook Live video, and a new YouTube video every other week.

 

Once you have your schedule, it’s time to schedule the actual content using a calendar. You can use Google Calendar or an old-fashioned paper one. The key is being able to stay organized and having your social media goals in writing to ensure it gets done and posted regularly. How far out should you schedule? That’s up to you. If you like to plan in big batches every few months, go for it. If you prefer to be more spontaneous, do it once a week. Play around with different time frames and see what works best for you. When you know what you’ll be posting about and have the text and images ready ahead of time, it’s quick and easy to keep up with social media.

 

To save even more time and make social media content more hands-off, take a look at some of the scheduling tools available. I like Hootsuite, MeetEdgar, PostPlanner, and Tailwind (for Pinterest). Use them to schedule and loop posts that will go out without you having to log into your social media profiles every single day.  Instead, you can set aside time once every couple of weeks to do the bulk of your work. Then check-in from your phone throughout the week to respond to comments etc. Getting organized and figuring out a system that works for you can be such a game-changer when it comes to being consistent on social media and growing an engaged following. When you have those main posts going out on schedule, you can then pop in and interact & post in real-time as and when time allows.

 

Tools and Tips to Help You Automate Social Media Marketing

Keep Readers And Search Engines Happy By Publishing Content Consistently

One area where consistency will start to pay off quickly is when it comes to your website or blog. Putting out fresh content regularly is great for both your readers and search engines. Both will reward you for your hard work in their own ways. Let’s take a look.

 

Let’s start with the golden grail of web development. Free search engine traffic. We all want Google to send us as many new potential customers as possible, right?  They in turn want to send the freshest and most up-to-date information to their customers. Who are their customers? People who search for something via their search engine, of course. And it’s the search engine company’s job to ensure they deliver the best possible result. What does that have to do with you and consistency? Great question!

 

When you update your site regularly, you’re showing the search engines that you are up to date and relevant. This isn’t an article or blog post on a site that’s been sitting there for ten years and could be outdated. This is something you’re actively working on and the search engines will reward you by giving you higher priority over dormant sites. Of course, there are many other factors that go into ranking, but the easiest thing you can do to improve your SEO is to create content consistently.

 

Just as important is nourishing the relationship you have with these readers. Think back on the last time you’ve landed on a new blog or website through a Google search. Assuming the content was up to snuff, you appreciated the information, but you were probably a long way off from considering buying from this site or even giving them your email address. But if you were curious enough to browse around, you may have become interested enough to bookmark the site, or at the very least have it on your radar when you come across it again later. By the way, making sure that happens is becoming easier with targeted advertising like FB ads for example. But that’s outside the scope of this post.

 

When you update your site regularly, you’re training your website visitors to come back for more. They’ll get in the habit of visiting and reading often. Of course, that’s not going to happen with every single person who comes across your site, and that’s okay. You want your ideal target audience, the people who are really interested in what you have to share. You’ll get their attention by publishing regularly and as they read and engage with you on your blog, they’ll move closer to becoming a subscriber and then a customer.

10 Content Marketing Tips for Email Marketing Success

Of course, as an added bonus all this content you’re adding regularly is out there attracting new people through search engines, social media, and other people sharing links to your valuable content. That’s why you want to publish consistently to continue to grow.

 

Invest a Percentage of Your Income for Your Future

As you work on your daily habits that help safeguard your future, one of the daily habits that will pay off the most is learning to save and invest a percentage of your income for your future by habit. It’s hard to save money for the future if you’re not able to really think about the future much, but there is no willpower needed if you just think about what you’re doing today, and keep doing it as a matter of course, you’ll end up benefiting exponentially.

 

  • Determine Your Priorities – When you know what your priorities are today and into the future, through your life, it’s going to be much easier seeing your daily spending and savings goals.

Better Goal Setting Tips for Maximum Productivity

  • Automate Investing and Saving – Once you have set up your goals, you can automate most of the process by having a percentage of your paycheck go directly to savings and investment accounts. If it’s never there to spend, you will be more likely to save it.

 

  • Avoid Consumer Debt – When you are setting up your daily habits, you know that avoiding consumer debt is an imperative for anyone who really wants to have a safe and stable future. Therefore, you don’t buy things without a daily plan for saving and spending.

 

  • Borrow Money Like Rich People Do – When and if you borrow money, only borrow it when you really don’t need it, and the interest rate is super low. If the rate is lower than what you can earn on your money, borrowing is smart. For example, if you qualify for a zero-interest car loan, why wouldn’t you?

 

  • Plan For Big Expenses – When you habituate your spending and saving, you will always plan for big expenses (and really all expenses) so that you’re never caught off guard. You will know that at this particular time in the future, you’re going to buy a thing, and you know how much you need to be saving daily to ensure it happens.

 

  • Plan for Emergencies – Even though it seems impossible, you can plan for potential emergencies, making them less tragic. In everyone’s life, they have things happen. People get sick. People get hurt. People lose their jobs. People even die. Plan for at least one emergency by saving six to eight months of living expenses in a liquid account.

 

  • Save All Windfalls – During a lifetime, you’re going to get monetary windfalls once in a blue moon for birthdays, inheritances, or bonuses and raises at work arrange for every single one to be saved or invested without even giving it a thought.

 

  • Take a Cooking Class – Most people waste money by eating out at restaurants and not even good ones. Decide to learn how to cook so that you can make good quality food at home.

 

  • Buy Experiences Not Stuff – When you do plan expenses, consider having more experiences and less stuff. When you spend money on an adventure, you always learn something that gives you value far beyond what you buy.

 

  • Track Your Efforts – Whatever you track and pay attention to is what will grow. Track your savings efforts by checking up on your accounts at least quarterly. This is important when you’re doing automatic deposits just to make sure it’s all working as planned.

 

When you start thinking of the daily habits you have as good things that automatically take care of your future, each day becomes a no-brainer. You just save money just because that’s what you do and not something difficult to do.

 

It’s part of your priorities and a driving force for your lifestyle, and that’s what you set up to be important. Do you see a method to the madness now? Set your goals, schedule the actions you need to take to reach your goals, and then simply live your life doing a little bit each day, and one day you’ll arrive in the future automatically, and all will be well.

 

Learn to Laugh More Often

Sometimes you can make yourself feel happier and more successful by simply seeking out more laughter. A daily habit that will pay off big time is simply not taking life or yourself too seriously while finding ways to laugh about funny things even if they’re hard.

 

Developing the habit of laughter simply requires that you give yourself permission to laugh and let go and seek out more humor. Let’s look at several ways you can bring more laughter into your life.

 

  • Spend Time with Funny People – When you really want to feel light, there are likely people in your life that you can make sure you spend time with. When you hang out with funny people, it will rub off on you.

 

  • Try New Experiences Often – One way to bring laughter back into your life is to keep trying new things. When you open your life and mind to new experiences, you also open yourself up to funny things happening to you that are out of the norm of what might happen if you just do the same thing day in and day out.

Tips to Help You Practice Positive Thinking

  • Watch Your Favorite Funny Go to Sitcom or Movie – Sometimes, you have to pull out the big guns and watch a rerun of something that made you laugh when times were good. Bringing laughter back into your life in any way you can is a healthy habit that pays off for years to come.

 

  • See The Situation from a New Perspective – Everyone sees things from their own perspective and information bubble when you realize that you can become more like a child or a baby or a first-time parent by opening up your world to new ideas and perspectives.

 

  • Go to a Comedy Club Show – Choose the type of humor you like but burst through your comfort zone and go to a comedy show near you. You may not even realize that people still do comedy shows at clubs, and you don’t even have to put up with smoking nowadays if you don’t want to.

 

  • Understand Human Nature – When you know how humans really behave, on average, it’s a lot easier to see what is happening to you through the eyes of experience. When you understand that this is just how things are, it is way funnier than when you think it’s only happening to you.

 

The great thing about bringing more laughter into your life is that it pays off in numerous ways. It will lower the stress you’re experiencing, which will lessen your chances of experiencing stress-related diseases like obesity that lead to serious cardiovascular disease. Not only that, but it’s like you’re also doing a ton of sit-ups to your stomach muscles. It’s a way to get in shape that doesn’t feel like work at all.