Avoiding these mistakes can help you design a successful influencer marketing campaign Share via

The success of any influencer marketing campaign depends on how meticulously the campaign has been designed. Many factors decide the positive outcome of the campaign.  If the campaign’s strategy is not well thought out in advance, the brand may find the whole exercise futile in the future.  This blog under the education series will look at the top common mistakes brands should avoid while designing influencer marketing campaigns.

Not clearly defining the objective of the campaign

The major mistake brands should avoid while designing an influencer marketing campaign is being unclear on the purpose they want to achieve through the activity. Whether the goal is to generate sales, create brand awareness, or increase social engagement and interactions, brands need to define a clear objective for the campaign. For example, if it’s a new brand catering to the mass market and wants to create awareness about the product, a mega influencer can help achieve the objective. But in case you are a niche brand looking to build a community around your products, a nano influencer, who enjoys loyal followers, can do the trick.

Selecting random influencer

Brands that select the influencers for their campaign randomly or without giving it much thought will face problems. Getting the right influencer for your brand campaign is one of the most critical aspects of influencer marketing. For a brand, it is imperative to select an influencer who resonates well with the brand’s ideology, its target audience, and the campaign’s objective. In addition, brands have to chalk out the results they are looking to achieve through the campaign well in advance. For example, selecting a beauty influencer for a campaign to promote the sportswear brand is most likely to fail because the target audience of the brand and the profile of the influencer’s followers are very different.

Selecting influencers with a fake engagement

Influencers indulging in frauds like fake followers and fake engagements have become one of the top concerns for brands that spend much money on influencer marketing campaigns. According to various reports, more than 40 percent of influencers on social media platforms, especially Instagram, are engaged in fraudulent activities, sometimes even without knowing it. Therefore, brands should do their due diligence before onboarding an influencer for a campaign and make sure that the engagements on their posts are genuine. For example, if you see random or unrelated comments on the influencer’s posts too often, it could be a sign that bots or software drive the engagement, and there will be no tangible outcome of those interactions.  There are various ways brands can detect influencer fraud, and brands must steer away from this form of trickery.

Not monitoring the quality of the content

Brands should constantly monitor the quality of the content coming from the influencers to ensure that it conforms to all their guidelines. In addition, brands should keep an eye on whether the content can clearly and effectively communicate the main USPs of the product to achieve the desired results. It has been observed that brands often brief the influencers about the product and the content they want for the campaign but fail to monitor it actively, resulting in sub-standard work. Influencers can also make mistakes with the spellings or grammars on their social media posts, which creates a negative image of the brand. But brands should also be mindful that they do not encroach on the creative freedom of the influencers.

Focusing only on one platform

Devising campaigns and maintaining one social media platform can become a taxing job for marketers. But in the vast world of social media, where billions of people log in every day across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Youtube, and others, it will be a wrong strategy on the part of the brand to continue focusing on just one platform and losing out on so much more. Instead, to reach more potential consumers through their influencer marketing campaigns, brands should create an outreach program with a substantial presence across all the major platforms. Brands can, of course, set priority on which platform they want to invest more but neglecting other platforms entirely is a complete no.

These common mistakes can ruin all the effort brands have put in to create their influencer marketing campaign. But with a little bit of due diligence and research on brands end can significantly improve the chances of achieving the desired results, which will be beneficial for everyone involved in the project.