The Biggest Mistakes You’re Making with Influencer Marketing and How to Fix It

Almost anyone can be an influencer. Whether you’re a professional athlete, famous celebrity, social media guru, blogger or YouTube star, it’s possible to become an expert in your field, educate the world with your knowledge and skills, and land a career as an influencer. Plus, if you’re really good at your job, you’ll have marketers flocking to you left and right for exposure, which is exactly where influencer marketing comes into play.

Influencer marketing is an effective way for businesses to enter the social sphere through the help of an expert and boost engagement to their brand. When you have a niche brand, sometimes it’s hard to build your audience and let people know you exist. *Influencer marketing enter stage right.*

“59% of brands said their influencer marketing budgets will increase this year.” – EConsultancy

It’s great news that more businesses are realizing the power of influencer marketing and setting a budget for it, but if you’re doing it all wrong from the start then it’s completely pointless. Wasting time and budget on strategies that aren’t working will cost you conversions and hurt your business in the long run. If you’re executing an influencer marketing campaign and not seeing a positive ROI, then you’re most likely making these big mistakes:

1. You Don’t Have Your Own Goals Established: No Strategy

You want to reach out to influencers but you lack a strategic game plan. Like ALL marketing campaigns, your goals and expectations need to be laid out beforehand. How much budget are you willing to put toward an influencer marketing campaign? Is the goal of the campaign to gain more followers or drive more conversions? How long do you want the campaign to last? Asking yourself these questions prior to reaching out to a social media influencer is key, so that you’re both on the same page and not wasting each other’s time.

2. You’re Not Doing Your Research: Choosing the Wrong Influencers

Just because you find a writer or YouTuber with a large following doesn’t mean you should immediately reach out to them. Sure, it’s super impressive that they’ve gained a reputation with their audience but are they relevant to your industry at all? Too many times do businesses jump at the first sight of followers and base their search on that alone. In order to really succeed at influencer marketing, you need to look for influencers in your industry. Stop focusing on the numbers so much and start searching for influencers that will best represent your brand.

3. Your Influencer Marketing Pitch Is Poor: Bad Communication

Writing up a 30 second e-mail asking if an influencer will promote your product or service will get you nowhere, plain and simple. You need to put love and personality into your pitch, which means that every sentence needs to have a purpose. Your subject line is probably the most important piece of the influencer marketing outreach, since it’s the first thing they see when they open their e-mail. Try to keep it short and to the point, but also catchy. Basically, urge them to want to open the e-mail without using desperateness and spammy trigger words. Don’t use convoluted sentences, keep it conversational but also strategic, and use their name!

4. You’re Not Building Relationships with Influencers: Buying Likes Is the Only Thing on Your Mind

Your main goal shouldn’t be to write an influencer a check for 100,000+ followers and then never talk to them again. With influencer marketing, this is your chance to strategize, connect and engage with professionals in your industry (so take full advantage of that!). Follow their social channels and show support through participation. This means staying up-to-date on what they share regarding your brand, liking and commenting on posts and even re-sharing posts.

Did you catch your business making any of these influencer marketing mistakes? Contact our digital marketing department to secure a strategy for reaching out to influencers!