Influencer marketing as an industry in 2019 is going to see an extreme surge in terms of growth. More brands are investing in it and the brands who have been working with influencers already are planning on widening their campaign reach.
This method has proven over easy and tough times to be a profitable one with exciting ROI for the brand marketers. However, with no written guide on do’s and dont’s, some brands have been trying to find their way by committing a lot of faux-pas. This kind of negativity in influencer marketing stems from mistakes by the brand and the influencers which in turn harshly affects the brand image.
Greenroom has come up with a checklist for every brand’s reference before implementing an influencer marketing campaign. This list allows the brands to anticipate the root cause and prevent any kind of negative fall-out.
Good communication with influencers is an absolute necessity
How is the influencer for your brand being chosen? An ideal influencer for your campaign would be one who resonates with your target audience. Do a thorough check on your chosen influencer before you work with them. Apart from the basic questions like if your influencer has the right audience, count of followers and the quality of content, here are some secondary but essential questions that have to be posed before you work with someone.
How is the engagement between the influencers and followers?
Have they worked with competitor brands?
What kind of campaigns has the influencer worked on previously?
Have they been involved in any negative scandal recently?
It is a win-win for the brand and the influencer if the marketer understands the influencer’s personal brand before choosing them. So now that the influencer is chosen, it is absolutely necessary that the influencer understands the brand and kind of projects he/she will be working on.
Brands also seem to be struggling with the fact that there is a lack of authenticity in their influencer marketing campaigns. What brands seem to forget is that influencers are people and not faceless entities who promote their product or service. The influencer’s opinions are just as important as the brands. The primary reason why influencer marketing works is that it is based on positive relationships. This reflects now only influencers and followers, but also between the brand and influencers.
“Collaborate with the influencers by setting up timely meetings and exchange ideas.”
It helps to give a little creative freedom to the influencers and not restrict with just the brand’s thought process and creativity. Do not forget that the influencer became popular in the first place due to their creativity and content. And nobody knows their followers as well as they do.
Making mistakes and being disorganized is a recipe for disaster
As exciting as jumping in the influencer marketing bandwagon looks like, the industry is a very competitive one. Before the campaign, a brand should know what they want out of it. Drive sales, improve the brand’s image or immediate popularity. Like any other marketing plan, an influencer marketing plan is also extremely vital.
It is important to be decisive and set realistic goals. Instead of just posting content with any old influencer, having a detailed itinerary will give the plan a shot of purpose, and ensure that both you and the influencer can work toward achieving a mutual goal. This also ensures that the influencer is as involved in your campaign as you are.
For eg, Disha Patani received a lot of flak recently for copy-pasting the message directly from the emailer. While the photo was taken down in a matter of seconds, her followers didn’t fail to notice the mistake and the Indian actress was trolled for it.
Another infamous example that has caused a furor recently would be the Fyre festival.
The Fyre Festival was advertised by many of the top model influencers like Hailey Baldwin, Emily Ratajkowski and Kendall Jenner as a Bahama-based music festival. This super elite fest was co-planned by Ja Rule and wannabe entrepreneur Billy. The disastrous festival’s tickets cost up to 12000$. The attendees were promised a luxury vacation and what they got was bread and cheese meal and mattresses soaked in rainwater.
Overdoing a campaign
We have all been excited about a successful campaign. With all its wondrous results, the brands should stop itself from turning greedy.
If you are working with only one influencer who has produced a successful campaign for the brand, consider working with more to widen your brand’s visibility scope. But how many is too many?
Does the number matter? While it is easy to get disillusioned initially by the engagement, likes, and shares on the post or as an effect on the brand’s page itself, it is important that the brand also notice the sentiment behind the comments on the posts. It isn’t easy to monitor such data when a brand works with 50 influencers for a single campaign. While is impossible to assess the sentiment of all comments related to your brand manually, it is high time that the brand evaluates qualitative scores such as sentiments instead of just focussing on the quantitative KPIs.
Quality content is mandatory
Influencers that brands work with have become popular mainly because of their rich content. While being too strict and rigid about the content posted is one issue, lack of good quality content is the biggest faux-pas of all. That is a typical example of a lose-lose situation. This also happens when the importance of quantity is chosen over quality. For eg, if the influencer has to post 5 times a week or if 50 influencers are posting a similar message about a campaign at the same time.
A terrific example would be the Reliance Jio launch back in 2016. During the launch of Reliance Jio, the telecom arm of Reliance Industries, celebrities and stars alike took to Twitter to congratulate Reliance and its staff. But things went haywire when a simple congratulatory message was copy pasted across multiple celeb accounts and that’s when the brand became the butt of all jokes in 2016.
Conclusion
While brands are wary of some basic mistakes like looking at influencers’ followers over content, Greenroom has curated a list that is often looked over. An easy fix to some of the above is to work with a capable influencer marketing agency. But what mistakes do you think brands do that they should avoid? Let us know below in the comments, or visit our website, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram pages to reach out to us.
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