4 Common Mistakes With Influencer Marketing

In the age of marketing that’s driven by authentic reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations, it’s no surprise that influencer marketing is one of the best ways to reach an audience. But this type of marketing is deceptively simple and depends on much more than having a blogger or live streamer talk about your products and services. To get the most from your work with an influencer, avoid these four mistakes that people often make with this type of marketing.

Creating the Wrong Type of Content

Certain types of content are appealing to your audience in particular. You may find that most of your users are on a particular platform — Instagram, for example. In this case, it would be a mistake to work with an influencer who isn’t producing content on that channel.

Overlooking Influencers Who Have a Smaller Customer Base

Many people overlook influencers who have a smaller following in favor of those with a big following, regardless of the industry they’re in. This is often a mistake. It’s far better to work with a customer base that’s relevant to your industry, even compared to an influencer with a bigger audience. This doesn’t mean that you should overlook audience size completely. Just remember that relevance to your industry is an important variable when it comes to this type of marketing.

Failing to Supplement Influencer Marketing With Your Own Marketing

Another mistake is relying on the influencer to generate all of your marketing material with no guidance or supplemental marketing material on your part. Original content from the influencer will certainly help, but you also need your own marketing material — both to back up the influencer’s message and to make their job easier.

So, don’t leave all the work to the influencer. Create new content or beef up old content so that it’s relevant to whatever the influencer is talking about.

Not Preparing Your Site for an Uptick in Traffic

The whole point of influencer marketing is to drive more traffic to your site, so not preparing your site for those new users is an obvious mistake. But it’s an easy one to make since you need to think about more traffic from a marketing perspective and a technical one.

So, as discussed above, you need to have your own marketing materials in place to supplement the influencer’s work. You also need to make sure your site is user-friendly and navigable and that your checkout system is streamlined and fully operational. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you’ll need to optimize the layout and make sure you have enough workers on hand to help with the customers.

Finally, you need to check that your website can handle an increased amount of traffic. Confirm that your servers can accommodate a larger number of users. If necessary, expand your server requirements to help prevent a crash or slow loading times.

Influencer marketing is a fantastic way to reach audiences for all kinds of businesses. But it doesn’t guarantee success. To get the most from an influencer marketing campaign, you need to create the right type of content, look for influencers who are relevant to your industry, make sure your own marketing is up to par, and get ready for an uptick in traffic to your pages.