Influencers have a unique role to play in your marketing efforts. To collaborate effectively and create campaigns that connect with your target audience, you must plan strategically, find and vet the right influencers, provide content guidance, and track your results. Many components are involved in a successful campaign, and many missteps can happen. To help avoid influencer marketing mistakes, here’s a look at some of the most common pitfalls that brand marketers should avoid:
Common influencer marketing mistakes to avoid
Not identifying goals and KPIs
Before you search for influencers or research content ideas, think about what you’d like your campaign to accomplish. Your campaign needs a specific goal. Are you trying to drive brand awareness? Boost social engagement? Increase sales? Set your goal, but don’t stop there. Make a plan to measure it. Which influencer marketing KPIs will you monitor to gauge success?
If you’d like to increase brand awareness, for example, you could watch audience growth, reach, impressions, hashtag use, and brand mentions.
Failing to use an influencer marketing platform to ease influencer discovery
Picking the right influencer is one of the most important choices you’ll make during the campaign. You need an influencer that loves your brand and shares your target audience, someone with content creation experience, a good reputation, and values that match your company.
You can search for “fashion influencers” on Google or YouTube, sift through the results, and review social profiles, but there’s an easier way. Use an influencer marketing platform like IZEA Marketplace to search and filter an extensive database of creators.
Dismissing nano- and micro-influencers
If you’re new to influencer marketing, you might assume that the success of a campaign is tied to a follower’s audience size. Research shows that’s not the case.
Nano-influencers (1K-10K followers) and micro-influencers (10K-50K) tend to have stronger engagement rates than mega-influencers. As a result, brands plan to increase spending with smaller creators. By 2024, 43% of influencer marketing budgets will go to nano- and micro-influencers, according to Insider Intelligence.
Lacking a disclosure policy for both relationship transparency and AI usage
Asking an influencer to endorse your product is an authentic way to promote your brand. However, authenticity — and trust — quickly erode when creators fail to disclose their relationship with your company.
Ensure you have a disclosure policy in place, not just because it’s the right thing to do but because the Federal Trade Commission requires it. Proper disclosure should:
- Use terms like ad, advertisement, endorsement, or sponsored
- Be listed in a prominent place, not hidden among hashtags or linked pages.
- Make the relationship between an influencer and a brand transparent.
You should also consider a disclosure policy if you use AI-generated content in your campaign. Research shows people don’t mind seeing AI-generated content, but they want to know it is computer-generated. Be sure to disclose this information or use an influencer marketing platform with a disclosure tool for generative AI content.
Only focusing on social media
When you think of influencer marketing, you probably imagine visual product endorsements on Instagram or product reviews on YouTube. While social media is certainly an effective way to leverage influencers, don’t overlook additional outreach opportunities.
You could ask an influencer to do a product review on TikTok and host an in-person workshop at a local venue, for example, or have a creator publish an Instagram Story and a blog.
While social media will likely play a role in your influencer campaign, consider adding other elements to enhance your reach and engagement.
Trying to control rather than guide influencer content
An influencer marketing campaign is a collaboration between a creator and the brand’s marketing team. While it might be tempting, brand marketers can’t control the content creation process. Instead, your team should be guided by way of an influencer marketing brief, which should include:
- Brand and product overview
- Campaign review
- Content type, due dates, hashtags, review process, disclosure policies
- Call to action
- Special requests
- Brand-specific hashtags or the use of a company motto
- Inspirational content to draw from
You can set up an approval process that gives your brand a chance to review the content before it’s published, but the most engaging content usually stems from an influencer’s creative freedom.
To help, we have influencer contract templates in IZEA Flex, our influencer marketing platform.
Not compensating creators fairly
Some brands practice product seeding, where influencers receive a free product in exchange for an endorsement on social media. However, you shouldn’t assume that all influencers are willing to take a product as their sole compensation.
How much do influencers charge? As you’d expect, certain factors like audience size, experience, and the type of content you request, can play a role in a creator’s rates. However, IZEA’s State of Influencer Earnings provides insight.
Here’s a look at the average cost of content by platform. A Facebook post, for example, usually costs around $642, while Twitch content can cost upwards of $4,373.
Be prepared to discuss compensation when you reach out to influencers.
Whether your brand is new to influencer marketing or has years of experience, it’s always a good idea to review and improve your practices to make sure each collaboration is a success.
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