E-commerce brands can benefit more from influencer marketing compared to others. This is because the e-commerce sites are more synergetic with social media platforms where influencers like sharing their content.
People spend much time on the internet and more so browsing social media. E-commerce brands can activate influential marketing strategies on social media platforms because this is where customers can search the products and buy them. This article presents you with the four necessary steps your e-commerce brand need to take to create a successful influencer marketing strategy.
1. Set your goals
2. Choose the appropriate platforms
3. Identify the ideal influencers
4. Be creative and build trust with your influencers
Set your goals
To benefit from the influencer marketing campaign, set the goals. The goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. If you want to increase sales or promote brand awareness, specify to what extent you want to achieve this and how you intend to do it.
This is how you set your goals:
● Before you decide what you want, get a clear picture of where you are right now in terms of social media influence. The social media audit can let you identify and gather your social media accounts together.
● Identify what is important. An analysis of social media channels may reveal the ones that are performing well. For instance, you may realize that writing product descriptions or catchy snippets on your social media seller channels that are not doing well may enable you to reach more audiences at the end of the marketing campaign. E-commerce descriptions are aimed at converting online visitors to customers. Look at your social marketing plan and the business strategy.
● Select the goal-setting framework. Focus on being trackable and realistic. The goals must be aligned with the overall mission and vision of your business.
Identify how you are going to measure your return on investment. Social media marketing campaigns' effectiveness may be based on the volume of sales generated via affiliate links and website visits. You may also measure return on investment based on the number of your brand followers, newsletter signups, hashtag engagement, number of likes and comments, and so on.
E-commerce brands are synergetic with influencers in various ways, depending on your goals. The influencer marketing campaigns may not improve sales, but they should enhance the brand reach. The most important thing is to spell out the goals so that your influencer collaborations can yield desirable results.
Choose appropriate platforms
According to SuperiorPapers, various social media platforms serve different purposes and have different types of audiences. Therefore, you cannot just pick a platform based on your personal preferences. Evaluate the channels to determine if they can be effective in meeting the influencer marketing goals.
Instagram is an ideal channel for clothing and footwear brands because it is generally virtual. You may find an audience who are interested in various designs of shoes and clothes. Instagram has content formats such as IG stories and posts that can allow influencers to showcase your brand through engaging videos and photos.
The marketing writers at BrillAssignment say that Facebook is a big platform in terms of the customer base. You can use this channel for your influencer marketing strategy because it has audiences in various age groups. Facebook has advanced content features, and besides posts, you can share your brand stories or share some live videos to promote your brand. Your influencers can, therefore engage their followers.
Compared to Instagram and Facebook, Twitter has a smaller audience base and is dominated mainly by millennials. If you are dealing with male products, Twitter may be an ideal channel because it is largely dominated by men. You can, therefore target male millennials while implementing influencer marketing campaigns.
Twitter manager for Assignment Masters mentions that because the tweets are limited to 140 characters per post, Twitter may not be useful for influencers who desire to give your brand more context. However, it is preferred for real-time news and events coverage. If you want to promote industry news or company events, you can incorporate posts with hashtags to make them more effective.
YouTube
On the other hand, YouTube offers a wide range of audience demographics with almost a similar number of male and female viewers. Females are mostly interested in watching content such as weight loss, makeup, and skincare. Males mostly watch bodybuilding, fitness, gaming, and sports content.
Identify the ideal influencer
The key to identifying an influencer is knowing your audience first because it is the target audience who follow the influencer. Identify the right influencer for your e-commerce brand, considering their personality and how they connect with the audience. If the influencer and your brand share the same audience, then the influencer marketing campaign will likely be effective.
All influencers have their niche. If you are in the footwear and clothing industry, look for influencers in this niche. You cannot have a computer dealer advertise your clothes and shoes because they do not interact with your target audience.
Consider the number of their followers. The more followers they have, the better for your brand. You can use macro-followers if you are targeting a new audience to create brand awareness. Additionally, your influencer and the brand should have shared interests in the goals you want to achieve.
The followers can trust influencers whose recommendations sound authentic. Their brand-sponsored content should represent their values at all times. Also, get influencers whose style and personality align with your brand values and messaging. The personality can make the content relevant and appealing to your audience.
Influencer marketing is not limited to celebrities. Therefore, micro-influencers play an essential role in buying conversions. Using hashtags can be one of the most effective ways of finding influencers. Hashtags may be relevant because they make the content accessible and searchable via social media platforms.
Social media can also allow you to identify influencers who are already talking about your brand. Take advantage of listening tools and social media monitoring to identify such influencers. For instance, if you deal with fitness equipment, you can engage with an influencer who posts something about the equipment.
Be creative and build trust with your influencer
For marketing campaigns to be executed effectively, e-commerce brands must build trust with their influencers. Many businesses engage influencers because they believe that influencers can reach audiences and can trust them. Therefore, the brands should step back and allow the influencers to do their work in terms of content creation.
In some cases, brands tend to influence the content via unreasonable requests, scripting, or other regulating practices. This may inhibit the creativity and authenticity of the influencers, hence hinder the achievement of marketing goals.
For best outcomes, allow the influencers to take their place and deliver the content that has made them earn online followers. However, some situations may require your input. For example, you may consider having a contest campaign to promote brand awareness.
You may choose to engage in an influencer takeover where you can temporarily share content in your influencer's account. Ensure that you engage your influencers before sharing the content,
Low trust results in low engagement, and if this continues over time, the influencer's audience can be eroded. If you fail to establish trust, your audience, and more so millennials may not interact with your content no matter how powerful it may be. The influencer may get attention, but what matters is the brand's authentic and genuine interaction with your audience.
The best brand influencers reject any deals that don't fit in their feed, and they avoid being biased. They endorse products they love, and they are willing to test the product before endorsing it. These are the kind of influencers you need to engage and entrust your brand with.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing is an effective digital marketing strategy for all businesses, large and small. To make the best of it, you need to set your brand goals by establishing where you are and where you want to be. Choosing the social media platform is equally important because various platforms serve different purposes. Take time to identify a potential influencer and trust them to promote your brand accordingly unless otherwise agreed.
Author: Thomas Lanigan
Thomas Lanigan is a multi-skilled professional making his name in the writing field. He is an author, academic writer, proof-reader, and blogger. He is currently working as a full-time writer for MyAssignmentHelp as a writer and editor. His future plans include starting an online platform for self-publishing.
