How to Use Influencer Marketing for eCommerce

Influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways for businesses to increase brand awareness and trust. With today’s social media influencers gaining and retaining loyal followers, businesses can benefit from turning them into brand representatives through effective marketing campaigns. eCommerce brands, including those in the food and beverage space, can benefit greatly from working with these influencers.

Influencer marketing is not only great for exposing people to your brand and increasing recognition, but it’s also highly profitable with potentially high ROI. The average brand and business earns around $5.20 for every dollar spent on influencer marketing, making it a highly lucrative channel.

The benefits of influencer marketing can help your eCommerce brand flourish, but it’s important to know how to approach influencer marketing campaigns. The following guide will help you get the most from your eCommerce influencer marketing efforts.

Determine Your Goals and Audience

Like with any other marketing campaign, you need to know who you’re trying to reach and what you wish to achieve with your influencer marketing campaigns. 

Start by figuring out who your audience is and what they’re looking for from your brand and offerings. Based on your audience’s interests, you can determine which niche of influencers to choose for your campaigns. This will also help you identify the right platforms to target, whether your audience spends time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube for example.

Once you find one or two influencers in your niche and on the right platform, you can take a closer look at their followers and see what their preferences are, the different hashtags that they use or follow, and the specific type of content they like. 

After identifying your target audience, you can determine what goal you would like to achieve. Some potential goals include increasing brand awareness, driving more traffic to your website, growing your social media following, or driving sales. You can then work with an influencer to try to achieve this goal.

For example, your goal might be to sell more frozen food or beverage products, in which case an influencer could review your products in a video. At the end of the review, the influencer may then encourage people to make a purchase and receive a discount through a referral link.

Find the Right Influencer

After defining your audience and goals, you’ll be able to start looking for an influencer that’s the right fit for your brand. In doing so, think about your core values and what your brand is all about. What kind of influencers would best represent those aspects?

To help you find the ideal influencer, you can look at existing followers and find out which influencers they follow. Additionally, you could use search engines to look up popular influencers in your niche, use platforms like Grin to help narrow down your selection, or attend certain events such as Instameets, which involves gatherings of people who connect and share their personal experiences via Instagram photos. 

Keep in mind that there are also a few different kinds of influencers you can work with, depending on the scope of your niche and your goals. These influencer types include:

• Nano influencers (a following of around 1,000-10,000)

• Micro influencers (a following of 10,000 to 100,000)

• Macro influencers (a following of 100,000 to 1 million)

• Mega influencers or celebrity influencers (over 1 million followers)

While you might want to maximize exposure with a macro or mega/celebrity influencer, the fact is that you can gain plenty of traction with a micro or even a nano influencer. Many smaller influencers have a loyal following that stick around for a long time and are likely to trust the brands they endorse.

You can also target multiple smaller influencers to expand your reach and multiply your audiences without spending as much as you would on a macro or mega influencer. 

Try Different Campaigns

When getting into influencer marketing, you can experiment with different types of content to see which of them get the best results. 

Some of the content you might want to generate through influencer marketing could include:

• Sponsored content in which influencers promote your brand through a video, photo, or blog post.

• Giveaways and contests that entail influencers asking for followers to like a page or post, comment, or tag friends in exchange for giveaways or a chance to win a prize.

• Reviews of products that detail the influencer’s personal experience.

Measure Your Campaigns’ Results

You won’t be able to determine how well your campaigns are performing unless you can track their progress. Depending on your goal, you’ll want to look at certain key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics in analytics tools. 

For instance, if your goal is to increase brand awareness, you’ll want to focus on referral traffic and engagement metrics such as likes, shares, comments, and reactions. Meanwhile, campaigns attempting to convert followers to sales would place emphasis on cost-per-click, click-through rates, and conversions.

Based on your campaigns’ performance, you can make any necessary changes to yield better results and continually improve your efforts.

Experience Success with Solid Influencer Marketing Strategies

By taking the right approach to eCommerce influencer marketing campaigns, your brand will have the chance to stand out and connect with target audiences. Regardless of your niche, there’s an influencer out there waiting to help your brand grow and build a long-term mutually beneficial relationship.

Need more help with marketing your eCommerce brand? Gray Growth Logistics can help with logistics consulting and more. Get in touch with us today to find out more about what we can do for your business.