How Influencers Can Boost Your Ecommerce Brand

What influences most buyer actions? Think about it.

Is it the catchy slogan or the famous icon behind the product? If you’re anything like most consumers, you said the latter. While “Be Like Mike” is a great slogan, it didn’t sell the shoes. Jordan did.

No matter how you slice it, influencers are, well, influential.

Influencer marketing forms a solid foundation for increasing your brand’s visibility online. Read on to discover how influencer marketing can boost your eCommerce Brand.

What Is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a form of digital marketing. They often promote a brand’s products on social media for eCommerce sites. They also promote major corporations. Influencers provide credibility and awareness for your brand.

The growth of influencer marketing has been increasing over the past several years. Projections for ad spend on influencer marketing expect to reach $13.8 billion in 2021.

Consumers respect influencer opinions and trust their recommendations. Forty-nine percent of users rely on influencer recommendations on Twitter for buying decisions.

Let’s put that into perspective. Influencers are almost as trusted as a close friend when it comes to buying online. That’s a HUGE advantage for eCommerce brands.

Consider these statistics:

• 17 percent of brands spend over half their marketing budget on influencer marketing. (MediaKix)
• 89 percent of brands say influencer marketing ROI is as good or better than other content. (BigCommerce)
• The average influencer marketing campaign returns six dollars for every dollar spent. (Kalypso)

So how can you get influencers to promote your eCommerce products?

Step 1: Find an Ideal Influencer for Your eCommerce Brand

The first step is to find an influencer for your brand. The right influencers should be someone who is popular within your niche.

Your best bet is to generate a pool of like-minded influencers in your niche. Compile your list by searching brand-related keywords on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc.

After that, you’ll want to whittle the list down to your top five.

Then, ask yourself these questions:

• Is this influencer part of our target audience?
• If so, would they use our brand?
• Does their personality match our brand’s image?
• Is there content suitable for your brand?
• Do they have experience creating high-quality sponsored content?
• Would they be easy to work with?
• Could their followers or subscribers become potential customers?

With these questions in mind, you’ll be able to narrow down your top five list further. You may decide to run a campaign with the top three on your list. That, of course, depends on your budget.

You can contact most smaller influencers through their social media account. Smaller accounts with less than 25,000 followers go by the name micro-influencers.

Take this time to conduct some further research. You can check in on metrics for sponsored posts (if they have any).

Single Grain suggests looking for a 5% like ratio for influencers with less than 20,000 followers. For influencers with audiences greater than 20,000 followers they suggest a like ratio of 3%.

As you contact influencers, keep these things in mind:

1. Don’t spam hundreds of influencers with the same message.
2. Be targeted in your research and personal in your approach.
3. Have a plan.

Step Two: Build Effective Relationships With Influencers in Your Niche

Whether you decide to go with your top five list or your top three list is up to you. With your list of well-researched influencers, it’s time to start building relationships.

Here are some ways to develop your business relationship:

• Introduce each influencer to your brand’s products. Reaching out with the intent to share your brand’s products creates trust from the very start. It also shows the influencers on your list that you value their time.
• Provide some details about your campaign and what it entails. Include influencers in your plan for your campaign. That way, influencers won’t have to guess how they can help. You may already have ideas for contests, product reviews, or referral programs. Let them know.
• Provide fair, market-value compensation. If you’re a small eCommerce store with great products, tell them. Be up front with compensation. If you can’t pay much, be generous with free products from your brand. Building a solid business relationship starts with finding win-win agreements.

You may want to work with high-profile influencers. If so, you should consider the costs along with the benefits. Here is a short breakdown of what influencers can charge per sponsored post.

Keep in mind that these figures reflect averages based upon research. Even so, it gives you a sense of the pay-to-play system that influencer marketing has become.

It’s beneficial to diversify your influencer marketing budget. Split the money that would go to one macro-influencer between several micro-influencers. Studies show that usings an army of micro-influencers may provide more value.

Step Three: Use Influencers to Increase Brand Awareness and Trust

There are almost 8 million etailers worldwide.

To remain competitive, your content marketing strategy must be original, engaging, and buzz-worthy. Half of the battle is getting your consumer’s attention.

Influencers are the gateway to a larger, more engaged audience. Here are three ways influencers can help increase your brand awareness:

1. Allow Influencers to be content creators

Influencers get followers for their ability to create unique, engaging, and valuable content. As a brand, you can leverage that. It should be one of your social media marketing strategies for eCommerce.

Influencers aren’t only great at getting shares and likes. They know how to craft content that builds traction on social media. That means giving your influencer some creative freedom can be a good strategy.

2. Run Contests Using Influencers

Influencers are pros at social engagement. It should be a part of every social media marketing strategy for eCommerce. After all, a contest is only as good as its engagement.

Contests can build hype around a new product. That can lead to increased site traffic, social media followers, or conversions. Effective contests can engage followers in conversations or build curiosity.

The right influencer can increase the engagement of a contest.

3. Leverage Influencers for Referral Programs

One of the best ways to use influencers is through referral programs. Influencers mention your brand on all their social media platforms with a promo code. It uses eCommerce and social media as a marketing tool.

The code is then linked to the influencer to gauge the success of the campaign. Here’s an example of a referral program for H&M.

Need Even More Tips?

Need even more tips? We’ve got you covered with our related guide: Ecommerce Social Proof & Why You Need It.