You’ve seen reports about how influencer marketing is “the next big thing.” You’ve read articles and case studies talking about how effective the channel has been for brands. Yet you’re unable to see why influencer marketing is such a huge trend because you tried it and you failed.
Did you ever wonder what you did wrong? Working with influencers can be challenging especially if you’re new to it. In fact, even the most seasoned marketers make influencer marketing mistakes that have affected their campaigns.
The good news is that there’s always room for improvement. Take a look at the following possible reasons why your influencer marketing campaign failed and find out what you should avoid in the future:
#1. You didn’t work with a relevant influencer
One of the most important principles of influencer marketing is to work with the right influencers. When you find influencers who are relevant to your brand and product to build a connection with them, you’re halfway there on the path to influencer marketing success. On the other hand, choosing the wrong influencer can land you in trouble and may even affect your brand reputation.
See for example how EA’s attempt to reach out to Breaking Benjamin’s Benjamin Burnley failed miserably. The gaming company wanted to promote their Star Wars: Battlefront game with the help of influencers and reached out to a number of celebrities including Anna Kendrick. When they sent their new game to Burnley, he declined their offer and opted to break the game and post the image on Instagram, where the musician has more than 90,000 followers.
However, EA still managed to be at the top of the best-selling games list in the U.K. At the same time, it’s important to note that EA is a big name in the industry and this minor setback didn’t hurt their reputation too much. For a smaller company, a backfired influencer outreach attempt could significantly damage brand reputation and sales.
#2. You only focused on top influencers
Yes, top-ranking influencers have a massive following. They will naturally be your top choice when it comes to influencer marketing campaigns. But you should also note that the larger following an influencer has, the less likely they are to engage with their followers. Lower engagement rate isn’t exactly ideal for encouraging an audience to purchase something.
A Markerly study found that those with fewer than 1,000 followers were able to generate comments approximate 0.5% of the time. Influencers with more than 10 million followers, on the other hand, were able to generate comments only 0.04% of the time. This is a massive difference proving how the size of influencers really matters but not in the way you would think.
The Markerly team recommends targeting influencers who have somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 followers, so you have a good balance of reach and engagement. While these influencers still have significant reach, they’re also able to drive engagement effectively. A previous Huffington Post article also talked about how these “micro-influencers” have a tendency to generate more genuine and relatable content for their audience.
Take a look at how luxury watch brand Daniel Wellington partners with micro-influencers like Paulina of Deer Home, a teacher and blogger. The influencer has somewhere over 50,000 followers and is able to generate thousands of lines for her posts, which comprise of intricately-arranged sets and clean, dreamy images. As you can see in the screenshot below, the influencer also promotes a discount code unique to her Instagram handle, encouraging her followers to go purchase the Daniel Wellington watches before the discount validity is over.
#3. You didn’t build a connection with influencers
The whole point of influencer marketing isn’t just to increase brand exposure but to build trust among a new audience. This makes it crucial for you to build a genuine connection with your influencers, so their posts and content promote your brand genuinely. Consumers can easily sense promotions that are too staged, which can cause nothing but harm to your brand name. For your partnership to come off as authentic in front of an audience, it actually needs to be authentic.
There are a number of ways to build a genuine connection with influencers. Right from the start, you will need to approach them in a straightforward manner instead of having a hidden agenda. Your initial goal should be to get them to truly like you and not just do the promotion for the sake of incentives.
An excellent way to build and showcase an authentic partnership with influencers is by getting them involved in the creation process. Maybe you could have them design a capsule collection to express their creativity. You could have them come up with exclusive designs for product boxes. The possibilities are endless; you just have to think of something that will get the influencer actively engaged in promoting your product.
Black Milk Clothing partnered with grunge artist Lora Zombie, who has more than 300,000 followers on Facebook to create a collection based on a few pieces of the artist’s work. The artist then promoted the collaboration on her Facebook page, which generated more than 4,000 likes. As you can see in the screenshot below, fans were excited to hear the news and some even proceeded to immediately buy some of the products for themselves.
Bottom Line
There you have it; three of the possible reasons why your influencer marketing campaign didn’t pan out as you’d expected. Make it a point to avoid these mistakes while making the most of the ideas from the given examples. Ever made a mistake with influencer marketing? Got any questions about influencer marketing success? Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.