HOW TO AVOID LOSS-MAKINGINFLUENCER CAMPAIGNS

Introduction 

All marketers could be divided into those who hate and those who are crazy about influencer marketing. As you might have guessed, we’re in love with it.

First of all, influencer marketing, or so-called “KOL marketing,” is a great tool that could help you with brand awareness and grow sales. But when we’re talking about the crypto space, we must admit that bloggers can easily affect or even change potential investors’ opinions, drive sales, and grow the project you promote to where you want it to be.

However, even with these loud promises, there are always pitfalls around. If you would tell me that a marketing campaign with crypto influencers is a waste of a big amount of money on poor-quality content posted on a talent’s account with a fake audience who can also put your promo next to a scam project - you’ll definitely be right. But you’re wrong at the same time as you could lose a great benefit such as a number of holders and token price growth. 

Here’re our 7 tips to ensure you won’t spend a fortune on a pacifier and become closer to your marketing goal.  

Tip 1. Detect the main “SMART” goal

First, analyze the project and your current market position. Find your perfect Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely goal. We all know this formula perfectly well, although we see a lot of mistakes in practice when it comes to campaign planning with clients. And as a result, you may face a lot of pop-up difficulties such as missed deadlines, mismatch of expectations with reality, poor results (especially if they were initially unrealistic), and cancellation of campaigns altogether.

Tip 2. Choose the platform

The crypto topic is trending on many social platforms, from mainstream ones to niche ones. The most popular spaces among crypto enthusiasts full of Web3 influencers are: YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Telegram, and Discord, while the less popular ones are TikTok and Instagram. Any of these comes with its own rules, trends, and formats. To choose the best one, try focusing on how to reach your goal and make this path as easy as possible. Build and analyze several user flows on different platforms, from the influencer's post to your final point. The easiest “flow” would undoubtedly bring you more leads. For example, if we want to grow freefloat of the token, we would try to explain the project’s true value via Youtube crypto influencers with integrations and full reviews. We will lead them to the Telegram community and use community marketing to convince them that the project is worth it.

Tip 3. Decide what kind of influencers you need

We’re not talking about a blogger’s volume or the number of followers, views, comments, or even approximate budget per a talent. Old rules of classic influencer marketing simply don’t work here.  
Think about the relevance of the creator, and the specific topic he/she/they are disclosing in their blog. The more native and organic your project would be integrated = the better.

Tip 4. Check the influencer's account and the content

We highly recommend looking through every single account, watching the content, then assessing the quality and style of content delivery. Remember: a successful influencer campaign isn’t about number of followers or views; it is about impact and quality. Whales won’t spend their time on someone who promotes scams or shows unrealistic graphics promising the moon. The crypto space is full of scammers and cheaters. Easy steps to detect them:

• Compare the number of views to likes and comments; it should be around 100/1. 
• Make sure the comments are relevant, not copy-pasted, and in the same language as the content itself. 
• Use analytic tools (even free ones) to see deeper metrics such as graphics of views, audience’s GEO and gender data, ER, etc. For example, this is the graphic of views on a YouTube video you could see by downloading one of those free extensions to your browser:

Those two screenshots show us how artificial or bought views look like. We see how the views were growing on the first, second, third, and seventh day and how many views there were in a month. We see a straight trend line on the first screenshot, but usually, the video accumulates most of the views in the first 2-3 days. In the second screenshot, YouTube algorithms noticed bought views and simply swept them.

Tip 5. Negotiate the rate

There is no doubt that crypto market rates have gone absolutely crazy compared with other niches. But it doesn’t mean you can’t negotiate the price with even the best crypto influencers. We’re here to tell you: “Don’t be afraid to bargain.” Try to predict the number of views/impressions and count CPM. Take an average cost and calculate how much you can offer the blogger. If this rate is too far from the original one - you could still politely offer it or offer a bit higher price if you’re sure this influencer would bring you results. 
Use your communication skills, and offer compelling reasons why your offer is fair enough. Tell them what you can offer in exchange for that discount. For instance, you are interested in a long-term engagement or you can offer a kind of discount on your product or service or issue your tokens or NFTs as a part of the rate.

Tip 6. Take a test campaign

Don’t expect your test campaign to nail it on the first try. You need to start, wait until the results are measurable, analyze them, and optimize the whole process. Sometimes teams need a few test campaigns to find the best source of positive results and invest in something that really works. It follows that dividing your budget and not burning it for your first trial campaign is a great idea for sure. And remember: to make your test significant, you’d better collect enough data and a wide variety of collabs. From experience, testing different formats, platforms, and even GEOs will give you a lot of analytical data that will lead you to the desired result. After changing the target GEO this spring, we increased NFT sales 17 times.

Tip 7. Build lomg-term relationships

As mentioned above, influencers are always ready to give you a friendly discount if you want to partner with them for the long term. Also, their audience is more likely to trust something bloggers promote over a long period to maintain trust. That’s why long-term relationships are mutually beneficial for influencers and brands.

Conclusion

Even if influencer marketing seems unprofitable and ROI is tough to measure - try to stay a data-driven company, keep an eye on the process and give it some time to become fully measurable. Even those simple steps can make a big difference and save your budget.

Never underplay the role of influencers in your crypto projects, as they can make your brand reputation stronger or mar it. We’re here to prove that crypto influencer marketing isn’t about spending money for nothing; it is the best investment in the future of your brand. So as one smart guy said: