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Did you know…

Influencer Marketing is now a $5-10 billion dollar industry. It’s massive, but you may still be scratching your head thinking, “What the heck is an influencer? What’s with all the hype, and does it actually work?”

An influencer is someone who has created a large following through their content creation. An influencer marketing campaign is a collaboration between said influencers and brands to try to help drive sales and improve brand awareness. 

According to the Commerce: 89% of marketers reported a positive return on investment from influencer marketing, however, there are a number of pitfalls you can stumble upon when launching your first influencer marketing campaign.

Today, I’m going to walk you through five tips to avoid the most common mistakes of influencer marketing. So, let’s dive in!

1. SELECT YOUR IDEAL INFLUENCER AUDIENCE

To start, you’ll need to identify the proper influencers to work with your brand. This is where I see a ton of brands falling short. You’ll want to make sure that the influencers you choose to work with actually align with your brand’s message.

Their followers should also be your target audience, and your products should align with the influencer’s overall persona online. This way, you can make sure it seems natural when they tell their followers about your products. For example, if you’re an e-cig company trying to work with a health and fitness influencer, it would seem disingenuous to ask them to post about your product. Their followers won’t buy into the fact that they’re using those products, and thus they won’t end up buying your products.  

(I like to create a list of 50-100 vetted influencers prior to step two.)


2. MAKE A SPLASH WITH YOUR OUTREACH

Once you’re confident with your influencer list, you’ll need to move on to outreach. Outreach is a huge opportunity for you to differentiate yourself as a brand. A lot of brands reach out to influencers with a super generic message, but I love to take the time to build relationships with the influencers that I want to work with. I think it’s a major differentiator and I’ve noticed that response rates skyrocket when you use that strategy.

3. NEGOTIATE, BUT DON’T BREAK THE BANK

The next step is negotiations. You want to make sure prior to reaching out to any influencers that you’ve decided if you’re going to do a “per trade basis” or if you have marketing dollars to put behind the influencer campaigns. Personally, I like to start on a per-trade basis so I can validate that there will be a positive ROI with my influencers. After that, I’m happy to put ad dollars behind these campaigns. Another mistake I see a lot of brands make during the negotiation phase is failing to set clear expectations and deadlines with influencers.

 You need to be extremely specific concerning what you expect and when you expect it by. Can they write their own captions? You may want to make sure that you have approval prior to posting to ensure that it’s on-brand. You want to be positive that all of the campaign details are crystal clear so that you’re happy with the end result, and the influencer is happy with the relationship that you’ve built.

4. EXECUTION

Next, we’re going to move on to execution. This is going to be something that you have to be really organized with, especially if you’re running multiple influencer marketing campaigns at the same time. I like to keep a Google Doc spreadsheet with the following details:

  • The influencer’s name.

  • Their address.

  • Their contact information.

  • The tracking number of the product that was shipped to them.

(I’ll share my spreadsheet template with you in the link below this video!)

I always follow up to make sure that the product(s) arrived when it was supposed to, and once I know that the influencer has received their products, I like to reiterate the terms and agreements we initially agreed on. I’ll then ensure that they are happy with the product(s), and that they are on schedule and ready to post. I also confirm that they will send me the caption and their photo prior to posting. Another thing a lot of brands miss the boat on is generating a unique URL for the influencer to use. Why is this necessary? So that you can track every single click that happens from each influencer. 

5. ANALYTICS: YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND

The fifth and final step is analytics. You’ll want to be crystal clear whether or not you’re receiving a positive ROI from each influencer. To do this, you’ll need to be tracking everything through links. (You’ll be tracking things like the number of clicks, engagement rate, etc.)

I like to use two apps for this:

  • The first app is called Bitly. It’s a free website where you can generate a unique URL.

  • The second app is called People Map. It will show the engagement rate on influencer’s posts, how many likes it got, and how many comments as well. This way, you can see overall how many followers came to your profile from each influencer’s posts.

I hope you found this blog to be helpful, and if you’re ready for your first influencer campaign, you can get started right away without logging hours upon hours to create influencer lists.

How, you may ask? By clicking the link below and downloading my list of 500 influencers that have already been categorized for you by industry!

https://www.lvsdm.com/influencer-marketing-500