BEST 10 Tips to Avoid Influencer Marketing Pitfalls

According to the forecast by eMarketer, it is revealed that, among companies with over 100 employees in the United States, 67.9% of them will adopt influencer marketing as a weapon in their marketing armory, paying for brand partnership with influencers like YouTubers and TikTokers. Against the shock from 2020’s pandemic, influencer marketing trend in the US will still be witnessed a rally in 2021 and beyond.

Despite a slight shrink in brands’ spending on influencer marketing, there is an increasing interest in collaboration with YouTubers. The percentage of US brands adopting influencer marketing grew to 62.3% from 55.4%. Meanwhile, 2020’s modification of Google search algorithm seems to be more in-tune with the business logic of influencer marketing.

Figure via eMarketer

After numerous data quoted in previous influencer marketing guides, NoxInfluencer Marketing Academy is going to discuss some rule-of-thumb content that may appeal to marketers. Without many numbers, this article is more about detailed logic in normal influencer marketing practice. But don’t worry, all our empirical tips are based on NoxInfluencer team’s contribution, including 800 million impressions, 9.4 million clicks, and 2.1 million conversions. No doubt. Every lesson learned from countless influencer marketing cases is definitely valuable for all marketers who intend to embark on influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing is usually an A-or-B thing, which means it goes to glorious successes with high return or it results in epic fails where it takes the company months if not years to recover. As a world-leading professional influencer marketing platform, we stand in the center and have witnessed both two results pretty often. Influencer marketing works by the viral nature of social media. While a brand can also be easily destroyed by this nature. Especially when something done wrongly, problems occur. The following tips are meant to offer a really valuable guide for marketers to avoid influencer marketing catastrophes.

Tip 1: Set aside a 20% buffer in your each influencer marketing campaign

When cooperating with influencers, casual cancellation or contact loss is more likely to happen than traditional marketing activities. In case of a cooperation break that fails your marketing campaign, setting aside 20% of your influencer marketing budget as a buffer is a better way to minimize your loss.

Suggestions from NoxInfluencer:

To marketers: Schedule alignment with influencers is the first-and-foremost detail to confirm, guaranteeing smooth project progress. Keep 1 to 3 backup partners in case that original one breaks the contract.

To administrators: Give your operation team around 20% budget buffer. 20% extra budget is suggested to grant as a way to take the risk of contract break.

Tip 2: Resolutely terminate lingering partnerships

If it’s been 3 to 5 days since you lost contact with your partner influencer, just cut off the collaboration without hesitation. You don’t have to expect they will respond someday. Even if they reply eventually, other problems are very likely to occur in subsequent cooperation with them.

Tip 3: Settle all schedule

Make sure your promotion agenda is in line with influencers’ channel timeline, such as posting time. It is too late when finding out a schedule clash after all other cooperation details are confirmed.

For e-commerce marketing campaign, if demonstrated product is required in promotion video, please spare enough delivery time.

Tip 4: Watch out for unnamed MCN

Not every MCN agency has registered with a formal business license. Be careful when some MCNs actively reach out to you. Keep in mind that require them to send you a formal invitation Email under the name of their company.

Tip 5: Set a capped payment

CPM (Cost Per Mille) sometimes is applied in an influencer marketing partnership to pay for promotion. However, the likes or views can be fabricated by robots. So, a payment cap can protect you from unnecessary loss.

Tip 6: Creativity

The creativity of promotion content impacts ad CTR greatly. Lower CPC can be achieved from higher CTR. Generally speaking, most influencers will not inject enough creativity into their sponsored content to promote brands. Marketers should communicate enough with influencers about content creation.

Tip 7: Distribution channel

Some influencers are multichannel creators. It is possible that the final channel used to post your promotion content is not the channel you expect. Distribution channel is also a key factor to consider.

Tip 8: Put promotion part at the beginning of video

Few subscribers will watch videos from beginning to end. And the viewer attrition rate is lower in the first half than in the second. So, if the promotion part is put at the end, marketing performance will be affected.

Tip 9: Settle the retention time

Some YouTubers will remove marketing video furtively. The required retention time of promotion video is necessary.

Tip 10: Payment way

The payment way varies among different countries or regions. Paypal and bank telegraphic transfer are mostly used methods by US influencers. When carrying out influencer marketing in other countries, payment methods should be dealt with. Some influencers don’t receive advance payment. If you encounter payment issues after the video is completing, the perfect launching time may be missed.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing tips can help you plan and execute strategic influencer marketing campaigns. Be careful to select the right influencers and collaborate with them in a mutually beneficial way. Also, giving them enough freedom to create content is important to build a long-term relationship with them. Finally, continuously analyzing and optimizing your campaigns can help you get the most out of them.

Thanks for reading. Until next time.