With people regularly glued to their phones, marketers have huge opportunities to increase visibility. As social media increases in popularity, marketers must evolve and find new strategies to grab people’s attention. Influencer marketing is one such technique. Since influencer marketing now plays a large role in social buying trends, it can be useful to leverage this angle. Tap into influencer marketing trends to learn the best approach. That said, working with influencers can come with its own set of challenges.

Common Influencer Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

When done right, influencer marketing effectively reaches your target audience and makes your brand visible to potential customers. To ensure you’re on the right track with your influencer marketing campaigns, avoid these common mistakes.

1. Choosing the Wrong Influencer

Rather than working with big influencers, work with those who align with your brand. Numbers can be tempting but approach the relationship strategically. Having a huge following doesn’t ensure the influencer is right for your brand.

In many cases, going for niche influencers proves to be more beneficial. Micro-influencers are often a better fit for brands since have more of a close-tied community. Find influencers in your specific niche that are more likely to align with your brand goals.

2. Working With Influencers Based on Their Follower Count

It’s a big mistake to splurge on influencers who have a huge following but no justified engagement ratio. Remember a high number of followers doesn’t necessarily guarantee a good engagement rate.

There are situations where influencers with a huge following have a negligible engagement rate, while influencers with comparatively lesser follower count can sometimes have a great engagement rate. Hence, let their analytics be a deciding factor.

3. Forgetting Influencers After their Campaigns

Never drop an influencer once your campaign is successful. Keep in touch by engaging on their social media posts and their blogs (if they have them). You can even add them to a private list on Twitter and monitor their account to seek opportunities to engage with them and keep the relationship ongoing.

Why take all this effort? It shows you value their content and didn’t just approach them for your benefit. It leaves a good impression of your brand and builds a long-term relationship, leaving an opportunity for future collaborations. There are lots of ways to leverage user-generated content and this keeps the door open.

4. Relying on a Few Micro-influencers for Sales

Grabbing a few micro-influencers and expecting huge impacts on sales is one of the many influencer marketing mistakes to avoid. Usually, micro-influencers have followers in the range of 1,000 to 100,000. They aren’t famous but are experts in their niche. Although they don’t have a huge following, their content is effective and has greater ROI.

To establish a presence with micro-influencers, the number of daily posts and stories should be higher so your viewers recall your brand. Close deals with numerous micro-influencers to achieve the greatest results.

5. Refusing to Update Your Content Strategies

Sticking to old content strategies just because you’re comfortable does more harm than good. Most social media platforms moved toward video content. Integrating this and leveraging newly-launched features to your advantage increases your chances of scaling up your performance on social media.

Adapt these features into your influencer marketing strategy. For example, if you’re doing an Instagram campaign, include content creation for Instagram Reels and Stories into your plan. Is it necessary? Yes, absolutely! Your audience is actively using these features and you don’t want to miss the chance to reach them.

6. Actively Measuring Metrics but Not Analyzing Them

Influencer marketing campaigns come with specific goals in mind. Align on expectations and goals before creating an influencer marketing campaign. Why curate well-crafted campaigns if you’re going to measure the metrics but not thoroughly analyze them?

Measure metrics like impressions, reach, engagement rate, and follower growth along with likes, saves, and comments. These are not just numbers; they tell you what your audience truly liked and what did not work. Monitor digital marketing metrics that you can use to inform future initiatives.

Conclusion

Learning how to overcome the challenges of influencer marketing is a critical part of executing a campaign. In addition to these six crucial points, make sure you always have a strong integrated strategy.