There’s a lot of talk about influencer marketing. But how many brands do you see doing it right?

While it seems that everyone has started to get in on the action, many are following the trend without truly understanding how to get results.

With the right Influencer Marketing Strategy in place, brands can harness the power of influencer marketing and influencer collaborations to gain a better connection with their audience, increase sales, and build brand trust and recognition. In this post, I will show you the 4 mistakes brands are making today. Don’t worry, I have solutions! Influencers, this post isn’t just for brands.

P.S. I rarely use guarantee words and make statements like the one above. Before you dive into the post, you need to understand your writer's point of view…

I spent nearly a decade in brand marketing and the advertising industry before I launched my influencer business. So I've worked both "sides of the campaign." 

• Behind the scenes: I ran and created influencer campaigns as a marketing and branding strategist.

• Influencer: I currently work with brands to best promote their products to my audience.

Now that you know my background and my experience, you understand why I feel fairly confident discussing this subject with you. 

Here's what I've discovered:

• Influencer campaigns are more emotional than, for example, a paid media campaign. In some cases, influencers don't feel valued, and brands don't feel like they've seen a return on their investment.

• When both parties get frustrated, everything crumbles. It baffles me how so many campaigns and "contracts" are agreed upon in DMs! When I work as a brand marketing strategist, I use email, Zoom, the phone, and before COVID, in-person meetings. Why is influencer marketing taken so lightly when so much is at stake?

Here's Where Brands Go Wrong

They Only Focus On Follower Count

Brands focus on vanity metrics. A vanity metric is a marketing term used to describe metrics that contribute very little to a marketing strategy. 

The number one vanity metric is follower count.

So how does an influencer’s follower count impact engagement rates? Engagement rates show what percentage of an influencer’s audience is actively engaging (via likes or comments) with their content.

Engagement Rate =

(Likes + Comments) / Total Number of Followers

Nano influencers, who have less than 10K followers, have the highest average engagement rate with 4% across all feed posts and sponsored ones. Read more: Later.com Blog & Jillian Warren.

Takeaway: Even the proper engagement calculator above, though proven very helpful and insightful, may also throw a wrench into the second biggest mistake brands make with influencer campaigns. (Keep reading!)

They Don't Invest The Time in The Vetting Process

I get it -- it's much easier to look at someone's following, general niche, a few posts, and think they're worth the spend. Unfortunately, what brands are not doing is taking time to comb through the influencer's posts.

• Does the influencer respond to comments?

• What do their captions say about their post?

• Are they using all of Instagram's content types, such as Reels and Guides?

• Do they have a digital presence off Instagram?

These are just a few questions to kick off a thorough influencer vetting process. Every day we see brands pursuing the wrong influencers because they don't know how to identify and choose the right ones.

They Write a Business Plan, But Not an Influencer Plan

Having a professionally written Influencer Marketing Strategy is integral for brands to follow as their roadmap. Brands are not hiring strategy experts to help them build out a realistic and attainable plan of action. Instead, they jump right in, and are frustrated when a campaign doesn't go well.

They Don't Look at The Long-Term Relationship

Brands in today's social media landscape must find new ways to form sustainable partnerships with influencers. If brands took the time to look beyond the vanity metrics, do the research, and write a solid Influencer Strategy, they'd see the value in finding an influencer who can promote their brand beyond the "$150 per post," model.

Take a look at the research below. This post is backed by research.

Final Thoughts

Every dollar spent counts. But do me a favor? Focus on the saying, “time is money,” when it comes to your brand’s influencer marketing. Don’t make the mistakes above.

1. Look beyond the number of followers. Calculate engagement rates carefully: Don’t lose the best influencer your brand could ever partner with because of a low engagement percentage. In most cases, the bigger the influencer, the lower the engagement rate.

2. Take your time. Use Instagram hashtags to search for influencers in your industry. Avoid services and free influencer search tools to find your next influencer — these have proven to be quite ineffective and sometimes, 100% inaccurate!

3. Hire an Influencer Marketing Strategist. There are tons of free and low-cost downloadable resources available online for you to write the strategy yourself. But, time is money. It may be worth the spend hiring a freelancer or an agency to get your business and your marketing team on track for success. Would you launch a business without a business plan? No. So don’t launch an Influencer Campaign without an Influencer Plan in place.

4. Look at the market data. Focus on finding influencers who can promote your brand today, tomorrow, and two years from today. The better an influencer knows your brand, the stronger the content can become. Look at the Influencer Industry value projections. If you can master Influencer Marketing this year, think about how prepared and how successful you may become as the industry grows exponentially.

5. If you have questions… comment! Contact me. I’m happy to lend you my advice or insight. And, I love talking to readers! :)