Having a strong online presence is very important for startups. Through digital marketing and a strong online presence, you can market your products and services to a highly targeted audience without spending a fortune in the process. Thanks to the many digital marketing instruments available today, expanding the reach of your online presence, particularly your social media accounts, is easy to do.
Influencer marketing is a great way to reach a new audience through the social media pages of key influencers. It is an effective digital marketing instrument to use, but it is not without its challenges. For a truly effective influencer marketing campaign, here are the common mistakes you cannot afford to make.
Relying on Followers Count
Many brands rely on the number of followers that influencers have when choosing which influencers to work with. This may seem like a great idea at first; more followers = reach and more exposure for the brand, right? Well, not really. Unfortunately, there are more layers to dig into when choosing influencers.
Influencers who have been on the platform for a long time, for instance, may have more dormant followers than new influencers. Two influencers can have 20k followers each and still produce different exposure entirely.
On top of that, the follower count doesn’t tell the whole story. User engagement is far more important when doing influencer marketing. What’s the point of having an ad seen by 10,000 people when you don’t get any response from those 10,000 at all? Add these dimensions to your research, choose influencers correctly, and you’ll have a much more successful influencer marketing campaign.
Pay and Post
Yes, many influencers offer paid posts. You provide them with a brief, agree to a particular fee, and they will post about your products or services to their followers. You can approach influencer marketing this way with the help of platforms designed to work as a marketplace for influencers, so the whole process is easier too.
This is the easy way of doing influencer marketing, but it is certainly not the best way to go. You want to build genuine relationships with the influencers in your industry or those who are aligned with your startup. A long-term relationship will lead to more genuine content and better audience building in the long run as well.
Grab the Audience
The last mistake you absolutely need to avoid is not taking the audience into consideration. Before moving forward with your influencer marketing campaign, you have to be certain that the audience you’re targeting is the right audience segment for your products or brand.
Not all influencers, even those with similar topics, have similar audience segments. Two beauty influencers can target different age groups or demographics, which means they will have different types of followers.
Take the audience into consideration when working with the influencers and developing your marketing content. Provide a clear brief, but let the influencers add their own touches to the posts. The more natural the posts are, the bigger the audience (and leads) you will get in return. This is how you achieve influencer marketing success.
