Importance of Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing, which involves promoting products or services to large communities through influencer databases, can be a key player in the growth of the eCommerce industry.
Social media marketing involves endorsements and product placements from influencers toward their audience. This can allow for extended reach for businesses, resulting in successful eCommerce sales outcomes.
The eCommerce industry is ever-changing, and as the popularity of online shopping increases, demand is also on the rise, which calls for adaptation in the purchasing channels. More effective channels allow for the main objective of influencer marketing to be reached, which is an increase in brand awareness, and they create a more seamless buying experience for consumers.
The Impact of Influencers on eCommerce Sales
Businesses can collaborate with influencers across social media platforms to create promoted content featuring their product and service offerings.
By undergoing business-to-consumer or B2C marketing through an influencer, a greater audience within a brand’s target demographic can be reached, allowing brand awareness to grow through their following and driving quick sales.
When an audience sees a person they are interested in, know, and trust promoting a product or service, they may feel more inclined to purchase. Leveraging trust amongst an audience can be the most important factor in growing your business’s current eCommerce sales level.
However, this is only possible through a previously established positive connection between an influencer and their audience built on trust and authenticity.
There are multiple ways in which influencers can achieve authenticity with their audience before collaborations with businesses.
By maintaining honesty throughout their platforms and sharing personal experiences through relatable content they can create a deeper connection to help resonate with their followers.
Building trust through brand collaborations, influencers can achieve this by only promoting products and services they would purchase with their own money, and their following should also go on purchase.
Influencers may be inclined to accept a brand deal for a product or service that does not align with their values and does not meet expectations due to the financial gain of the collaboration. However, this can damage an influencer’s reputation through misleading information provided to their followers.
Influencers should connect personally with their audience to maintain trust and authenticity to understand what they want to see and hear.
How Influencers Drive Traffic and Sales
Influencers can reach large and engaged audiences, which can drive significant traffic and sales for a business they collaborate with. Engagement can be the key player in driving sales, achieved through influencers consistently posting relevant content to their audience, promoting sales growth as engagement is maintained.
The level of sales growth can depend on the category of influencers being used to promote your products. There are four types of influencers: mega, macro, micro, and nano.
Mega-influencers have a very large following, typically in the millions. The second type is macro-influencers, with between 100,000 and 1 million followers.
Micro and nano influencers are the smallest types of influencers, with following counts in the range of 10,000 to 100,000 and 1,000 and 10,000 followers for nano influencers.
The type of influencer that would suit your brand the most can depend on its size, as mega influencers can come at a very high price compared to smaller influencers.
Successful Influencer Marketing Campaigns
At ExtraDigital, we have worked on influencer marketing for RealD 3D, one of our longstanding clients, to raise awareness of 3D film in Germany, France, and the UK.
Nano-influencers were used to engage more genuinely and help resonate with the audience. The objective was achieved using influencer marketing, and the benchmark was exceeded by 18%, outlining the positive outcomes of influencer collaboration.
Some wider examples of successful influencer marketing campaigns include Nord VPN, which sponsors YouTube posts and receives 85.3% of its social traffic from this channel.
The size of Nord VPN as a company has allowed them to focus on macro-influencers, using ambassadors with some of the biggest names, including PewDiePie. PewDiePie’s video, sponsored by Nord VPN, has over 4 million views and over 11,000 comments, emphasising the extent of macro-influencers following and reach.
In addition, Gymshark uses influencer marketing through challenges across social media. It created a challenge called “66 Days: Change Your Life Challenge,” in which it used multiple influencers with a strong presence in the fitness industry on TikTok and Instagram.
Using influencers, Gymshark has raised awareness of the challenge of increasing engagement from their audience and promoting their brand. Identifying the Right Influencer for Your Brand
Ensuring the right influencer is used to promote your products and services is important to understand. Here are some ways the right influencer can be identified:
- Define your brand goals.
- Define your target audience.
- Understand what types of social media platforms you want to use.
- Ensure values align.
- Conduct a competitor analysis to understand what processes are working to drive traffic to their sites through influencer marketing.
However, success from influencer marketing also requires strategies to ensure effective collaboration is achieved. Some ways that this can be achieved are as follows:
- Build an authentic partnership and get to know your influencers.
- Motivate your influences.
- Communicate clearly.
- Automate your campaign to focus on priorities is maintained.
Combining these factors will ensure a successful collaboration, resulting in traffic and sales growth.
Creative Freedom
The final element required to ensure success through influencer marketing is to give influencers creative freedom to maintain authenticity.
Creative freedom can allow influencers to maintain originality, which is important as this allows them to generate a higher level of engagement with their audience. High engagement can be positive for a business as this outlines the strong connection between the influencer and the audience.
Originality can also make the brand messaging appear more understandable to the consumer base, increasing traffic to your business.
In Summary
Influencer marketing can be a great tool for promoting your business by boosting brand awareness and engagement for your target audience. A strategic approach that benefits you and your influence can expand your reach and overall success rate. So, is influencer marketing right for your business?
