4 Myths Preventing You From Building A Successful Influencer Marketing Strategy
Although many marketers have implemented Influencer marketing into their strategies, and have increased their budgets; 41% of you are still favouring more traditional forms of advertising and only allocating less than 5% of your budgets on Influencer marketing.
By now you’ve probably heard quite a bit about influencer marketing. However despite all the success stories, there is abundant yet still somewhat conflicting information on what works and what doesn’t. There are still many misconceptions, which may lead you to question whether this strategy is the right vehicle to drive sales for your brand.
We look into the myths preventing you from building an effective influencer marketing strategy.
1. Influencer marketing won’t work for your brand
You may feel that influencer marketing works better for bigger brands or that it just won’t benefit your product. But the truth is this new age word of mouth marketing can be effective for nearly every brand out there, if you pick your influencers carefully. By targeting influencers who are able to craft and convey an honest story about your brand, you’ll find that their audience will engage, contribute to the conversation and consume what the influencer has to offer. Whatever your product may be.
Find out whether influencer marketing is right for your brand
2. Celebrity influencers are more valuable than smaller ones
Celebrity influencers will probably use up most if not stretch your budget out completely. Celebrities like the Kardashians, and Selena Gomez can charge up to £500,000 for a sponsored post. Although it’s true that these influencers would reach a wider audience; you don’t have to pick influencers with a huge following to have an influence.
In fact there’s an optimum level for the number of followers after which an influencer’s engagement rate starts to fall. Influencers with a reach of 10-100,000 hit the sweet spot, as they drive higher engagement, and can better turn consumers into your customers. Influencers with a smaller following provide more authenticity than celebrity influencers, all whilst reaching a more targeted audience. Not to mention you’ll have quite a bit of your budget left.
Read about the difference between celebrity endorsements and influencer marketing
3. You can’t measure the ROI for your campaigns
We admit, calculating ROI for an influencer campaign can be tricky, but it’s completely untrue that it can’t be measured. In fact it’s key to every successful campaign, and to inform future projects, in terms of making decisions on scaling, retargeting and optimising. You can measure ROI according to the goals set at the start of the campaign. From tracking post reach, engagement rate and conversions by using tracking pixels or unique links, you can determine your ROI.
How to determine your ROI in three simple steps
4. There’s no need for platforms to help run your campaigns
While influencer marketing platforms are an added cost, the benefits far outweigh the expense.
Platforms like ZINE offer a range of services. They take into account the influencers real-time data on their outreach on each social media platform. With filters facilitating browsing and analysing influencers’ profiles on an extensive database, to streamline the collaboration’s management, negotiation and administration. Whilst also being able to track how your campaigns are measuring up; all in a self-serve platform automating the whole campaign management, cutting down hours of manual labour.
Influencers also prefer the safety of being approached by brands on platforms, rather than social media and the ease of using influencer marketing platforms to manage their interactions with brands.
As Influencer marketing is evolving and becoming more complex, an efficient blend of both people and technology is critical.
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Joanna Karamanis
I’m head of Content at ZINE, where I use my expertise in fashion consumer psychology to empower brands and influencers in their marketing campaigns. I love to travel, bake as well as shopping online.
