How to Make It Big When Going for Sponsored Posts
So you invested in a sponsored post. Wait, what? A dozen of posts? And all to nothing? Sometimes it may turn out to be quite a flop, even when advertisers splurge on ads at influencers throwing the budgets off track, but to no avail. Why is that? Could be a lot of reasons behind it. Let’s talk it out.
Your Website is Poorly Optimized
Before you start running any promotion, make sure you double-checked, triple-checked, and quadruple-checked that your website of yours is doing great. And I mean, meticulously. It’s important that the site is clean, simple, and intuitive so that the user will not spend their whole life looking for the contacts page. The landing — the first page a would-be customer would bump into — must have a detailed product description followed by photos, videos, and reviews. And remember, make it Feng Shui balanced, having no needless information.
Check if your website is optimized for tablets, smartphones, and PDAs (just kidding).
Both ‘Gram and YouTube are now primarily mobile-oriented. And if the mobile traffic of the former is hitting almost 100%, for the latter it’s on par with a number of those still using the keyboard in front of the desktop. So pile into the mobile website development to have the conversion rate going the days afterward. And work with the load time of your pages. If it takes 2.5 seconds to load, it means forever. Optimize it.
If you decided to run a huge mass campaign, better pay more for a reliable web hosting service, and thence no client gets lost.
You Fish with No Bait
Ah, typical for the newcomers: trying to attract people without any special offer, deal, or discount.
With discounts (up to 20%), deals or bonuses you will increase your CTR and lower your CPA with no hassle. A potential client coming here because of the sponsored post must feel he might get a bigger piece of a pie than those users who never saw it.
You Missed a Bullseye with your Audience
One of the most common cases the newbies keep stepping on rakes is when they start picking up creators judging by the content they make. You’re thinking Ii’s the content of the influencers, not the stats. But bear in mind: if the influencer of your choice is a travel influencer, it doesn’t mean its audience is nothing but backpackers and explorers all over the map; or that only car drivers read automotive blogs; or that only girls would follow a beauty boss and so on. No.
This is not a rule of thumb as many guys will subscribe to pretty women, and sometimes it’s better to take online gaming than BB cream for a sponsored post.
INFLUENCER ≠ AUDIENCE
This is where even major agencies blunder since there are not that many tools you can use to evaluate the influencer’s audience.
To understand the audience of a specific influencer, use HypeAuditor.
When choosing an advertising platform, start with looking for a pen portrait and a number of your target audience among the followers of a specific creator. Aim for at least 25% of the regular audience of the profile.
You Shy Away from Duplication
You’ll boost your purchase conversion rate 2 to 3 times higher than your usual campaign if when featuring a product you center around one particular audience but with users coming from different sources. Users begin to think your product goes viral since it’s discussed everywhere, and so they are keener to copping it.
To make it work, you need your audience to see your product at different spots at least three times.
But if you go for three sponsored posts with one single influencer, you’ll dig a hole for yourself while shooting yourself in the feet.
To make the audience buy what you want them to buy and save your money, you need at least 15 to 20 influencers to post your product as part of one campaign and take into account the duplication. Based on your budget, you can use micro-influencers or reach influencers with a 100K audience. Keep in mind the minimum of 300,000 followers in total and think twice and wisely when breaking down the budget among the influencers.
What is more, with such a campaign you’ll be able to go over your methods and moves and understand, what gave you the best response so you could use the most effective approaches later on.
You Bet on influencers with 1 Million Followers
Now, you might think that it’s definitely a win-win situation. Nah, it’s not what you think. First, since the audience is too broad, the engagement rate would show low numbers. Second, people do not believe in ads from big influencers. How come? Too many commercial posts. Besides, these guys will charge you $1500 and more for a tiny reference. You will gain much more sales if you ditch top influencer for a dozen of small ones thus spreading your campaign and working with duplication.
I Cannot Reach Them
One of the reasons influencers may suck wind is because of poor reach. Bad reach will not only limit the number of clicks needed but will drop the sales as well. We know from experience that you will get the best results when going with at least 15 creators and a cumulative reach of at least 300K.
Since the average CTR range is 0.3% to 1% (for Instagram), it would mean 900 to 3,000 people out of 300K will go to the website.
That’s why it’s vital to remember to optimize the landing and bring enough people to see it. It will help you have enough clicks to calculate your Purchase Conversion Rate.
You Let the Stats Slip Away
As soon as the campaign is on, you must start working with metrics right off the bat and compare the results at each particular stage. You’ll be able to see which posts engage and sell more for a specific audience.
You’ll need it to understand if you hit the right audience, its wishes, and demands if your approach was successful. Also, the collection of the stats will help further optimize the upcoming campaigns and thus upscale more effective approaches.
When analyzing your campaign, you need to be sure you know the origins of each sale, which influencer each one of your purchasers did come from. To do that, place individual UTMs for influencers and evaluate the performance at Google Analytics.
You can also opt for promo codes and coupons in your campaign to assess your performance. But take note that there are people who won’t read the caption and therefore won’t use the coupon. That’s why it’s better both to provide incentives and study the stats.
Always focus on the business metrics, i.e. orders and purchases as it is what should seek in the first place. You cannot use likes, comments or followers gained to measure your sales, only maybe your own sense of worth.
Always study reviews and comments under the sponsored posts since it is the feedback of prospect customers you might use for building up an effective marketing campaign in the future.
Wrap-up
· First optimize your website, then think of the campaign.
· Make a catchy offer for the audience
· Work with the pen portrait of the audience of an influencer, not the content they make
· Spread out with at least 15 influencers, keep in mind the duplication
· Size up the required reach of your campaign beforehand, make it at least 300K
· Collect stats for clicks and conversion rates, work with them and adjust your future postings based on your data only.
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