Anna is the Head of Marketing and PR at HypeAuditor, the most accurate and in-depth Instagram and YouTube analytics tool on the market. She is passionate about influencer marketing and Instagram analytics.
One thing is for sure, influencer marketing is one of the biggest marketing trends in 2018. If you’re a marketer planning to use influencer marketing, here are 7 common influencer marketing mistakes brands often make. Learn how to avoid making the same.
#1 You didn’t set the goals and KPI
Too often marketers engage with influencers without defining what the end goal is. You have to understand what your short and long-term objectives are to ensure your influencer marketing campaign is delivering value to your brand.
The most common influencer marketing campaign goals are:
- Brand awareness
- Brand reputation
- Sales
- Attracting new target market
- Increasing followers number
- Customer retention
- Product launch coverage
Setting out KPIs helps you to understand a campaign’s ROI and create benchmarks for future campaigns.
#2 You influencer is not relevant
Look at how aligned an influencer’s content is with your messaging. A relevant influencer has expertise and subject-matter credibility, as well as developed, solid relationships with their followers.
For instance, it’s strange to advertise hair vitamins with an influencer who always wears wigs.
#3 Influencer’s audience live outside your target market
Imagine that you sell a product only for the US market and you find a perfect creator from Miami.
You pay for sponsored posts but get no sales. Want to know why?
Influencer’s followers live in Brazil and Argentina and only 8% of them live in the US.
#4 Influencer’s audience is not your target audience
If you sell a product for women it’s obvious that you should work with influencers who have a female audience. But sometimes even beauty influencers have a male core audience.
#5 Influencer’s followers are fake
The most common issue in influencer marketing is fake followers. The price for a sponsored post depends mostly on followers count. But now it’s so easy and cheap to buy any amount of followers.
#6 Post’s likes are not real
If you consider the engagement rate when choosing an influencer to work with, don’t think that you are protected from scam. Likes could be bought also.
Look at the Engagement section in HypeAuditor Instagram report and check if they have a lot of suspicious activity.
#7 And comments too
You often see comments like this:
Unfortunately, most of them are generated automatically by bots. To check, you should look at the comments section under an influencer’s posts.
Don’t spend your Influencer Marketing budget in vain. Be smart and check all the influencers you are going to work with HypeAuditor.