6 Influencer Marketing Mistakes That Waste Your Budget by Lucinda Honeycutt #436

Hi, and welcome to the SEO Podcast, Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebResults. My name is Matt Bertram, your sales guy. And apparently today you're selling t-shirts. Is that what you're doing? You couldn't, what's the story here? Well, no, I'm not. By the way, for you YouTubers and Facebook Livers, Matt, well, describe what's going on. It's like, shh, shh, shh, I got my watches. No, no, I'm not really selling t-shirts today. I was just talking about my productivity the last two weeks, but what I decided is we've really started to go with these t-shirts and everybody's adding, yeah, exciting ideas and we keep growing. We were going to do like four or five, now we're at like 20, and I was looking at these t-shirts and I couldn't decide which ones to wear, so I just took the printout of all of them. And you're wearing literally all the t-shirts right now. So we got, let's see, we got Do You SEO, that's nice and simple. I'm going to save that one for last because it's my favorite. Oh, yeah. Shacow Us, right? So that's one. Marketing is bigger in Texas. That's pretty solid. We all know that. Making marketing great again with the Trump hair swish on it. That's pretty cool. And then a lot of text. Even our content writer was like, that's a lot of text. Well, this was based off of a popular shirt here about Houston. But we have more. These were just all the ones. So the one that I like is, so Star Wars style SEO results, right? So imagine Star Wars SEO results. And on the back it says, may the rank be with you. Yes. I'm going to be wearing that shirt a lot. Yeah. That might be my go-to shirt for the podcast. We should probably order different colors so that it doesn't look like a uniform. Black. So if you're interested in a t-shirt, and you should be, you can get it at eWebResults.com slash swag. I was

like, we had that one right. This is podcast number 436. As always, we have a tip from our previous podcast. And that tip is? Don't forget about influencer marketing. It's pretty simple. And actually, that's what we're going to be talking about today in this podcast, podcast number 436. Last time, we were talking about internet marketing trends that you can no longer ignore in 2018. Make sure that you subscribe, follow, boom! All right. We are filming live here in Houston, Texas. Matt and I, we are your results rebels! I've got to jump into this review real quick. This is from R. Graves Jr., who may be one of the best friends of Adam. We don't know. Or may not be. He's at least named similarly. Or identically, I think. But no junior. We don't know I'm the junior. Yeah. So, punch in the face right up front, Mr. R. Graves. Title is Content Great, Audio Isn't. Oh, sorry. Sorry about that. Whoa! Yeah. That was a downer. Awesome. It is still five stars. Hey guys, keep up with the good work. I like the casual approach and expertise. Very enjoyable to listen to. One point of improvement would be audio. Voices are not the same volume. The music is then inherently even too loud in comparison. You guys are worth it. Upgrade your audio. No, I'm telling you, when I listen to stuff, that's the worst thing. I have to turn up the volume way up to here. Or then get blasted. And then the intro or the exit is so loud. Yep. We've got to get that right. I think, you know, I was just kind of done with that, Chris. And so, like, we just got a new location. New podcast studio. Yeah, yeah. We got a new location. Deb has a specific podcast studio in it. That's our fix. That's our fix. I ain't dealing with this stuff anymore. So, this is interesting. I like how this works. We make the podcast in a different room, but the editing is the problem. All

right. We will hire. Actually, we're looking for. I know that this is later on in the podcast. If you are in Houston. Yes. And you do editing. And you do photography. And you do video. Video. And if you do social media, it's a big plus. We are hiring. Yep. If you know anybody in this area, we need you. All the podcast listeners need you, too. Yeah. So, please, give us a call. Reach out to us. Get on my calendar. Let's talk. Yeah. 713-592-6728. Is that it? 6-2-4. 6-7-2-4. How do you not know that? It's been the phone number. I'm looking at a different phone number from old times. So, all right. So, each, if you're visiting us again, then you might be interested in a tip. You can get five online marketing mistakes that can take your business. I don't know if you can. Yeah, no. It's there. We got that up, and we got a bunch of other stuff. So, just go to eWebResults.com and go to resources and resource guides. And you will get that teaser. The article we are talking about. So, we mentioned in our tip, the article is Six Influencer Marketing Mistakes That Waste Your Budget, this is by Lucinda Honeycutt. Punch in the face to you, Lucinda. Yes. We really appreciate the article that you wrote. It was really good. We're going to dive into that soon. If you've never been to the podcast before, howdy. And welcome to the podcast. We are glad you're here. We're going to get through this potatoes, and we'll be to the meat here very shortly. Again, if you've listened before, we run a contest each and every week. The way the contest works is, if we get 10 Shikos. A share, a like, and a fault. Right here. Right here. Right here. Shiko Us is the t-shirt that he's wearing third from the left. All at the same time, if we get 10 Shikos and a review, then we move to the end of the show how you can connect with us,

where you can leave us a review, just kind of as a courtesy fun thing that we do. And if you sign up for a profit plan, get a t-shirt and a book. Yep. And a book. And a book. I just threw that in. You're just throwing in the book. I'm just throwing in the book. For the next five. For the next five. We had a meeting earlier today, it was like tossing out a book. And you get a book. And you get a book. And you get a book. Like, the table next to us was like, I don't know what this book is for. What are we? Thank you. And you get a book. Again, we do have shirts. That's at ewebresults.com slash swag. Please check those out. If you would like a free website analysis, you can get that from us, one of our internet marketing specialists here at ewebresults. Just go to ewebresults.com. Yeah. And then click the link. Yeah, click the link. Well, we should add a button at the top because you like to say button and people like to click the button. But you said on the last podcast, the next five people. Get a shirt. That's sign up for a free website analysis. Get a t-shirt. Well, we're just giving stuff away right now. We're just. Yeah. Next five. So sign up. Sign up. Yeah. Get that started. Let's see. I think that's it. We are. That's the potatoes of the podcast. All right. Let's jump into this. Time to get into the meat. All right. Again, six influencer marketing mistakes that waste your budget. By the way, if you have some sort of electronic device and you're in a position to shakow us or when you shako us, there's a sound you should hear in the back of your mind, which is shakow. We got to get into this article. People are trying to fast forward. Okay. We can't. Yeah. We'll do that. Well, but we do want you to tweet and we also definitely want you to

tweet Lucinda. We do. We do. Hashtag SEO podcast. This is podcast number 436. At best SEO podcast. At eWebResults. At Matt Bertram Live. At eWebResults. Chris. EWeb Chris. Chris versus eWeb. Chris versus eWeb. Thank you. Somebody has to know that. And then at capital L, capital E, capital H, as in Honeycutt, L-E, Honeycutt. I do think the caps matter with Twitter. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm just doing that just in case. And let her know you're listening to the podcast and we're talking about her article. Six Influencer Marketing Mistakes That Waste Your Budget. She says that actually influencer marketing is really valuable. Potentially returning $11.20 for every paid media dollar spent used improperly. It's just a waste of your budget. I'm interested in that study. I need to go back to that link and see where she's getting those numbers. So she talks about marketing methods, the old chestnets, product, place, price, and promotion. She says those are out. What's in now is preference, personalization, performance, and promotion. And podcast. And podcast. And profit plan. Profit plan. From problems to profit plan. All the P's. All the P's. Good influencers know what their audience want and they deliver it in a way that's highly personal to their audience. So this is why you should be listening to this podcast and influencers and kind of engaging influencers. So the number one, right? Number one influencer marketing mistake is being seduced by the numbers, right? So this is not one of those obvious things. You're like, hey, I'm going to pay somebody to promote my product. They're an influencer. They've got all of these followers. And you've got to keep in mind, a lot of followers may not be a good thing for you, right? Well, there's a couple of reasons. One that she doesn't actually go into. I'll let you, I'll hit this one and then let you go into it. Yeah, yeah. But like, as I'm like vetting influencers, okay, you've got to look at the engagement rates, okay? If you've got $100,000 and

you have two likes or, you know, one share. You don't really have $100,000 followers. They probably bought those followers and it's probably a huge waste of money. So there's actually a couple of really big influencers out there, I'm not going to say, but they have no engagement. There should be an equal kind of ratio between number of followers and engagement. I'm just saying, look for that because if they don't have that, they're not getting the reach and there's something fishy. So, but go into the rest of it. And she just jumps into this and say, you know, traps of assuming that, you know, lots of followers an influencer has, the better return they will, bigger profile equals a higher level of authority. Those things just aren't, you know, like Matt was saying, just aren't necessarily true. Those with 100,000 plus social media eyeballs, we should exercise caution. A lot of those followers will fall outside your target range. So even if they are engaged, right? Like maybe those are because of the variety of followers, they're not your target market. We always talk about target, offer, copy, target. You want a nine out of 10. If you get a nine out of 10 on target, you're going to make it, right? That's one of the things. Then you got to get the offer right and then the copy is okay. It's like, do you want a hundred leads or 10 great leads? Yeah. Like, you know, or whatever, something like that. You get it. Paying money to have your message shown to people who have zero interest in what you're doing is just a waste of money. Engagement levels actually fall dramatically as the number of followers rise. That's what you were talking about. And she really kind of sums it up. Instead, we would be wise to identify exactly who we're hoping to reach. That is, of course, the oldest trick in the marketing book and use a number of smaller, low level influencers, quote unquote, level influencers to reach them. These are typically

going to be non-celebrities. Yeah. And they're packing a small but devoted and most importantly, trusting group of followers. So Chris, I feel like this is the perfect time. Yeah. For you to do a little promotion on your other business, okay, just from the sake of the influencer marketing, right? So we had the lunch today with some great prospects. You shared with what you were doing on YouTube, right? And you were talking about Cliff High. Yeah. And you want to kind of tell that story a little bit? So I can. The power of influencer marketing. Yeah. So the company is SES Research and it ends up, ultimately, it started off as a carbon nanomaterial manufacturing and distribution business. It still is and now is in the supplement business just because of some research that was done back in 2012. Last year, there's a gentleman by the name of Cliff High who's on YouTube. He's clearly an influencer. He's more an influencer in the Bitcoin space, right? Investment in Bitcoin. Yeah. And he started talking about C60. That's the product that SES Research sells. And all of the industry, except for us because we're the supplier of that raw product, went out of, ran out of stock. Like everybody ran out because one influencer talked about C60 in one YouTube video. Yeah. That's powerful. I mean, I think there was like 1.2 or there might even be more views on just that one YouTube video. Yeah. Right? And so the power of influencer marketing is absolutely there. Put an industry on lock out of the business. Yeah. For a minute. Yeah. Yeah. A whole industry. That's pretty crazy. Yeah. So engagement levels per follower are typically higher when you've got these people who have got a smaller, more devoted, trusting group of followers. So don't just be subduced by the numbers. Number two mistake that you can make is automatically paying. So let's say you like an influencer. You have identified that they're speaking to your target market and you just send off a check. And the

point is, is congratulations. You just paid for something you might've been able to get for next to nothing. And the whole summary of these couple of paragraphs is if your product is awesome and you gave them a free sample, they might rave about it for free. Well, not only that, if you pay sometimes, they just post and then they'll take it down. Yeah. Like, so you want them to legitimately, like legitimately interested in it and wanting to share it. Yeah. And, you know, it becomes a permanent post and it really fits into what they're doing. So yeah, I think you need to wait before you pay, like maybe send them a product, have them test it out, build a relationship. That's what outreach is about. Pick up the phone. Yeah. Pick up the phone. Build that relationship. All right. Number three, failing to track ROI. So one of the beauties of internet marketing over a lot of traditional marketing is that you can actually track the ROI, your return on the investment that you're making. Because remember, marketing is not an expense, it's an investment. Sometimes the investment has zero or negative return. If you're working with us, we're focused on making that positive return on investment. Okay, we won't talk about the call that I just had, but someone was paying a lot for a website and we web shamed him. We did. We actually web shamed him. We felt a little bad afterwards. Because he probably overpaid for his website. Yeah. Yeah. But to call the whole team over and have him look at it with him on the phone, I felt a little bad about that. But he took it in stride. No, sometimes you're in a business, you're trying things, you're making things work and sometimes they could be more efficient. All right. So failing to track it, tracking the return on investment of influencer marketing can be tricky, especially if you're running a number of different campaigns at the same time. I don't feel bad. This is punch in the

face marketing. Yeah. We tell it how it is. Yeah. So you got it. We punched him in the face. Actually, we kicked him in the shins. No, we punched him in the face. Yeah. And kicked him in the shins at the same time. We tripped him. Don't just distribute the same links to all your influencers. Provide each of them with a different trackable link so you can keep track of exactly where your traffic is coming from. That's not rocket science. It's pretty straightforward. It's just a little bit of extra work and it could splash. If you can recognize which influencers are actually contributing to your traffic and ultimately to your sales, then you can spend more money with them and more time. Well, so I had a call with that company. Again, I was talking about it on the last podcast. And basically, we really got into it on if someone gives you an email, it will track. And it's not rocket science either, but it tracks to the infinite degree if this person sent an email or gave you an email, then this person did. And then it's track and share something like with like a JavaScript on like some of these pages. And so you can actually see what influencers are, you know, driving the traffic. And then, you know, I think that that's good for influencers too, because they think, hey, like, you know, you got to think of like, like CPN cost per thousand. Right. Right. If you're getting a hundred for whatever, 10 bucks, like what is it? Like, what is that returning? What is that returning? Could I get that return on Facebook or Google or somewhere else? Right. So, you know, you got to be really careful with influencer marketing, not just think, hey, I'm going to give it this person. They got a hundred thousand followers and, and I'm just going to get a bunch of sales. My a hundred dollars or whatever, a thousand dollars is going to get a return. Don't assume it. Yeah. Yep.

Don't assume it because maybe it's true. And really you shouldn't spend a thousand. You should spend 10,000 with them. Or maybe it's not true and you shouldn't be spending. We haven't got up into that, that echelon yet, but I mean, we're just, we're testing a lot of different things out and you're seeing people. And people that you don't think are providing a lot of influence are and others aren't. You know, so essentially. All right. So, uh, here we are on number four, six influencer marketing mistakes that waste your budget, uh, by Lucinda Honeycutt. Uh, it is failing to disclose, right? So this is very important. I know like there's a big hoopla about the Kardashians and they were, you know, doing tweets and they actually weren't, uh, labeling them as ads. That's what this is about. That's pretty big right now. In the industry, no one's really, uh, going, this is an ad, you know, and people don't want you to say this is an ad. So it's a really interesting thing that we'll see how transparent it becomes with the FTC. But, um, so, so businesses operating in the United States must abide by the federal trade commission guidelines or face this potentially severe consequences. And they say, this is like FTC, if a post or image is an advertisement, it must be clearly labeled as such. It's already happening. So they gave an example and really people are just putting like hashtag ad and the place you're putting it is in a place that in the sentence at the end of one sentence and then you go into the next one. You can still do it effectively. Yeah. Yep. Ads that look spontaneous, like spontaneous endorsements are powerful, but disclosure is required. The good news is that perhaps surprisingly engagement doesn't necessarily suffer when you label it as an ad. So that's, that's kind of cool. No. I mean, you think about all the, uh, what are they called? Celebrity endorsements. Yeah. Like they, you're, they're clearly getting paid for that toothpaste or

whatever. For those shoes or whatever. All right. Mistake number five is providing insufficient guidance. And this is more in terms of, well, this is in general, right? If you're, if you're going to get an influencer to post once or you're going to get them to maybe engage on an ongoing basis with your brand. Some influencers acquire knowledge of your product through ordinary use, and you will only need a limited assistance, primarily related to the brand itself. Um, others, typically those who aren't that familiar with their product will need to be taught about it. Then you need to teach them the USPs, unique selling propositions, how it works, what it does, how to use it, and maybe some basic troubleshooting, uh, shooting tips for those followers who may encourage difficulties. I mean, I think that this goes for like life. Yeah. Yeah. You really, make sure you provide the guidance, right? Yeah. You need, you got to manage everything. Yeah. Yeah. You know, or it'll quickly get off the rails. And finally, six influence marketing mistakes that waste your budget. Number six is putting your influencer in a straight jacket. Ooh. Why? How do you do that? Yeah. So your image is who you are and it can be disastrous to deviate from it. Right. So we all agree with that. When dealing with influencers, we should remember that they also have a certain image that they need to, uh, that they've developed and need to uphold for their followers, forcing them to move away from that comes across as fake, which will damage whatever message they're trying to send on your behalf and also potentially damage them by all means provide guidance as we discussed in, you know, number five, but don't try to zip influencers into a corporate straight jacket. Right. And this is probably the big caveat. You're paying for an authentic voice. Let them use it. I think that's some of the best advice. So, so I, I feel like you want me wearing a suit when we do this. I sent

that memo on podcast number three 40 or whatever. Well, yeah, we were walking into a few meetings. I remember you're like, is that what you're going to wear? And I was like, yeah, I wear that for you. I dressed up. I dressed up specifically. Don't you see the quote? Actually, we should start going to high end meetings with just the t-shirt. Well, we're not in Silicon Valley, but we're trying to bring it here. I mean, we haven't wore the sandals yet or the shorts, but, but, uh, and the unclipped toenails. All right. Whoa. No one do that. So that is the meat of the podcast. Um, if you like this podcast, we ask you to do one simple thing. Please tell three people about the podcast. Share it. And we're going to start tracking influence. And so we'll know who it is, who it is. And we'll give you a t-shirt if you do good. If you personally are looking to grow your business with the largest, simplest marketing tool on the planet, the internet call you are results for increased revenue in your business. 7 1 3 5 9 2 6 7 2 4. I got it right that time. I'm just happy. You know, I practice Friday. I practiced. I don't, I don't know very many numbers, but I know there's a four at the end. Um, Hey, if you want to connect with us on our, on our profiles, on social media, you can do Pinterest, which is pinterest.com slash eWebResults. Uh, YouTube is a little tricky. It's eWebResults.com slash YouTube, uh, Facebook.com slash best SEO podcast or eWebResults. Both of those. Yeah. Uh, Tumblr is eWebResults.com dot Tumblr.com. Yeah. Uh, and then I'm, I'm, how do you pronounce that? I'm your imager, imager, imager. I think it's imager. Sammy, like it's active in that. If y'all are active in some of these not top, well, I don't know, like level tier one. So let's say tier one, tier one. If you're, if you're really active on tier two or tier three,

uh, reach out to us. We'd love to talk to you. You know, maybe we can exchange some kind of value. Uh, yeah. Let us know. Yep. Uh, and then, you know, I don't know. Facebook, we did Facebook already. So, uh, that's good. You can find us guys. You can leave a review. Just Google us. Where do we want to leave us a review? My book. No one left a book review. Oh, yeah. I haven't left a book review. Go on to amazon.com. Look up, build your brand mania and, uh, buy the book. It's how much is it for the ebook? I don't even remember. It's $2.99. $2.99 for the ebook. Yeah. And then just buy it and leave a review immediately. And the review can be about the podcast. And we're going to send out an email to the email list. Please. Like, I, I really, it, I like, it looks sad. Yeah. It looks sad. Poor book. Poor book with not enough review friends. Yep. Yeah. We need, we need a review, sir. I need a review. I know. I, I'm telling you, I, I'm calling you out. It was the most brilliant review possible. I just didn't hit send. But I gave you my Amazon login and you asked me for that for two weeks. Yeah. You finally, okay. So, okay. So now. So I can help you promote the book. Now that you've given me what I need to help you promote the book, I need to leave you a review. Yeah. I mean, I know that they're mutually exclusive, but. We'll get, we'll get this done. By the way, Matt is literally wearing all of our t-shirts right now. Not all of them, but. Well, not all of them. All my, my favorites. Six of them, actually. Yeah. Uh, again, go to ewebresults.com slash swag. Yeah. Um, let us know what t-shirt you like the most. That would be really cool. Yeah. We're going to run a little contest or vote or something. Do not forget that if you sign up

for a 15 to 30 minute, uh, uh, website analysis, uh, first five, get a free t-shirt of their choosing. Yeah. I think two people have signed up. Yeah. Um, so there's three more. Three more left. Yeah. All right. So, uh, this brings us to the end of our podcast. Uh, we are the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. That is because of y'all, all of you all. Thank you so much for listening. Not because of the sound. It's not because of the sound. Not because of the sound. No. And we're working on new thumbnails. A little more pro, professional. Professional thumbnails. Because we're like just a party here. What, what thumbnails? Which thumbnails? On, like, on the different sides. On the actual images? Yeah. Oh. Like, we're, we're upgrading. Oh, oh. We're upgrading. For the portfolio? Is that what you're talking about? Like, on, like, Stitcher and iTunes. Oh, oh, yeah. Like, the thumbnail of the podcast. The podcast image. Yeah. It's just a picture of us. Yeah. Like, there's no text. It's just like, ah. I feel like that's a good thing. Yeah. No, it's fine. Thank you, guys. Keep, uh, keep reaching out to us. Keep connecting with us. We really appreciate you. Until the next podcast, my name is Christopher Rooks. Matt Bertram. Bye-bye. Bye for now.