How Shopify Businesses Can Use Influencer Campaigns To Scale Their Sales
Nowadays, influencer marketing seems to be the go-to strategy for marketers. In fact, the influencer marketing industry has soared to $13.8 billion in 2021. So if you own a Shopify store and haven’t partnered with influencers, it’s high time to plan around incorporating it with your marketing strategy.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing entails a collaboration between a business and an influencer, also known as a content creator. It’s social media marketing that heavily relies on the influence of these creators on their audience. It did not start out like a well-oiled marketing machine. Influencer marketing was initially utilized in brand awareness campaigns and strategies. And then, it boomed — from being a 9.7 billion dollar industry in 2020, it is expected to reach 15 billion dollars in 2022. This exponential growth is enough evidence of its effectiveness. And true enough, 9 out of 10 marketers believe that influencer marketing works. Gen Z consumers prefer a diverse and less polished way of marketing.
"At a fundamental level, influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions from influencers–individuals who have a dedicated social following and are viewed as experts within their niche. Influencer marketing works because of the high amount of trust that social influencers have built up with their following, and recommendations from them serve as a form of social proof to your brand's potential customers."
Source: sproutsocial.com
There are some excellent benefits of influencer marketing, including connecting with your ideal customer and doubling the distance of your marketing budget. As an Ecommerce business owner, this strategy is particularly beneficial because you're typically selling to the entire country or world. This makes it easy to reach out to relevant influencers from anywhere and work with them to create organic content on their channel that promotes your brand. This process allows you to reach your target market through a referral and not just an ad. Influencer content is proven to be successful because their audience trusts them, making their recommendation or product review super successful. There are several ways to work with influencers.
How do you get started on influencer marketing?
You can definitely tap into influencer marketing at a low cost as an entrepreneur. Having a Shopify business already means you have an online presence. Now, all you have to do is connect your social media with influencers. Here’s a guide.
Know your marketing goal and budget
Before going out there and looking for influencers to partner with, ensure your goals are clear and well-documented. What do you want to achieve? What are your metrics? When you set up clear goals, you can also have clear benchmarks. And they help you measure whether you are on the right track or need to go back to the drawing board and re-align.
When we help clients with influencer campaigns we start by talking with them about their budget. This helps us to find the right influencers with a follower count they can afford. If you have a smaller budget you would want to work with nano or micro-influencers. Nano-influencers have fewer than 10,000 subscribers, while micro-influencers typically have a following of between 10,000 and 100,000 subscribers. If you have a larger budget you could try and go after macro or mega-influencers. However, this typically is outside the budget of most small businesses, and you can usually gain a lot of headway by working with nano or micro-influencers.
Selecting a goal seems like it would be straightforward, "I want to make more sales." But making more sales isn't specific enough to be a good goal. Setting "SMART Goals" is a really easy way to think about setting your marketing goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. An example of a SMART Goal for an influence campaign would be, "I want to make 10 sales in the next 30 days by working with these 3 influencers." Setting these types of goals helps you to know if your efforts are working, and to decide which parts of your plan you need to change to see better results next time.
Know your target audience
This needs to be established before looking for an influencer that aligns with your target audience. For example, who is your target persona? Is it female or male? What are their interests, hobbies, and consumer behavior? Do they follow specific influencers, to begin with? Mapping out a behavior pattern can help you understand your audience’s purchasing habits and determine which influencers to tap. You can use customer surveys to gather this information.
This information is important because it allows you to find where your ideal customer is hanging out on social media. Do they prefer educational content or comedy? Food videos or clips and memes from the office? Would they prefer to travel or curl up on the couch and read a good book? Knowing the answers to questions like these will help you to start searching for content related to your answers and in turn, help you find influencers in those niches.
Search and reach out to influencers
A google search may be a shot in the dark. Chances are, you’re going to get an overwhelming volume of results. To narrow down your choices of influencers, you can find out which ones are already talking about you. Then, you can search relevant tags, mentions, and keywords on social media. This process is referred to as social listening, and there are some great resources out there than can help with that process.
Another process is to let the algorithms feed you content. You can start by following relevant accounts on Instagram and follow similar ones per Instagram suggestions. For serious researchers, we suggest setting up an avatar social account to do your research. That way you can like and comment on the content you think your avatar would enjoy, giving the algorithm enough data to really serve you all the relevant content in that niche. This process can be a little time-consuming but allows you to curate a list of appropriate accounts or influencers that you can reach out to.
Have a collaboration plan
When reaching out to influencers, ensure you are ready with your proposal, which includes the scope, budget, and guidelines for the influencer partnership. How many posts would you like them to make? On platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok we often ask creators to make multiple posts. On YouTube, you could ask for multiple dedicated videos, but that typically would ver we would only ask for Would you like photos or videos? If the influencer you're reaching out to has multiple social platforms, which ones would you like them to post on? Do you have requirements for what the copy should be? Are you ok with the influencer creating their own script?
We also suggest having a payment plan set up and ready to go. Social media moves fast, and so do influencer marketing campaigns. Social media influencers typically will accept 3 different types of payment; cash, product, or promotion. You may be surprised (sarcasm) to find out that cash is the most preferred payment option.
There are multiple influencer marketing platforms that help streamline this process. Some of these tools include collabstr.com, izea.com, and grin.co. They have some additional features that make finding, interacting with, and paying influencers a lot simpler. However, they do include monthly fees or take a percentage of sales. Another way to pay influencers is by going through Paypal or Venmo. However using these platforms does require a lot more manual tracking, and can cause headaches for your accountant during tax season. Having tools like these in place can help you start your campaign quickly.
How can influencers help scale your sales?
The number of influencer marketing-related companies and businesses grew by 26% in 2021. This number alone shows many benefits of using influencer marketing in your Shopify business. Also it probably won't surprise to find out the online content creators have grown significantly in the last few years. According to a blog on Statista.com:
YouTube generated $28.8 billion in revenue in 2021, a 46% increase year-on-year
Over 2.5 billion people access YouTube once a month
YouTube’s most subscribed channel is T-Series, however, Mr. Beast earned the most revenue in 2021
YouTube Premium reached 50 million subscribers in 2021
When looking at other social platforms like TikTok, we find that they have over 1 billion monthly active users. (Statista.com).
Because there are so many users and creators on these platforms, there is going to be an opportunity to help you grow your business.
Reaching niche audience groups
Influencers vary in their target audience, preferred platform, and audience size. But what’s great about an influencer’s reach is that it’s built around shared interests. Most of the influencer’s audience is interested in their niche. Now, niche influencers, also known as micro-influencers, may have fewer followers than others. However, effective influencers with a clear niche tend to have more engaged followers. This means more interaction with potential customers and potentially more significant ROI.
Building trust
We trust a person’s recommendations if we’ve already established that we respect and trust that person’s judgment. Influencers have this effect on a larger scale. An influencer is the broker of their followers’ trust in your company. For example, suppose you have influencers promoting your product or service. In that case, you are also increasing the chance of gaining their audience’s trust.
Enriching your content
It’s not easy to develop fresh and engaging content regularly. Influencers can help fill in these marketing gaps. For example, suppose you have an agreement with an influencer to co-create content. In that case, you may have tapped into a source of quality and engaging content relevant to your target audience.
Influencing and driving purchasing decisions
A survey found that 5 out of 10 consumers purchased a product based on the recommendations of an influencer they follow. Because followers respect and trust their favorite consumer’s preferences, they tend to perceive the companies they recommend more positively, driving them to patronize their products.
BONUS! Shopify + Affiliate Programs
One way we haven't covered working with influencers is by setting up an affiliate program for your online business. You are probably familiar with the Amazon affiliates program because they are the largest online store in existence. But, did you know that you could implement the same strategy that Amazon uses to increase sales by setting up your own affiliate program?
There are free ways to set these up, but they require a lot of manual tracking. You could start with an excel list of the influencers you allow into your affiliate program. Then create a bit.ly URL to keep track of when that influencer has directed people to your store. Then you could provide them with a special discount code that they can share with their audience so that you know when one of their fans made a purchase. At the end of each month, you could check how many times each discount code was used and pay each member according to the number of sales they helped make. But, as fun as that sounds there are easier ways of setting up and tracking an affiliate program.
Shopify has made it easy for you to get started by creating a blog post that outlines the best strategies for implementing an affiliate program on your Shopify store. Plus they provide a list of third-party affiliate program websites that help you track and manage a successful affiliate program that leads to sales while you sleep. Check out the full Shopify blog post here.
Using a third-party tool to help track and implement an affiliate program will not only make it easier for you to manage the program but will also make the experience for influencers and shoppers more enjoyable, which leads to more sales in the long run. Setting this up is a great way to capitalize on the relationships you build with influencers. Allowing them to share a link on their social media posts pointing to your online store can prove to be more effective than Google Ads.
Bottomline
The question now is, does influencer marketing really drive and scale sales? The answer is an unequivocal yes. Various research studies suggest that for every dollar a marketer spends on influencer marketing, the company earns about $18. Therefore, influencers can indeed help your Shopify business generate more sales. However, rushing the process and choosing the wrong influencer can not only lead to no or low sales but also can cost you a significant amount of money. Don't rush into a relationship with an influencer without first identifying your audience, forming a strategic plan using SMART Goals, and choosing a budget. With the right research and preparation, you can run a successful influencer campaign and scale your sales.
