Top Influencer Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

10 Content Marketing Tips for Email Marketing Success

As you get started engaging in influencer marketing, whether you are the influencer or hiring influencers, you want to avoid making mistakes. Remember that others have gone before you and succeeded. All you have to do is follow their path, and you’ll be successful too.

 

  • Focusing on Reach Over Impact – While you do want the influencers you choose to have an active and engaged audience, you don’t need them to have million-plus followers for the campaign to be effective. In fact, having a smaller audience can indicate a better return on investment due to the higher engagement smaller influencers enjoy.

 

  • Not Providing Influencers the Right Information – What information does the user really need to make a buying choice? Look at everything you do from the buyer’s perspective and where they are in the journey but, at the same time, consider the influencer and what info they need to make decisions about the direction of the content they produce.

 

  • Not Allowing the Influencer to Showcase Their Creativity – The worst thing you can do when you contract with an influencer is micromanaging them to the point that they cannot be creative. You do want to provide some guidelines of what to avoid, but you don’t need to tell them everything to do.

 

  • Not Being Product Focused – The product is what you want to promote, so if the influencers you choose don’t focus on the product and what it does for the viewer, it’ll be hard for the audience to make a buying choice.

 

  • Having Unrealistic Expectations – If you’ve never run an influencer campaign before keeping your expectations realistic by realistically looking at the numbers. Set your goals using the SMART goal technique so that your goals are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.

 

  • Choosing The Wrong Influencers – Don’t just pick anyone to promote your brand. Instead, pick someone who already fits your company brand in voice, personality, principles, morals, and values.

 

  • Rushing a Launch Campaign – Don’t just launch an influencer campaign without being ready. If it works and you get a lot of traffic from it, you need to be totally prepared for the impact on your business so you can serve your audience better.

 

  • Not Expanding Across Platforms – You want to be on all the platforms your audience is responsive to. You don’t have to personally have an account on these platforms to work with influencers successfully.

 

  • Not Following Up – When you work with an influencer, you always want to debrief when a campaign is over so you know what can be improved next time. In addition, if you gained new followers, you need to be prepared to communicate with them.

 

  • Not Serving Your New Customers Well – If an influencer sends new customers your way, you must serve them and take care of them well. No one wants to turn their customers over to someone who mistreats them.

 

As you go forward with your influencer marketing campaigns, keep these tips in mind. You want to be as authentic as possible while also serving your audience in new ways, and influencer marketing can help you achieve more faster than you may have ever experienced.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Six Steps to the Influencer Outreach Process

In order to find the perfect influencers for your campaigns, it’s important to go through an outreach process that ensures you find just the right people. After all, if you do this with a plan in mind and seriously check your information and data for accuracy, you can practically guarantee that you’ll be successful. Truly, you’re not even taking that much of a risk when you do this work to get it right.

 

Step #1: Create an Influencer List

Define Your Influencer Marketing Goals

Form a list of the influencers you would like to work with the most. The bigger the list at this point, the better. Shoot for locating at least 20 to 30 potential influencers per platform. Focus on one platform at a time to streamline this process.

 

Step #2: Review Their Profiles

 

Find the information required to make decisions before reaching out to the influencer. Find their social media handles and business credentials. Many influencers include links and special e-mails for business inquiries. Avoid using their personal e-mail or profile when contacting them. Instead, follow their accounts and actually view their profiles and content for a period of time before reaching out.

 

Step #3: Develop a Brief Project Goal

 

Determine why you want to work with an influencer at all. What is your goal? Do you want to boost traffic? If so, how is working with them going to do that? Do you want to make sales? How will this influencer help you make more sales? Figure out the mechanism to reach the goal you’ve set by setting SMART goals to ensure that you have a plan going forward.

 

Step #4: Pick Your Medium

 

You may need to be flexible and communicate with each influencer in the way that they desire to. For example, they may choose to use e-mail, direct message, management contact, video chat, phone call, mail merge apps, sponsored product packages, or something else. Typically, the influencer will have guidelines on their business page about what they need from you. If not, choose what you want to present to them and how.

 

Step #5: Create and Personalize Your Message

 

Be specific, clear, and direct about your goals, what your products or services are and how you’re going to work with them on this project if they choose to work with you. Always make sure that you include follow-up information and server times that will work for you to get the collaboration started faster. Be flexible but only within the guidelines you’ve already set for yourself and your campaign’s time limit and deadlines.

 

Step #6: Edit and Review

 

Always edit and review everything before sending it on to a potential influencer. The clearer you are, the easier it’s going to be to work together. You want to be professional as possible when you reach out to them. The higher quality your reach out is, the higher quality they’re going to expect from themselves as they create your campaign.

 

Once you reach out, make sure you record how and when you reached out to them so that you can follow up quickly when needed. The more records you keep, the easier it’s going to be each time you set up a campaign.