It all sounds so simple. Find someone with a big following, send them your product, and sit back while orders roll in and the brand becomes the next household name. Easy, right? Except… it never quite works like that. Okay, cue the tumbleweed blowing across an empty inbox and influencers ghosting hard, leaving you scratching your head. Sure, influencer marketing can grow your business, but there’s something you need to understand. But what?
Well, small businesses keep tripping up over the same influencer marketing mistakes, turning what should be a dream partnership into a cautionary tale. It doesn’t have to be this way, but it does take a little more work and research (and maybe even intuition) to get it right.
Sending Out Freebies With No Contract
There’s sending someone a gift, and then there’s sending someone a gift with absolutely no strings attached. The second one? Well, it’s influencer roulette. Some will post and disappear the next day, others will happily pocket the freebie and vanish into the sunset like it never happened.
What’s the lesson here? Well, no contract means no guarantee. Even just a simple agreement can set out what’s expected, when it’s due, and who gets to do what with the content. Basically, without it, there’s every chance the only thing an influencer delivers is radio silence.
Scripting Influencers Into a Corner
Seriously, there’s nothing worse than an influencer reading off a corporate script like it’s their school homework. Just remember that influencers are good at what they do because they know how to connect with their community in their own words.
Especially in areas like financial services influencer marketing, where trust is everything, that natural, relatable voice is priceless. You can hand over a key message, but don’t give them a script, it hurts both of you.
Getting Starry-Eyed Over Follower Counts
Okay, sure, it’s tempting to chase that influencer with 150,000 followers, but numbers aren’t always what they seem. You need to take a peek at the comments and it’s all bots, spam, and people who clearly didn’t even read the caption. Besides, engagement is where the real gold is, and it’s what too many small businesses forget to check.
For example, an influencer with 5,000 loyal fans who hang on every word? Well, that’s worth way more than 100,000 silent scrollers (and ghost followers). If the community isn’t talking, liking, or sharing, those follower numbers don’t mean much more than a high score on a video game.
Picking Influencers Who Make No Sense for the Brand
Here’s an example; sending high-end jewellery to someone who mostly posts about camping gear? Well, that’s a miss. A big one. And yet, businesses fall into this trap all the time by choosing influencers based on how many followers they have, instead of thinking about who they actually speak to. The right influencer lives and breathes the niche, and so does their audience.
Forgetting to Check Who’s Actually Watching
So, the influencer looks like the perfect fit. But is their audience? Just go ahead and imagine launching a brand targeting 30-something professionals, only to discover that the influencer’s followers are mostly teens from another country.
Well, that’s a fast track to wasted time and money. Just do some research, really, just a quick audience check can reveal everything from location to age range to buying habits.