As influencers continue to be a hot topic on social media, influencer marketing is becoming more and more popular. Thus, we start seeing more sponsored posts in our feed every day, and that doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. COVID-19 lockdowns have been quite devastating for many industries, however, coronavirus seems to fuel the fire for influencer marketing. In fact, 63% of marketers plan to increase their influencer marketing budgets during 2021. Based on data from Mediakix, Business Insider estimates that brands are expected to spend up to $ 15 billion on influencer marketing by 2022.

According to Mediakix, 89% of all marketers find ROI from influencer marketing comparable to or better than other marketing channels.

 

When we take the influencers’ impact on the consumers’ purchasing habits on the one hand, and the influencer marketing statistics which I mentioned above, on the other hand, we can straightforwardly claim that influencer marketing is the best of the effective marketing strategies. However, when it is used wrongly, it not only damages the brands’ online presence but also its reputation. 

 

So as you see, influencer marketing is sensitive. It isn’t just about finding someone with an audience and offering them money so they can say good things about you. When you start your influencer marketing campaign, you should take some steps and avoid taking some. What are the secrets of successful influencer marketing campaigns? What should brands pay attention to during their campaigns? In this blog, we’ll generally talk about you need to consider to avoid your brand becoming a loser and make your bank account look like a phone number.

 

1. What are you trying to achieve from an influencer marketing campaign?

Are you building awareness about an upcoming product, creating buzz about services, increasing social engagement, or driving clicks to your website?

It’s important to set up specific goals before starting a campaign(in fact, the first and foremost thing you should do) because it is like a guideline for tracking and measuring success throughout the campaign.  Also, these goals assist you to ensure that influencers are on the same page with your brand.

Brands must be as clear as day in their campaign goals. Clear and brief influencer marketing goals are crucial to a successful influencer campaign. Your campaign goals can be various and specific for your brand. However, in influencer marketing, the campaign should target at least one of these three goals: 

 

• Build brand awareness and strengthen brand online presence.
• Increase social engagement and interactions.
• Generate leads and drive sales and profits

 

If you focus on too many goals in one influencer marketing campaign, that is not effective as well. So, every influencer campaign should target one or maybe a couple of main business objectives.

 

2. Your most important criterion when choosing an influencer is number of followers?

Then you already lost the battle. Paying attention to only the influencer’s follower count is the most common mistake while choosing an influencer to promote a brand. It should not be the most critical priority of influencer marketing. On the contrary, brands should choose influencers who have a similar culture to their campaign. Finding the right influencers can be challenging. Brands should carefully analyze the audience, key metrics before starting collaboration because an influencer with a lot of followers doesn’t mean an engaging audience.

 

You can check out the influencer in the following sequence:

• Go through the influencer’s pages.
• Look at what kind of content influencer share:
• Check whether the influencer’s culture fits with your brand.
• Look at the engagement they get on their posts with the help of likes and comments. (However, Influencers can buy fake followers and pay like or comment on their posts that can mislead you.)

 

These steps will help you to explore and make a better-informed decision. Take time to dig into these details. However, searching for the right influencer on Instagram or elsewhere is time-consuming. This is where it makes sense to use Keepface.

How to find the right influencers for your influencer marketing campaigns?

As an influencer marketing software, Keepface focuses on finding the right influencer for your brand with any niche and audience. With the access of over 350K influencers & content creators, you can find the perfect match for your business. Keepface is an automated platform for brands to reach the most relevant influencers, communicate with them, and manage campaigns using real-time analytics. 

 

Keepface influencer marketing software helps you identify, recruit, and negotiate with influencers in one platform. You can find influencers with any audience and engagement rates in the Keepface database with spending less time. Filter influencers by category, country, engagement rate, followers, gender, budget as well as analyze their key metrics to find the best-fitting influencers for your campaigns. You also get an in-depth analysis of influencers’ social profiles, performance data, and audience. 

 

Also, you should consider fraudulent influencer factors. According to a report from Cheq, fraudulent activity is costing advertisers $1.3 billion in 2019. Fraud figures not only prevent the product from reaching the target audience but also causes brands to spend money without getting any noticeable results. When influencers use social media bots for increasing follower count and creating fake engagement, it becomes difficult to determine the credibility of influencers. 

 

3. Be realistic when offering, make authentic relationships with your audience.

Real offers, communication, authenticity play a huge role in your influencer marketing.

Keep it real and make realistic offers. For example, in February 1992,  Pepsi Philippines announced that they would print numbers, ranging from 001 to 999, inside the caps of Pepsi bottles. Certain numbers could be redeemed for prizes, which ranged from 100 pesos to 1 million pesos for a grand prize (roughly US$40,000 in 1992),  Pepsi allocated a total of US$2 million for prizes. But an error at a bottling plant led to 600,000 winners — and lawsuits, rioting, and even deaths. One marketing campaign creates a big crisis not only for the company but also for the country. Certainly, the above  is not an example of an influencer marketing campaign. However, brands should learn lessons from this mistake: it is better to stick to promises you can deliver on.

 

Also, communication and authenticity can affect your campaign’s achievement. If brands want to pursue a successful influencer campaign, then they must think about building real connections with their target audience.  At least personalizing each message, avoiding cliche statements are ways to keep communication between brand and audience genuine.