Take a look at the total brand mentions made by your target influencers, and analyze the level of engagement you have with them.

As a marketer, you’re probably familiar with the impact of influencer marketing on engagement and business performance. However, it’s not easy to take on this method of marketing. There are several influencer marketing challenges that you might face as you get started.

In 2015, a report from Augure showed the various challenges encountered when marketing a business through influencers. In this article, I’ll focus on helping you overcome the various influencer marketing challenges to reach your conversion goals.

Challenge #1: Identifying The Right Influencers

The Augure report showed that identifying the right influencers takes the #1 spot for the biggest influencer marketing challenges. The most influential authority figures can vary significantly based on the type of business you own and audience you’re targeting.

A study conducted by Forbes and EliteDaily revealed that only 1% of millennials will trust an advertisement. Meanwhile, 33% of millennials trust blogs when making a purchase decision.

These numbers clearly show that marketers are dealing with a whole new generation of consumers. This means you’ll have to look for influencers that have a sway over this generation. However, your choice of influencer will vary greatly if your target audience is predominantly working mothers rather than digital marketers. So what’s the best way to choose the right influencers? Here are a few tips to overcome these influencer marketing challenges:

Like any other marketing channel, you must start by knowing your audience. What do they like? What motivates them? Try to determine what kind of people they admire. For instance, athletes, fitness Instagrammers, and fitness bloggers would be your ideal influencers if your product is about sports equipment or workout gear.

Adidas and Nike provide an excellent example of this. The sports brands are partnering with fitness Instagrammers like the Australian sisters Base Body Babes.

You can use tools like BuzzSumo, LinkedIn, and Klout and Ninja Outreach to find top influencers in your company’s niche. From there, check out the type of content they create and share.

When you’re looking at potential influencers, scroll through their content or images to see if they align with what you’re trying to convey. For example, not all food bloggers will suit a brand that sells organic ingredients. An influencer must be able to express your brand’s unique personality through their content. Picking correctly will limit your influencer marketing challenges.

Once you’ve shortlisted potential influencers for your brand, measure the influence they have on their audience and see if that’s what you’re looking for. Take note of the number of followers they have and their ability to engage with this audience. Are their posts managing to attract lots of shares and comments along with the likes?

Challenge #2: Finding The Right Engagement Tactic

According to the Augure study cited above, finding the right tactic to engage with influencers is a challenge for 69% of marketers. Grabbing influencers’ attention is one of the biggest influencer marketing challenges. Maybe you’re not communicating your messages and offers in a manner that interests them. You need to watch your words and actions from the moment you start making contact with them. Here are some ideas for engaging with your influencers:

Try to get to know your potential influencers better. Find out what interests them and what kind of content they enjoy sharing. This helps you select the right approach for reaching out to them. Building a strong connection with them will reduce your influencer marketing challenges.

Let influencers know that you’re following them. Take the time to sign up for their blogs or newsletters. Follow them on several social media accounts. Show that you like their content by actively sharing it with your own audience. Reply to some posts and tweets, but avoid doing this too excessively.

After awhile, you can reach out to influencers by sending a personalized email introducing yourself and explaining your proposition. There are many channels to contact influencers, but email is considered to be the most suitable. 66% of marketers prefer email according to a 2014 Augure survey.

Writing an influencer outreach email opens a few other influencer marketing challenges. Choose your words carefully to be clear about what you’re asking for. Explain exactly what benefits your campaign will offer them. What type of compensation are you giving influencers? You could provide financial payments, social media shout-outs, discounts, giveaways, or commissions.

Challenge #3: Keeping Track Of Your Influencers’ Activity

The Augure report on influencer marketing challenges also showed that keeping track of influencers’ activities is difficult for 32% of marketers. It’s especially tough if you’re working with a large number of influencers across different niches. However, here are a few handy tricks for simplifying the process:

It’s smart to establish a plan and procedure for influencers to update you on their activities. Ask influencers how it would be most convenient for them to keep you posted when they create content concerning your brand. You’ll then be in the loop about their posting schedule to better keep track of their activities.

When working with influencers, you’ll need to maintain a detailed Excel spreadsheet like the free Influencer Marketing Campaign template or check how to guide on influencer marketing to know the use of the template.

This tracker allows you to keep all the information you gather on each influencer for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Add more columns to track the content they’re created for or with you. Also record the performance of each post.

Challenge #4: Measuring The Performance Of Your Program

Measuring how the program performs is another of the top influencer marketing challenges for 53% of marketers. You may find yourself investing plenty of money on influencer marketing, but what’s the point if you don’t know whether your efforts are effective? Perhaps the reason behind this issue is that you simply don’t know what to measure. Here are a few ways to tackle this challenge and effectively gauge your influencer marketing ROI:

Measure your success in engaging and developing relationships with your influencers. For instance, take a look at the total brand mentions made by your target influencers. Analyze the level of engagement you have with them.

Keep a close eye on how success with your influencers has impacted your target audience. Measure the overall brand mentions, social following, and influencer-driven referral traffic. This helps you determine whether you’re overcoming key influencer marketing challenges too.

Evaluate the impact of the campaign on your organization as a whole. For example, check out how many qualified leads the marketing program has generated. You can also measure your performance through the overall revenue influencer marketing has helped you generate.

Measuring all these metrics manually isn’t easy. Making use of helpful analytics and influencer marketing tools like Traackr. This tool gives you a detailed report regarding the above metrics, including brand mentions and estimated impressions.

Conclusion

There are a number of influencer marketing challenges, but the ones discussed here are most commonly faced by marketers. It’s my hope that you now have a better idea about what to do when you’re faced with such influencer marketing challenges. Perhaps you can even prevent these issues altogether. Always remember that for your campaign to be successful, you need to devote time to building strong relationships with influencers.

Article Written By: Shane Barker with Social Media Week