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.