The way marketing is done today has changed drastically as gaining the trust of customers has become more and more difficult hence websites are improving their transparency of how they collect, handle and protect user data so that customers trust the brand and consider to engage. Similarly, people have stopped trusting advertisements released by the brands. Celebrities endorsing brands also is of no help today as people are aware of how this model works.
The new trend is influencer marketing which works in a very different way. Users trust genuine influencers and their opinions because they have grown their following by organic methods. Brands are associating with influencers to test and review their products so that it can reach the maximum number of users but as this field is relatively new, brands still tend to make a few mistakes that we have spoken about below;
1. The Influencer is Not Relevant to Your Brand:
The basic of influencer marketing is the influencer himself. You need to be careful while choosing one as not all the influencers who have a large following can help in increasing your conversions. A few factors you need to consider while selecting an influencer is the niche they are working on, their post engagement rate, quality of the content they create and whether their followers love them or troll them. I have seen many influencers having thousands of followings but hardly a few hundred engage with their post, choosing such an influencer is not going to help your product marketing. The number of followings is important but what is more important is the number of people really enjoying the work of the influencer.
2. Unclear Brand Objectives:
As a brand, you need to be clear about your objectives and make sure that the influencer marketing campaign is aligned with your brand objectives or else the marketing efforts would flush down the drain.
3. Quality of Content Created is Sub-Par Due to Time Limitations:
Influencers are always marketing brands hence they are under constant pressure and get less time to post which can lead to sub-par posts which may not really influence the audience. Make sure to give the influencers enough time to come up with good content as only quality content will bring in conversions.
4. Influencer Content Looks Like an Ad:
The reason why you are paying an influencer to market for your brand is that people trust them as their content do not resemble like ads but seems like a more genuine view of your brand. If the content looks more like an advertisement, then users will not be interested as they lose trust in the influencer and their advocacy. Genuine brand review would go a long way to engage the audience.
5. Bad Communication Through the Posts:
Planning a campaign with an influencer is great but work on the communication strategy so that your message reaches the readers. Most brands do everything right but fail when it comes to communicating the right way with customers. Make sure your collaboration with the influencer yields a good campaign with the right communication strategy.
6. Focusing on Insignificant Metrics:
While collaborating with influencers, make sure to focus on important metrics such as for YouTube, check the number of video views rather than followers, similarly on Instagram see the engagement rate per post rather than the number of followers.
In Conclusion:
As we are aware, that trends keep changing and you need to be up to date with new trends. Influencer marketing is going to work its charm only until these influencers start endorsing products just for the sake of money.
