by Google
Have you collaborated with an influencer in the past, but it didn't bring you the expected results? You may have made one or more mistakes. Based on our many years of experience in influencer marketing, we decided to list the most common mistakes that we regularly see. If collaborations with public figures are created correctly, they can bring great results and many benefits for the brand.
COLLABORATING WITH AN INFLUENCER WITH A GENERAL AUDIENCE
In influencer marketing, it is particularly important to choose the right personality for your campaign. In order for the campaign to work properly, it is necessary that your target group overlaps with the influencer's audience as much as possible, otherwise you will be targeting marketing communication at the wrong people who are not interested in your product or service.
The best way to achieve this is to focus on influencers who have a very specific audience within a single topic, rather than influencers who communicate very generally on their profiles. It has been proven that influencers who build their communities within a specific “bubble” have higher audience engagement than those who publish posts to a more general audience. Influencers who have a specific topic, industry or focus are considered specialized influencers.
What does this mean? If you are trying to increase the visibility and sales of your bookstore by establishing a collaboration, an influencer whose work is based on book reviews or is an avid reader and often presents or recommends book publications on their profile will be the ideal choice for you. This means that, like the influencer, their audience is also made up of active readers and book lovers. These people are very relevant to your business and many of them can be considered potential customers. Of course, there are exceptions to this as well. It really depends on the type of audience and the book you are interested in promoting. If you are interested in increasing sales of mainstream publications, it is okay to establish cooperation with mainstream influencers as well. There are many variables to be aware of in this area, so it is often better to contact an influencer marketing expert.
INFLUENCER CAMPAIGN WITHOUT MEASURABLE GOALS
This mistake is more common in small businesses that have minimal or no experience with influencer marketing. Cooperation is agreed without predetermined goals, and subsequently it is very difficult to evaluate whether it was a successful or unsuccessful advertisement. It is important to determine what the goal of the collaboration is and how we will measure its success. Are you interested in growing your fan base? Do you want to collect emails for newsletters or are you trying to support the sale of your products or services? Choose your main goal and choose how you will measure it. Only in this way can you get objective results that show you what worked and what didn’t.
LACK OF SPACE FOR CREATIVITY
It is natural that you want to engage in the creative process, but even in this case it is true – too much of anything is bad. Remember that influencers are freelance creators and are not used to strict assignments. Freedom is very important to them and they like to do things their own way. While leadership is important, it is also essential that you do not get caught up in micromanagement. Don’t try to control every little thing. Every influencer has their own unique way of communicating, thanks to which their audience follows and likes them. Therefore, if you create a script for an influencer from A to Z, where they will have almost no room for their own creativity, their audience will detect it and your campaign will lose authenticity and effectiveness.
FOLLOWERS ABOVE ALL
We believe you already know this, but just to be sure. The size of the audience does not necessarily mean a lot of influence. Many influencers still buy fake followers, learn how to detect them. Let go of the audience size and focus on the relationship with the fans.
INFLUENCERS ARE NOT DOOR-TO-DOOR SALESMEN
If you think that after the first post from an influencer, your sales will immediately and dramatically increase, you are wrong. There is a reason why it is called influencer marketing and not influencer sales.
Of course, marketing activities should bring new customers to your business and increase sales, but it is important to set realistic expectations. Influencers should be part of your marketing communication that supports sales, not the only tool for an instant increase in sales. For cooperation with influencers to work, you need a long-term strategy. And only when you stick to a properly chosen strategy for a long enough period of time can you expect to increase sales. Don't push influencers into the role of door-to-door salespeople, whose job is to force a product or service on people. Instead, authentically include them in your marketing strategy, gain new followers, work on brand credibility, and build regular customers.
APPLICATION USING GENERIC EMAILS
You're interested in starting a collaboration and so you send the same email to several influencers. We have to stop you here. When reaching out to famous personalities, it's important to realize that they are approached by several brands every day, from which they can choose. You need to get them interested in your offer, and you will hardly succeed in doing so if you address them via generic emails that they receive dozens of times a day. It can also happen that several influencers are represented by one agency, which can quickly reveal whether you are truly interested in working with one specific creator, or you are just spreading the net with copied offers and waiting for someone to catch on.
Do your own research on influencers and honestly choose only those who are the best fit for your brand, or leave it to us and we will take care of a super match. Thanks to this, you will not have to send a large number of emails and you can invest the saved time in creating a personalized address. Take the time to prepare an interesting offer, be personal, specific, show your human side, appreciate their work and avoid general phrases.
COLLABORATING FOR VISIBILITY
It’s 2021, there are several studies on the effectiveness of influencer marketing, its popularity is constantly growing, and more and more brands are using this approach in their marketing strategy. It’s time to treat influencers like professionals and evaluate them accordingly. Simply put, if you’re interested in working with professional-level personalities who will take your brand seriously, treat them like professionals.
Influencers can be parents, freelance artists, students, or small businesses, and these people have bills to pay, just like us. Just like when you order a graphic designer to create a poster for you and pay for his service, it is also necessary to reward an influencer. It is his work, to which he has dedicated his time, creativity and know-how.
For several years, we have been working with dozens of well-known influencers, with whom we create creative campaigns with excellent results, thanks to which we were able to present you with the 7 most common mistakes in influencer marketing. We believe that this article was helpful to you and if you are interested in cooperation, do not hesitate to contact us.
