We live at a time when there is so much competition amongst brands and services. This challenge has forced brands to come up with a highly effective marketing strategy to stay in business. One such is influencer marketing as a social media marketing strategy. For instance, in the online casino gaming, a brand such as Lightning Link is engaging influencers in their marketing strategy to create brand awareness.

According to a study conducted by Tomoson, businesses are making as much as $6.5 for every $1 used in influencer marketing strategy. The poll additionally rated influencers as one of the fastest-growing customer acquisition channels. 

We highlight 6 of the most common mistakes in influencer marketing strategy.

#1 Not Cherry-Picking an Influencer for your Marketing Strategy

If you pick a wrong influencer, your marketing strategy will barely result in sales. The biggest assumption that we make is that more social media followers would result in more sales, while it is not an obvious cause.

To effectively pick an ideal influencer for your online business’s marketing strategy, we recommend that you consider the following:

Scrutinize the Influencer Followers

For influencers, followers make one of the most critical marketing strategy elements, and hence they are always on the race to bag them. Surprisingly, some influencers purchase ghost ‘followers’ such as bots, which would always have their numbers spiking. Looking at the posts by most influencers, you will always find the bots posting unrelated or incoherent comments, which should be a red flag.

Analyze Previous Influencer Engagements

If a competitor previously used the influencer in their marketing strategy, it would be prudent to analyze the level of engagement on their posts. A keen analysis of the influencer posts helps you understand whether the comments and interactions are by organic followers or bots. You will know rich influencer interactions from the comments and feedback on inquiries made by followers. 

However, there might be posts with followers who comment or engage more with the influencer’s personality instead of the product. This only means that this influencer might not be ideal to be one of your marketing strategy components. 

#2 Having No Primary Goal in Mind

Since you are considering an influencer for your marketing strategy ideas, do you have any specific goal in mind? 

It would be a waste of resources to engage an influencer without any intent. Just getting the product mentioned is not always an end to itself. 

Thus in your business marketing strategy steps, you need to pause and analyze your primary goal for involving an influencer. Some of these goals could be:

• To increase your own brand social media following.
• To capture a new audience through brand awareness.
• To drive sales and business leads.

Develop a specific communication strategy for any of these goals without a general one unless under special circumstances. This critical component should point you in the direction of the right influencer for that marketing strategy. 

#3 Failing to Measure Results in the Marketing Strategy

To gain a return on investment (ROI) in your marketing strategy, measure the effectiveness of the influencer campaign vis-à-vis the set goals and objectives, ensure that each objective ties to a measuring metric, and link the results. 

If, for instance, you aim to drive traffic to a site like Lightning Link, insert tracking links on the website. The tracking helps you understand if there is any new traffic to the site resulting from the influencer’s posts. 

On the other hand, if gaining more social media followers was your primary goal, use relevant social media analytical tools to gain some insights. At the end of it, the results help you analyze your marketing strategy and learn from any mistakes in future influencer engagements. 

#4 Ignoring the Few Posts by Micro-influencers

While celebrity influencers have millions of followers, micro-influencers rake in between 1000 to 100,000 followers on social media. We recommend that you target both types of influences but with a balance on the volumes of their postings for your marketing strategy. 

Develop a marketing strategy whereby a given number of micro-influencers will post a certain number of posts per day and for a certain duration. The repeated posting will result in the audience remembering the message or call to action much longer.

#5 Sitting Back as Influencers take Center-stage

Once you came up with a clear marketing strategy for online business and identified an influencer to champion it, you should not take a back seat. Influencer marketing requires that you walk with the influencer throughout the marketing campaign.

If you identified the right influencer for the products, you would expect that inquiries, comments, calls, and reactions would be on the rise. Practically, it is nearly impossible for the influencer to respond to all these inquiries. It is at this point that you kick in and address the relevant questions concerning your brand. No matter how long it takes, keep track of the post, and respond to queries. 

#6 Treating Influencer Marketing Strategy as Actual Sales

A big mistake made by businesses that hire influencers for their marketing strategy is assuming that influencer marketing is actual sales. In the real sense, influencer marketing strategy is just that; marketing. 

Influencers could help drive traffic to your website or social media platforms, which would make most of the time drive sales. As marketers, you need to involve them in your marketing strategy so that they own the process and become persuasive in their pitches. 

Conclusion

Finally, social media influencers have become a big hit, and if tapped into correctly coupled with a proper marketing strategy can magically create the much-needed sales leads and traffic.

Do you know of any other mistakes made in influencer marketing strategies? We would love to hear from you in the comment section below.