Pretty much everyone has engaged with influencer marketing at some point. A lot of us have our favorite creators whose recommendations we swear by. Some of us have seen a random ad in our feed with an influencer promising a product will change our lives. Some of us are business owners who have leveraged blockchain influencer marketing to reach our target audience while borrowing some of the creator’s authenticity.
But while blockchain influencer marketing can be very effective, it can also come with its own set of issues. Before you allocate your budget to an influencer marketing campaign, you need to know the pitfalls and how to avoid them.
Why These Pitfalls Matter
Even though it has been part of e-commerce for almost two decades, influencer marketing remains fairly controversial in some circles. Among business owners, some scepticism about its effectiveness boils down to the pitfalls we’ll discuss.
This is because for every blockchain influencer marketing campaign that wastes budgets and effort, others help to generate sales and improve your business’s reputation. To avoid wasting effort and becoming sceptical about influencer marketing overall, you need to know these.
Blockchain Influencer Marketing Pitfalls
While this is not exhaustive, here are some of the most common blockchain influencer marketing pitfalls and how to navigate them.
Inflated Follower Count
This issue has plagued business owners since influencer marketing first became a thing. How do you even know that this creator has the audience they claim? After all, people buy bot followers and then scam businesses into paying for promotion. The good news is you can tell pretty easily.
There are several tools online, such as HypeAuditor, that can instantly analyze any social media profile and give you a breakdown of their follower count. It will tell you how many of the followers are genuine and how many appear to be bought. It will also break down where they are from, their gender and age, and more. Not only can you confirm the creator has a genuine audience, but you can also ensure it overlaps with your target audience.
False Engagement
An influencer might have a large audience, but that doesn’t always translate into engagement. In fact, most influencers expect engagement rates between one and five per cent. Some, in an effort to bolster their credibility and make more money, create false engagement, which will not translate into sales for the businesses that patronize them.
Just like with follower count, you can use tools such as HypeAuditor to check the creator’s engagement rate. Besides these tools, you should always take a look at their content and see what the comments section looks like. Are they genuine comments asking questions and engaging, or is it a bunch of spammy comments that make no sense? This gives you an idea of the kind of engagement your campaign will get.
Poorly Done Campaigns
At the end of the day, influencing and content creation are jobs, and not everyone is good at their jobs. Some campaigns are very well done, with influencers promoting businesses to their followers in an engaging way. Other campaigns are done lazily, with influencers who clearly don’t know much about the product and haven’t bothered to research it; sometimes they’re poorly edited, and so on.
This sort of sloppy work reflects poorly not just on the influencer but on the brand itself. One way to get around this is to stipulate in the contract that you have final approval before the content goes live. Before the influencer posts a video or picture of themselves using your product, you get to review and approve it. If the influencer mispronounces your business name, seems unenthusiastic, or the content is poorly edited, you can decline publication.
Campaigns Not Following Schedule
Typically, when you’re doing influencer marketing, you follow a larger campaign timeline. If your project launches on a certain date, you might want all the influencers to post about it on that day and so on. One of the worst things you can do is chase an influencer to post on a specific day when they aren’t responding to messages.
This is not only frustrating but can derail the campaign timeline altogether. To avoid this, specify plainly what day and time the posts have to go up. You can also stipulate, depending on the platform, that posts be scheduled in advance and ask for proof. As a final precaution, make only a partial payment to the creator with the rest contingent on them posting in advance. If they have received full payment, they may be flippant about posting on time, but if the balance depends on their performance, they will be more punctual.
Undefined Deliverables
One of the worst things you can do for yourself when pursuing blockchain influencer marketing is not specifying the deliverables. Simply telling an influencer to post about your business is not enough. Ideally, when you approach the influencer, you should already have a campaign brief written. This brief should specify how many posts will go up, what format the post will take (photo or video), how long they will be published for, when they will be published, what links, codes, or mentions will be included, and so on. With this document, there is no back-and-forth about how many posts were agreed on or when a post was supposed to go up. This protects all parties.
Wrong Links/Tags
Imagine an influencer posting about your business, getting lots of traction from it, but linking to a faulty URL or tagging the wrong account? This could be a PR disaster, so you have to avoid it. This is simple: you can send the influencer the links and accounts to post so you are not relying on their own carefulness. On platforms like Instagram, you can even collaborate on posts, which means that both of you have to approve it going forward. This also reduces the chance of the wrong links or accounts being tagged.
Influencer Ghosting
Another nightmare scenario for many businesses is paying an influencer to run a campaign, only for them to disappear. This means not only wasted money, but also time spent creating briefs, communicating back and forth, and so on.
You can take several steps to prevent this. First, whenever possible, engage only with influencers and content creators who have worked with brands before. If they have launched several campaigns before, they already know the ropes and are less likely to be scammers. As much as possible, engage with influencers using agencies.
Here at Proleo, for example, we’ve launched several influencer marketing campaigns and have access to a roster of vetted creators who have never run off with anyone’s money. In addition, the middleman pays for campaigns in batches. They pay a certain percentage upfront and reserve the balance until after the campaign is completed. This mitigates risk for both parties.
Conclusion
While blockchain influencer marketing can be a great way to expand your business’s customer base, the process can come with several issues. From poorly executed campaigns to influencers running off with your money, these issues can derail marketing efforts. Thankfully, we’ve highlighted these issues and how to avoid them. Reach out to us at Proleo the next time you’re considering a blockchain influencer marketing campaign, and we’ll make sure none of these pitfalls become an issue.
