Why Some Influencer Marketing Campaigns Work and Others Don’t
Influencer marketing can be a powerful addition to your marketing strategy, but it can also be a good way to burn money if not done right!
Here’s what we have learnt over the years: why influencer marketing doesn’t always work!
1. You Didn’t Find the Right Influencers
You can’t randomly choose an influencer and allow them to market your products. To ensure that your brand is seen by people that need it, you’ve got to take the time to find influencers that are into your brand and understand what it’s about.
This boils down to your search for the right influencers. As you begin your search for influencers, you’ve got to know what you’re looking for, and to do this; you should create an influencer persona.
There’s no way to have 100% control over every move the influencer makes, but when you’re studying their social media profiles, you’ll get a general idea of what they’re about and if it’s a match for your brand.
While it can be easy to become fixated on choosing influencers with the most followers, you need to consider the content they post regularly. After reviewing their content, ask yourself if this is something your brand wants to be tied to?
One wrong move and marketing brands find themselves scrambling to repair their reputations. The influencer you choose can either make or break the effort your brand has put into marketing itself, which makes choosing the right influencer crucial.
2. Not Having Enough Room in the Budget
We’d love to say that influencers will market your products without expecting something in return, but that’s not true. People aren’t going to provide marketing for your business if there’s nothing in it for them.
Before you embark on your influencer marketing endeavor, your team must sit down to discuss if it can be covered by your budget. After determining the budget used for influencer advertisement, it’s time to meet with the potential influencer.
Keep in mind each influencer you encounter will have an ideal amount they wish to be paid for the work they’re going to partner with you to do. The thing to remember is the influencer is helping your brand get exposure, and that’s not going to happen if you don’t have the budget to do so.
One image here and there isn’t going to do much for you. Depending on the number of followers an influencer has, they’ll be looking to be paid a few thousand dollars to post and share across their social media platforms.
As of 2020, the amount that companies were planning to spend on influencer collaborations was a massive $8 billion, which is due to the ROI from such partnerships. While you can expect to spend a pretty penny for the time and help of the influencer, that’s nothing compared to the money that’s going back into your pocket.
3. Your Product Isn’t All That
Influencers can only do so much for your brand before your products have to face the music. Another huge reason why influencer marketing doesn’t work for every company that tries to use it is simply that their products suck.
Yes, you read that right; the product sucks. Influencers can be persuasive in getting their followers to purchase your products and services, but once they’ve done this, it’s time for your brand to put up a product that will do what it was marketed to do.
The last thing you want to do is hire influencers to market your product, and it does not work the way it was marketed to work. Not only does this ruin your reputation in your niche, but it also discredits the influencer and can affect their follower base negatively.
Before you move into the marketing phase, you must take the time to test your products and work out any issues they may have. If your products have already launched and customers find issues ensure you’ve got procedures in place that will allow them to have these problems remedied.
Another reason why influencer marketing might not work if you don’t have a great product because influencers will say no. As we mentioned briefly, influencers aren’t going to ruin the platform they’ve worked hard to build by promoting a product that doesn’t work.
They’d much rather keep their followers than risk it all and have to start again from the bottom. During the product creation phase, take your time and ensure you’ve created something that fills a consumer’s need.
By filling a need, you’re bound to see an increase in sales, as long as it works!
4. Your Theme is Basic
What’s the theme of the campaign you’re attempting to run? If you don’t know, chances are you’re going to run into significant problems once you begin to hire influencers to help you.
There’s nothing basic about being an influencer, and your marketing campaign has to go beyond selling a product. Your campaign theme needs to truly grab people’s attention and make them stop scrolling to find out more information.
The best way to ensure your campaign stands out from the rest is to do some research. Study the campaigns your competition has launched and make a note of both the positive and negative things they’re doing.
This data is crucial because you’re marketing to the same consumers; therefore, what your competition isn’t doing right can be influential in ensuring you don’t make the same mistakes with your campaign.
After you’ve taken some time to gather information about what does and doesn’t work for your target audience, get to work creating your campaign. For example, if your product can be used while on the go, your campaign should reflect this.
The influencer should be using your product in various settings to show its versatility to followers.
5. Micromanaging the Influencer
It can be challenging to let go of all the control you have or want regarding influencer marketing, but it must be done. Influencers are content creators, and they know what their followers want to see and hear.
If you find yourself micromanaging everything influencers do and post when they’re marketing for your brand, all you’re going to wind up with is an aggressive, in-your-face marketing attempt that won’t work.
People follow influencers because they’re attracted to their genuine nature. It’s about finding people you can relate to, almost like speaking to an old friend, except they have hundreds or even thousands of followers.
We understand you want everything done the way you want it to be done, but at the end of the day, influencers have more knowledge and understanding about social media than you do. After all, they spend most of their time in meetings planning out content and information to share with their followers.
It’s okay to provide influencers with a loose brief of what you’d like to see them posting, but ensure you’ve left enough room for them to create. People can tell when an influencer is saying something they believe in or pushing a product because they’re being paid to do so.
6. Your Creative Brief is Nonexistent
You’re probably wondering why we’re discussing a creative brief if one of the other downfalls when it comes to influencer marketing is micromanaging. Although it’s essential to give eth influencer creative freedom, you still want to provide structure.
In your creative brief, it’s essential you give an overview of your company and what you want to accomplish through this collaboration. After doing this, you should detail the message that the influencer conveys and the schedule by which they should post content.
Now it’s time to move into the most crucial aspect as far as the influencer is concerned, and that is the price they will be paid to market your products and services. It would help if you were clear, so there is no confusion in the future about the partnership.
Also, in your creative brief, list the ways you will go about paying the influencer, whether monetarily or by providing products in exchange for their services. Don’t forget to include a line about how the company will measure the marketing results based on the collaboration.
7. Forgetting Why You’re Launching this Campaign
It can be easy to forget the purpose of your campaign, especially if you’ve not taken the time to find the right influencer to work within the first place. Before you begin searching for influencers to collaborate with, you need to think about what they have to offer you in combination with their popularity.
Someone being popular doesn’t mean they can help market your products to people that want to buy them. Again, as we’ve mentioned collaborating with the wrong influencer will only cause you to waste money and time.
8. Taking the Easy Way
There are tactics that can be used to make any form of marketing easier, but shortcuts typically aren’t the way to do it. Doing things with the hope of getting quick results isn’t going to pay off in the long run.
The best influencer to partner with is someone who uses your products in their daily lives. This ensures that when they’re marketing your products, there’s a level of passion that you won’t get with someone that’s never purchased your products a day in their life.
However, if this is the route you choose to take, understand these are people that can be found in your communities. But, you will sacrifice the number of followers that an influencer has engaging in their daily content.
9. Stay Patient
Relationships take time to grow into long-term business partnerships. If you expect to have a lasting partnership with the influencers you collaborate with, you’ll need to have some patience.
Without patience, no trust will be gained, making the collaboration challenging and one that won’t pay off in the end. The downfall of many companies is not being patient and rushing things.
Doing this makes the influencer and others you work with uncomfortable, which will cause your partnership to end sooner rather than later.
10. Asking for a Lot
Asking for an influencer to go the extra mile to create content for your business might be going a step too far. In fact, as you collaborate with influencers, ensure you make things as easy as possible for them.
Everything from your pitch to your creative brief needs to be easy and stated in simple terms. If things sound too complicated, the chances of the influencer saying yes to working with you are significantly reduced.
If you ask the influencer to do too much work, they will not want to work with you.
Ask us how
Influencer marketing can be beneficial to your brand if done correctly. Above we’ve talked about a number of reasons why it doesn’t always work out even though companies have the best intentions.
These are all downfalls to this helpful marketing strategy, from not choosing the right influencers to having no wiggle room in the budget. If you’re still not sure how to make influencer marketing work for your brand contact Wear Cape.
Not only are we experts in influencers marketing we can also provide advice and help you get the international exposure your brand needs!
