Influencer Marketing: How you definitely missed out on influencers

“Influenza? What have you caught yourself again?! Because influencer marketing, i.e. the cooperation between companies and opinion leaders in the social media world, does not seem to have been fully understood by many companies. At least that’s my personal experience, which I want to report on in this post. 

Influencer marketing can make sense, both for companies and for influencers themselves. When used correctly in the right target group, influencer marketing can be very effective. Unfortunately, however, many companies do not put enough effort into getting there.

From cheeky inquiries to really brazen demands to deal offers that are simply outside of the gray areas of Google and can cost a sensitive manual measure, I have personally experienced everything. So this post is more from the “Let’s See What Sucked” category and is primarily intended to inspire companies to better prepare themselves for working with influencers. 

Tip: A contract between influencers and companies makes many things easier! It clearly defines what to expect and what is going on outside the agreed deal. An investment that quickly pays off for influencers and marketers. Here you can buy the contract from easycontracts.de.

My experiences from the perspective of an influencer

The article reflects the experiences of my wife Heidi and me. Together we run the projects meerdavon (travel blog), Happy Coffee (coffee magazine and shop) and this blog LetsSeeWhatWorks (entrepreneur / founder blog). The three projects receive around 15 requests for partnerships per month, which I would classify in the Influencer Marketing category. Most of them come for meerdavon, an online magazine (blog) in a clearly defined niche target group: people in Germany who enjoy surfing and travel to places where you can surf. Here we should share our thoughts with you for your help and guidance. Social Captain is the best site to Buy Instagram Followers and Likes at a very cheap rate. Because this site has more profitable services we recommended you to get all of these services about social media from this site. Influencers are also use this site for Instagram services. 

Inquiries are piling up, especially at sea. No wonder, because although the blog (valued in pure numbers) is rather one of the smaller ones in Germany, the niche for surf camps or schools, surf board or surf clothing manufacturers or other companies in the scene can be quite attractive. A week in a surf camp week quickly costs € 700, flights to Bali € 500-800, a new surfboard € 400-800, a wetsuit € 400 or more. When I look back on my own years as a vacation surfer, total budgets of € 1,000 per vacation week and person were not uncommon. There are also optional lifestyle products such as clothing, event tickets and media stuff.

Surfers and especially aspiring surfers spend a lot of money on surfing lifestyle, of which many companies would like to get a bit. 

Our base

Objectively speaking, our blog is still small, but in our niche it is one that is regularly found and mentioned. At the time of this writing, we have around 20,000 monthly blog readers, 13,000 fans on Facebook and around 3,000 followers on Instagram. 

The basis for our surf and travel blog is our own lifestyle. We are flexible, travel as digital nomads ourselves to the places we report on and write firsthand. We are surfers ourselves and travelers all the time. 

Our stories and experiences are written with high demands on the texts. Each contribution is lovingly composed and is in the end a unique, exciting and authentic story. We were even recently awarded an award for our claim to quality. You can read more about the cooperation opportunities that we offer here.

Heidi Christian Java work

Heidi and I in our “office” at a surfer location in Java, Indonesia

Of course I’m proud of the development of the project, but I am aware that we are still a small number in the world of influencer marketing. But that’s not the point here. Because even our current reach already gives a good insight into what influencer marketing means for many companies. Sometimes really terrifying, but see for yourself!

When influencer marketing fails when it comes to making contact

Anyone who makes the effort as an agency or company to write an email to a potential advertising partner (influencer) should have had a look at the website beforehand. Just to know who he is dealing with. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But apparently it is not. These are the most common faux pas that we have already experienced in our young influencer years. Here are the funniest and cheekiest requests we’ve received in the past few months:

1. The classic beginner mistakes

The classics include banal things such as the wrong language or form of address: “Mister” instead of “Ms.” or an incorrectly spelled name occurs in almost every third query. And why is a German agency writing me a German blog in English? And who is Ms. Müller? It is not uncommon for companies to be overwhelmed with email copy & pastes.

What is also not uncommon is the wrong sport to which we are addressed. Of course, sea is about the sea, but we are surfers, not windsurfers, kiters or golfers.

Incidentally, not only are mistakes made in terms of content, the form also does not always seem to be clear. We blog online. We cannot do anything about advertising in our print magazine. There is no such thing.

I find the “funniest” emails in which the tables are suddenly turned over. Instead of talking about the possibilities WE can offer the company, we should suddenly deliver something … Really funny, but something like that is important to us:

Please, find attached all details of this new establishment.

In the meantime, please, we would like to request your media kit and one free sample of your last printed magazine as well as your best offer

Already in the first email (in bad English from a German agency) the tables are turned. Suddenly we should make a “best offer” and send a “free sample” (of something we don’t have)? In that case, all hope was lost. We simply deleted the email.

2. When content agencies come with “high quality content”

Every blogger has already received this request from SEO agencies, which supposedly want to offer “1000-1500 words of high-quality content suitable for our target group” without any sort. These requests are particularly annoying because 

the mails never have an opt-out link (they never asked for an opt-in),

these agencies expect to place the content without paying (because the content is so special and high quality), and 

the topic environment never really fits. Mostly there are some job or gambling pages behind it and the text is mostly a copy & paste snippet collection from Wikipedia and other blog posts.