4 Common Mistakes in Local Influencer Marketing

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Influencer marketing is no longer the raw, untested idea that it was many years ago.

As data suggests, it’s shaped into a highly effective method for numerous marketing purposes.

A localized version of this marketing tactic called local influencer marketing can be even more effective in helping local businesses hook more customers and boost their sales.

However, this does not mean working with local influencers has no drawbacks.

Like every marketer out there, they too can commit mistakes.

This blog outlines four common mistakes in local influencer marketing for you to avoid.

So let’s get started.

Local influencer marketing

What is Local Influencer Marketing?

In local influencer marketing, local brands and small businesses collaborate with influencers in their area to achieve a better marketing outcome.

It’s a contributing element to influencer marketing’s success on the whole.

In general, driving more engagement and finding new customers are two prominent achievements of local influencer marketing.

Local influencers have a small but loyal number of followers who are constantly engaged and delighted by the content influencers share.

Moreover, one crucial factor of local influencers’ success is their profound social influence within a specific demographic.

Giving these small-scale influencers a chance to test your products or services and share their experience with their niche audience is a cost-effective way to attract customers.

Because in today’s saturated markets, it’s not that simple to convince people to purchase something.

That’s where local influencer marketing comes in to help you grab customers’ attention in an authentic, human-friendly manner.

So that was all to inform you of how successful your business could be if deciding to adopt a local influencer marketing strategy.

Now let’s move on to finding these influencers.

How Do I Find Local Instagram Influencers?

The first thing you can do to find local Instagram influencers is to consider using an Instagram influencer discovery platform.

Our recommendation is to use Ainfluencer for finding influencers that best suit your business’s needs.

Their platform has the following benefits:

  • Do everything is free of charge
  • Run fully-customized influencer marketing campaigns
  • Explore and invite niche-relevant influencers to your campaigns
  • Secure payments after verifying the post
  • Real-time metrics of influencers’ accounts

You can also find influencers the old-school way.

For this, you can search for thousands of Instagram influencers through Instagram features such as keywords, hashtags, location, and the Explore section.

Just type in a few keywords and see who’s putting the most trending content out there.

We’ve detailed the steps for finding local influencers in a separate blog post. Check it out here.

4 Mistakes in Local Influencer Marketing

Mistakes are common in every industry, and influencer marketing is not an exception.

Anyway, we’re all humans and subject to making mistakes.

Even so, being informed helps us to avoid them as much as we can.

In the next section, we point out four critical issues that are common in local influencer marketing.

1.      Ineffective influencer marketing plan

Brands and businesses should consider writing a clear, actionable marketing plan to extract the best possible results.

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Some owners and marketers think that influencers can have everything worked out for every business to market their products or services.

No doubt influencers are familiar with marketing principles to various degrees.

But that doesn’t mean they’re going to provide you with a plan as well.

You’re the one who has to inform them of your marketing goals

This can be quickly done by drawing up an influencer contract to clearly define your expectations and purposes.

However, keep in mind that the expectations should be down-to-earth and realistic.

2.      Picking the wrong influencer

Picking the wrong influencer is the second common mistake in local influencer marketing.

This issue partly occurs due to having unrealistic expectations of influencers.

Perhaps you think influencers have the Genie’s lamp and can transform your business upside down overnight.

That’s not gonna happen. Influencers are humans, just like you and I.

You reach out to them to ask for their cooperation in promoting your brand.

Another reason you may end up working with the wrong influencers is not having access to their profiles’ metrics.

You should first evaluate the influencer’s social media channels to make sure you’re making the right choice.

This is where we want to again stress the importance of using influencer marketing platforms such as Ainfluencer.

Their services let you find authentic local influencers who have a faithful base of followers and appropriate engagement rates.

3.      Forgetting to assess the marketing outcomes

Setting and measuring your marketing plan’s KPIs is as essential as setting business goals.

After your influencer marketing campaign is finished, you need to work on measuring the campaign’s results.

Again you can choose to perform this manually or get help from an influencer marketing website.

Ainfluencer lets you track everything from the start right up to the end by providing you with analytics, including likes, comments, clicks (if applicable), and more.

These are key influencer metrics that each brand needs to access to correctly evaluate its influencer marketing outcomes.

For instance, one of your business’s goals may be to increase Instagram engagement.

Therefore you should track the progress based on the number of likes, comments, and new followers.

4.      Inviting influencers for a single post

Finally, brands may be making a mistake when choosing to work with a local influencer just for a single post.

In this case, it appears more like advertising and won’t positively affect a brand’s credibility.

Ideally, you should try to look for ways to collaborate with an influencer on a long-term basis.

Moreover, collaborating with a non-niche influencer is another trap most owners and marketers may fall into.

As a result, chances are anything these influencers recommend won’t seem as authentic as expected to their audience, leading to a complete failure of your influencer marketing plan.

Recap

To sum it up, local influencer marketing is a straightforward yet tricky strategy for any local business or brand.

It’s tricky when you’re not familiar with possible pitfalls ahead of you.

We hope now that you’re familiar with the four common mistakes in local influencer marketing, you’ll be better able to avoid them.

However, these mistakes were the most common ones.

There are, of course, others that we might’ve missed.

Have you made other mistakes while trying to implement your business’s influencer marketing strategy?

Share your experiences with us in the comment section below.

Cyrus Nambakhsh

Cyrus is a serial entrepreneur, product-led-growth expert, a product visionary who launched 7 startups. He has built scalable platforms to help businesses and entrepreneurs. Contact: Cyrus@ainfluencer.com