5 Influencer Marketing Mistakes You Shouldn’t Waste Your Money On

So you’re getting started with influencer marketing, and you want to know how to avoid the common influencer marketing mistakes. Or maybe your previous influencer marketing campaign failed, and you want to know where you went wrong.

In this post, you’re going to learn about the top five money-wasting influencer marketing mistakes, and how to avoid them.

#1: Not Defining a Goal for Your Influencer Marketing Campaign

Every marketing campaign needs to have a set goal — whether it’s to raise brand awareness, drive conversions, or boost customer loyalty. And some marketers make the mistake of launching an influencer marketing campaign without a set goal in mind.

Since they don’t know exactly what they want to achieve from the campaign, they don’t know how to measure their performance. That means they won’t know whether or not their campaign is successful. They won’t know whether their campaign is yielding the desired ROI, because they don’t have a clear idea of what metrics to measure their performance against.

Not defining a goal for your campaign could also prevent you from carrying out other steps of the campaign effectively. For example, you may not know what kind of influencers to look for. And you may not have any idea what kind of campaign you should execute.

So you’ll be wasting money on ineffective campaigns with influencers who aren’t right for your brand.

How to Avoid This Influencer Marketing Mistake

Define what success looks like to you. What do you expect from the campaign? Do you want more people to learn about your brand? Or do you want to make more sales through the campaign? Once you have a clear idea of the goals you wish to achieve from the influencer marketing campaign, you can define your key performance indicators (KPIs).

For someone who wants to drive brand awareness, the most important KPIs would be reach, traffic, engagement, etc. And for those of you who wish to drive more conversions, the engagement and conversion rates would be the top KPIs to measure your performance against.

Here are some ideas from TapInfluence about which performance indicators you should measure according your goals.

Image Source: TapInfluence

#2: Choosing the Wrong Compensation Model

The right compensation model can get you a long way with your influencer marketing campaign. But choosing one that doesn’t fit your budget or goals could result in huge losses. And in some cases, you may end up paying for something that you could have gotten in exchange for a free product or experience.

Other times, brands may pay a set amount per post but fail to see sufficient returns on their investment. Or they may even agree to pay per click but end up paying much more than they budgeted for because the influencer drove better results than expected.

A TapInfluence and Altimeter study found that the biggest influencer marketing mistake is when brands don’t offer sufficient compensation. So marketers face a challenge with determining what type, and amount of compensation they should provide to influencers.

How to Avoid This Influencer Marketing Mistake

In cases where you’re offering exclusive previews of products and luxury experiences, you may not necessarily need to offer monetary compensation. But be open to negotiations if some influencers get back to you with additional requests.

Then you’ll have to choose a compensation model depending on your goals, and the types of influencers you’re going to work with.

Here are some of the most common influencer marketing campaign compensation models:

• Pay Per Post — This is the most commonly-used compensation model according to Linqia. It’s when you pay a flat rate to influencers in exchange for creating and publishing a post for your brand — whether it’s a blog post, a social media post, or even a video.
• Cost Per Engagement — This is another popular compensation model in influencer marketing. It’s when you pay an agreed upon amount to influencers, based on the level of engagement they’re able to drive.
• Cost Per Click — This is when you pay influencers a certain amount based on the number of people who took the action after seeing the influencer’s content. The action is typically that of clicking through to the brand’s landing page.
• Free Products or Experiences — Another popular compensation model, this is when you provide free products or all-expenses-paid trips instead of financial compensation.
• Cost Per Acquisition — This compensation is among the least used. It’s when you offer compensation in exchange for the sales or subscriptions they’re able to drive.

According to the Linqia study, the cost per engagement model is the most effective, along with the cost per click. This is likely because you’re paying for results. But the pay per post, and free products or experiences are also quite effective as you can see in the screenshot below.

Image Source: Linqia

It’s important to note that one single compensation model may not work for every influencer marketing campaign, or every influencer for the matter. You can try experimenting with some of the most effective ones to see which of them work best for your brand.

Read the full post on Shane Barker’s Influencer Marketing blog.