Don't do this if you want to succeed at influencer marketing for your brand

The one thing brands are doing to completely kill any chance of success with influencer marketing.

I’ve interviewed a lot of creators who have worked with hundreds of brands, and what’s the first thing they all say about the campaign they hated working on, and the ones that ultimately tanked?

The brand had a super strict creative brief.

How do brands get to a place where they have such strict requirements?

There’s a number of factors that play into this mindset:

• Established brands who spend a shitton on influencer marketing have learned a lot about what “works for conversions” (which could mean signups or sales). This leads them to impose strict guidelines on a creator based on what worked for another creator. Here’s the problem- not all creators have the same style, talk to their audience the same way or pitch products exactly like someone else does. And when you force a creator to pitch like someone else, their audience can sense that inauthenticity, and lack of genuine interest in the brand, and the campaign metrics will reflect this as well.

• For startups on the other hand, or companies that are just getting started with influencer marketing- it can be a lot of pressure to justify the influencer marketing budget back to a Founder or Head of Marketing who’s obsessed with metrics and conversions.

• Both of these scenarios, the company is undervaluing the benefit of the increase in brand awareness and enhancement in brand sentiment that influencer marketing can drive.

• When we run campaigns (influencer, or organic), and we don’t see the immediate conversions we would have hoped to see, it’s easy for a brand to pull budget away, or otherwise deduce that it’s not “working.” But, consumers on average need ~7 touch points with a brand before they’ll decide to try it or buy their product! So raising awareness about your brand, warming customers up to your company, getting them interested in your product are all worthwhile steps to invest in before they ever make their purchasing decision.

Was this email forwarded to you? And are you enjoying reading about influencer marketing?

Need more proof?

Here’s what content creator Joe Fenti has to say on the topic of stiffling creative briefs 🤣 

Have you checked out our podcast yet?! We interview brands and creators on both sides of the creator economy that are crushing it with influencer marketing. Follow the podcast on Spotify or Apple and take a listen below!

If your company has been considering starting or revving up your B2B influencer marketing, pop over to my website! It's kinda my thing 😉

💌 And lastly, if you enjoyed this edition, forward it to your coworker, your co-founder, your head of marketing, your cousin’s friend that’s an influencer, you get it.

Thanks for reading!

-AB