Influencer marketing has always been a popular marketing strategy for eCommerce businesses due to its effectiveness. By partnering with social media influencers who have a large and engaged following, eCommerce sites like yours can increase your online visibility and brand awareness. In this article, we’ll list the step-by-step process of running an effective influencer marketing campaign for your online store.
Identify the Right Influencers
First, identify influencers who are in line with your values and messaging as a brand. To do this, you must first define your target audience by looking at the demographics of your customers. Knowing their age, income level, gender, pain points, and other variables makes finding the right influencers to contact later on much easier.
You should also evaluate an influencer’s engagement and reach to ensure they have a genuine following. Then, browse through their content published on social platforms. Their content should match your brand voice and the products you’re selling.
Finally, you want to work with an influencer who has followers with high buyer intent. For example, if you are selling a new line of organic skincare products, you may want to work with influencers who have an audience that is interested in and has a high level of engagement with natural beauty products.
By working with these influencers, you can tap into their audience’s buyer intent and increase the chances of converting them into customers. Buyer intent studies show that 70% of businesses have seen a positive return on investment (ROI) accounting for buyer intent in their marketing strategies.
Build Relationships with Influencers
The next step is to approach the shortlist of influencers with a personalized message regarding your opportunity. To increase the chances of replying to you, offer incentives and benefits such as free products or exclusive discounts. Once you have their attention, provide guidelines for influencer content to ensure it aligns with your brand messaging.
However, some influencers won’t reply to your message for various reasons, even if you follow up on them. That’s why having multiple influencers to reach out to for your campaign is recommended to increase your chances of landing one to promote your eCommerce business.
You can forego the first two steps in this list by signing up for an influencer marketing platform and finding someone you can partner with. The fact that you can reach out to these influencers means they’re interested in partnering with brands like yours, which means higher conversion rates.
The platform also shares vital statistics about the influencer, like follower count, engagement rate, and others, to make an informed decision with your influencer marketing campaign.
Create Compelling Influencer Content
Once you’ve partnered with an influencer, it’s up to them to create the content. Since you hired them for this campaign because of their followers and content aligning with your brand values, the best you can do is brainstorm ideas for the content. Your partnered influencer will balance the promotional and entertainment components to produce the best content for your campaign.
Another thing you can do is supply them or suggest tools and software to use for creating the content. Most influencers have experience with using live streaming solutions to communicate with their audience. However, if not, you can provide them with premium tools to complete the job much easier and faster.
Amplify Influencer Content
Once you’ve created compelling influencer content, the next step is to amplify it. This involves sharing influencer content on your eCommerce website and your social channels. Part of your agreement with an influencer is for them to share their content on their channels to tap into their existing followers. You can also use social media advertising to amplify influencer content and reach a wider audience.
Finally, tap into your subscriber list and email them about the campaign. These range from people who signed up to your email list from the website to customers who bought products from you. Use an email newsletter software to compose the message and send it to them all at once.
Measure and Evaluate Influencer Marketing Success
Before launching your influencer marketing campaign, you must determine its key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the results. While the goal is to raise your eCommerce site’s sales and revenue once the campaign kicks in, you should also track metrics like engagement and impressions to get a better understanding of how your campaign performed.
If you’re tracking the number of clicks on the link/s that the influencer is promoting, use a campaign URL builder to indicate the source and medium of the campaign. This allows you to track on your Google Analytics the number of people who clicked on the link better to monitor the campaign’s impact on your sales.
Another metric to monitor is brand sentiment or social listening. Upon launching the campaign, expect people to discuss the influencer’s content and your brand. You will see here whether the campaign is getting positive or negative feedback. If you’re receiving the latter, find ways to improve the campaign before the criticism gets out of hand.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing can be a powerful tool for eCommerce businesses looking to reach a wider audience and increase brand awareness. Incorporating this marketing strategy by following the steps above can help you stay ahead of the competition and reach your target audience in a more authentic and engaging way.