Three mistakes retail brands make when working with influencers

Working with influencers is not a new approach within the retail sector, with more and more brands realising the benefits of using social media personalities to showcase their products to a new audience. However, working with can be a tricky business and here are three mistakes you should avoid to ensure that your campaign doesn’t fall flat.

Working with the wrong influencers

Choosing which influencers to work with requires a lot more research than simply looking at how many followers they have. This person will be representing your brand, so it’s important that you choose an influencer who holds the same attitudes and values as your company. Be sure to do your research and screen all potential influencers for their online reputation

As well as this, rather than looking just at the number of followers a person has, you need to make sure that the followers themselves are in line with your target audience. Quality over quantity is crucial when working with influencers; for example, if you’re a childrens’ wear brand, working with a family blogger with a social following of 10,000 parents will likely offer a higher ROI than working with an extreme sports vlogger with a social following of 100,000 adrenaline junkies.

Lacking authenticity

Having a strong brand is crucial to any marketing campaign, so it can often be difficult to loosen the reigns over how influencers share your products. However, a common mistake many retail brands often make when working with influencers on a campaign is to insist on canned statements and heavily edited content. On the one hand, this ensures that the influencer remains ‘on-brand’ but it can often backfire by harming the authenticity of the collaboration.

By allowing influencers to stay true to their own voice and share your brand in a way that is in tune with their own personality, you will reach their audience in a more natural, and authentic way.

Not tracking the campaign

As with any other digital marketing campaign, tracking the ROI should be paramount. You wouldn’t commission a TV advertisement without analysing the effect of the activity, so an influencer marketing campaign should be no different

Unlike other avenues, such as PPC, the exact ROI of influencer marketing can be a little more difficult to track. However, this shouldn’t put you off working with influencers as long as you establish the metrics right from the start. These could include, the total shares, engagements (in terms of comments and clicks) and sales based on direct traffic or use of a discount code specific to that influencer. It’s crucial that these are clearly set out before the campaign goes live, as failure to do so could result in all your hard work going to waste.

We can help! Give our fashion retail team a call today on, 0800 011 9715 or visit Fashion Digital Marketing.