Thursday 21 January 2021, by Tobias Foster
One of the primary reasons social media is so popular in today’s world is that social approval is essential to everyone. Once people approve and accept you socially, your life changes. This might not be true for individuals, but it’s very accurate for brands and businesses.
One of the best ways for a brand to raise awareness about them and their product is to get a celebrity or an influencer to approve them on a social media platform. This will drive a lot of traffic to the brand and increase their revenue and profit. This is why influencer marketing is an essential digital marketing strategy in today’s world and is one of the world’s fastest-rising industries.
Social influencers create content that their followers like. So they’ve been able to amass many people who love them and are loyal to them. This makes influencer marketing effective because the people trust the opinions and endorsements of the influencer they follow. A 2019 Benchmark Report on Influencer Marketing
confirms that the average return for that influencer marketing campaign gives for every $1 is $18.
Of all businesses, eCommerce brands have the best opportunity to use influencer marketing as an effective marketing strategy and enjoy its benefits. This is because they already have good synergy with social media platforms where the influencers and the audience are compared to other brick-and-mortar stores.
As people spend more time browsing through different social media platforms, it becomes easy for e-commerce brands to reach them through the people they are likely to listen to. Now, there’s an increase in the number of social media influencers, especially among the micro-influencers looking to establish their niche and increase their reach.
The success of previous influencer marketing campaigns by different e-commerce brands means you are also likely to find success with this marketing strategy. However, before you delve into it, here are some basic strategies that you should know about influencer marketing to make your campaign a success.
Choose the right channel for your brand.
You have to understand that different social media platforms have their different kinds of audience. So, you can’t just decide to run your marketing strategy on any platform that your heart chooses. You have to be sure that the channel is right for your influencer marketing campaign to be effective. For instance, if you are an e-commerce brand into the sale of clothes and shoes, the most appropriate platform for you would be Instagram. This is because it is a visual platform, so you are more likely to find an audience that loves your clothing designs and shoes, etc. If you are going to run an influencer marketing campaign for your brand, it has to be on Instagram, the same platform where you have your target audience.
This means that you have to know who your target audience is. Without this initial information, you won’t even know the platform to find your target audience, and you won’t know what platform to focus on for your marketing campaigns.
If your target audience is people from the older generation, then you are more likely to find them on Facebook. However, if you are targeting Generation Z, you should aim your influencer marketing campaigns at Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and/or YouTube, depending on what you’re into.
It will help if you consider your whole industry and those platforms where the conversations take place. This will help you find your ideal audience.
Identify the right influencer.
After deciding which platform is the best for your eCommerce brand, you also have to identify and determine which influencers are right for your e-commerce brand. You have to look at the influencer persona and how well they interact with your target audience. The effectiveness of an influencer marketing campaign is in the influencer sharing the same audience as your brand.
Every influencer has their niche. If you are into beauty and skincare products, you have to look for influencers in the same niche. It makes no sense to have a sports influencer advertise your beauty products because they don’t have the audience you need.
Your brand and the influencer need to have a shared interest in whatever goal you want to achieve. This is how to make impactful results from influencer marketing. The best fit influencers are those that are in the same niche and industry as you. They have the audience you’re looking for to influence their audience towards your brand.
Another thing to look out for is the size of their followers. Are you looking for a micro-influencer or a macro-influencer? Macro-influencers have more than 100k – 500k followers on a social media platform. They are ideal for when you want to create awareness among a new set of audience. In contrast, micro-influencers have about 15k- 100k influencers and are restricted to the niche. They have a smaller audience and are effective in reaching them.
Have influencer marketing campaign goals
One of the best ways to impact an influencer marketing campaign is to set goals for your campaign. What are you looking to achieve after the campaign? Are you creating awareness for your new product and for your brand, or you are looking to drive sales of existing products?
If you don’t establish your goals from the start, it will be hard to measure your campaign’s results. Establishing ROI would become impossible if this is the case.
Before you start the influencer marketing campaign, set your goals and decide which metrics to use to measure your goals. Here are examples of metrics that you can measure for your campaign.
- Number of visitors on a website
- Amount of sales that affiliate link generate
- Increase in the newsletter signup
- Number of engagement that campaign hashtag has
- The increase in followers on your social media account
- The quality of content created.
There are different ways for e-commerce brands to work with social media influencers, and it depends on the influencer marketing campaign’s goal. Deciding on the campaign’s goal is essential because it determines the nature of the marketing campaign, the kind of content created, the metrics to measure success, etc. If you are unsure what goal you want to achieve in your influencer marketing campaign, it will be impossible to hold a successful campaign. This is because there will be no direction or focus to your campaign. So, it will be hard to achieve one thing.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that influencer marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies in existence. However, like other marketing campaigns, you have to take your time to plan for it properly before you begin with it. It would be best to do your background checks on the influencer to be sure that they are the right fit for your brand and have the credibility to influence their audiences. You also have to make sure that you are on the right platform to help you reach all the influencer marketing goals you have set beforehand.
