Influencer Marketing: A New Way to E-commerce Success

 Modern-day marketing has ruled out the strategies used in traditional marketing, thanks to the fast-growing internet accessibility. Millennials get influenced by people’s recommendations mentioned before buying a product or using a service. It’s so easy to twist minds with one recommendation from a social media influencer. This is how influencer marketing has been topping the list of digital marketing strategies of this modern era with the maximum ROI. Among these strategies, influencer marketing has gained 35% of ROI, SEO has 30%, the social ad has 22% and SEM has 12%.  

Influencer marketing has garnered attention of millions who agree to endorse products, increase brand awareness, boost engagement and drive sales. There is a paradigm shift in the thinking of people as soon as a product is promoted by an influencer on social media channels. It is one of the best ways to build trust among customers about the brand products or services. For influencer marketing to thrive in e-commerce business, some keys factors should be considered:

1. Discover your social channels   

 Once you know your target audience, it is easier to discover where these audiences will be found. Know your agenda of profitability like traffic, engagement, sales, conversion, leads, etc. Accordingly analyze the type of audience attracted to the social media platform. For instance, if your product is a beauty product, target audience is mostly females and they are mostly found on social media platform like Instagram. Hollywood influencers mostly use snapchat to generate engagement. If you want to generate conversions, Youtube is your best bet. Once your channel is set, search for an influencer who maximum uses that channel. There are youtubers, vloggers, instagrammers, snapchatters, etc.

• Select the perfect type of influencer

Influencers should relate to the products or services that match your brand, else it is like throwing water on a stone. Seventy-three percent of marketers cite influencer identification as their biggest challenge in influencer marketing. The ideal influencer is one who aligns with a brand’s values, tone, and style. Finding influencers who possess these qualities provides the greatest chances of cultivating a resounding match for audiences. Sometimes micro-influencers generate more profitability for the brand than a huge-follower influencer. Micro-influencers are highly niched social figures with follower counts below 25,000. While the numbers are smaller, their audiences tend to be hyper-engaged when compared to more sizable followings. These influencers use a lot of varied range of products and endorse frequently on their channels. So traffic generated is also more. Concluding point is that micro-influencers are more effective for e-commerce businesses.  

• Strategies to use

Depending upon the sales objectives, e-commerce businesses can devise strategies with influencers to lure more customers with offers, discounts, referral codes, contests or giveaways.

• Contests are fun where they garner more audience and more engagement on the website. It’s a win-win situation for all.
• Sponsored post is one of the most popular types of influencer campaigns where a brand can reach out to a relevant influencer to promote their brand through a photo, video, or blog post. 
• Product Reviews are a great way to influence customers. Product reviews are quite popular and boost engagement as they offer the audience the influencer’s take on the brand. As a eCommerce brand, you can offer your products to the influencer for free. In turn, the influencer posts their product reviews or opinions in the form of product images and videos. 

• Add credibility to your brand

Instead of blindly trying to grab likes and followers, or throwing various bits of content out to see what sticks, influencer marketing tells us to demonstrate our brand’s personality and spreads knowledge about our products and services on a wider audience. Influencers attract a set type of audience depending upon their actions, likes or dislikes. So while you devise marketing strategy for an influencer, let them decide the line of action. Providing them a rigid script or talking points can affect their creative thinking and reduce the authenticity of their posts. Allow them to reconstruct your brand communication in their language, making it sound natural and relevant to the target audience. They know their audience very well and only they can add credibility to your brand through their actions. Let it be a more natural social interaction for these influencers to their audience.

• Measure Influencer marketing results

Areas of measurement will be very dependent on your goals. Many will be irrelevant to your influencer marketing campaign. Some of the most common areas of measurement include:

•  Audience Reach
• Impressions
• Engagement (Comments, Likes, Shares)
• Sentiment
• High Quality Content
• Conversions:
  – Growth in Your Followers
  – Brand Mentioning
  – Traffic to a Specific Landing Page / Website
  – Form Completions
  – Signups to a Newsletter / Subscription
  – Growth in Users of Your Product / Service
  – Increased Sales