Top 10 Influencer Marketing Strategies for E-Commerce

Did you know that 90% of marketers believe that influencer marketing is an effective marketing strategy and that the global market size of influencer marketing is expected to rise to 22 billion dollars by 2025? (Statista, 2022). 

Influencer marketing is a form of digital marketing, specifically, a form of social media marketing. It is a collaboration or a partnership between an eCommerce brand and an influencer or content creator. In this partnership, the influencer promotes the products or services of a certain brand by providing endorsements and recommendations either for free or in return for payment, free samples, or discounts.

Influencer marketing is also considered one of the top digital marketing trends for eCommerce in 2023. Therefore, eCommerce marketers who want their eCommerce store to survive and succeed in 2023 should start working on their influencer marketing campaigns. 

In this article, we are going to present you with some of the most effective influencer marketing strategies that will guarantee the success of your eCommerce business. 

Top 10 Influencer Marketing Strategies for E-Commerce

1. Start by identifying your goals and your target audience
2. Leverage all types of influencers
3. Use Influencers Giveaways and Contests
4. Involve Influencers in User-Generated-Content Campaigns
5. Ask your influencers to integrate links in their stories
6. Take advantage of new technologies
7. Repurpose Influencer Content
8. Understand and follow the rules and guidelines of Influencer Marketing
9. Constantly measure your Return On Investment (ROI)
10.  Diversify the ways you work with Influencers

According to Brandwatch, in 2022, 71% of businesses plan to increase their influencer marketing budget within the next year. It is a no-brainer that your eCommerce brand should join these businesses. The following strategies will pave the way for you to develop effective influencer marketing campaigns. 

1- Start by identifying your goals and your target audience

Starting by setting your goals and identifying your target audience is necessary for any marketing campaign. Think about what you want to get from your influencer marketing campaigns. Whether your goal is to build brand awareness, reach new audiences, increase the number of your followers or website visitors, generate leads, optimize conversion rates, or other, be sure to identify it at the beginning. Identifying these goals is not just important for you but for the influencers that you are collaborating with as well. 

As for your target audience, it is crucial to conduct proper eCommerce customer segmentation before starting your influencer marketing campaign. Identifying your target audience is essential for choosing the right and most suitable influencers to work with. 

Tips: 

• Consider the product you are marketing for in collaboration with influencers and the channels you are marketing on and segment your customers accordingly. 
• Revisit your already existing customer base, review it and divide it into new segments of customers who might be interested in your new campaigns.
• Review the followers’ list of the influencers you are considering working with and make sure their followers represent your target audience.
• Keep an eye out for your competitors. Check their platforms and observe the type of customers supporting their campaigns and get an idea of who you should be targeting.

2- Leverage different types of influencers

Source

Once you’ve identified the goals of your influencer marketing campaign, the channels you will be using, and your target audience, it is time to choose influencers to collaborate with. 

It is important to understand that. Today, influencers can be classified into different types according to several criteria:

You are now probably amazed by the various types of influencers. What is even more amazing is that this is not even an exhaustive list. There are other types of influencers out there, and the number of types keeps growing. Therefore, our advice to you is to use this variety and leverage all types of influencer marketing aligned with your goals, products, and target audience. 

Tip: Take into consideration the reputation of the influencers and their engagement rate, as well as your budget.

3- Use Influencers Giveaways and Contests

Giveaways and contests are always attractive tactics to engage your audience. When these tactics are integrated into influencer marketing campaigns, they become more personal and more effective. 

You can collaborate with an influencer to run the entire giveaway or contest campaign or just announce it on their platforms. 

Tips: 

• Agree with your influencers on asking their followers to follow your eCommerce brand’s accounts or to sign up for a newsletter as a condition to join the giveaway or the contest. This will open other doors for you to market your products.
• Giveaways and contests delivered to the audience through influencers can act as a great teaser for your newly launched products. However, always remember to announce these influencer-supported giveaways or contests in your product launch emails. 
• Integrate FOMO marketing by asking your influencers to include a sense of urgency and scarcity while promoting your giveaways and contests to provoke your customers’ fear of missing out. 

Examples:

• Baresswear is a British activewear eCommerce brand. In 2021, it collaborated with an Instagram influencer called Bethany Lea to launch a giveaway campaign. Bethany has around 1,250 followers on Instagram, which makes her a nano-influencer. Baresswear chose to work with Bethany mainly because of her relevance to its products. Bethany is a nutritionist and a performance coach, so she is a suitable influencer to market the sportswear of this eCommerce store. 

As you can see in the giveaway post, Bethany mentioned that to enter the giveaway, following the account of Baresswear is a condition. This type of influencer marketing manages to promote the products of the eCommerce brand, raise brand awareness, and increase the number of followers.

• Mintsbody is an eCommerce store that sells skin, hair, baby, beauty, and home care products. It is also another brand that collaborates with Instagram influencers for giveaways. For example, in 2020, it partnered with

Samantha Elle, a style, wellness, and empowerment influencer on Instagram. Samantha has around 22,000 on Instagram, which makes her a micro-influencer. 

4- Involve Influencers in User-Generated Content Campaigns

The difference between influencer-generated content and user-generated content is very clear. Influencer-generated content is produced by some who are considerably popular and have a certain level of influence on their followers. As for user-generated content, it is created by the customers themselves, who are considered “regular” people. 

Each one of these two types of content is proven to be very effective. Now imagine combining them and finding a way to make them work hand in hand. A great way to do that is to agree with your influencers on promoting, in their own content, user-generated content featuring your brand.

Involving influencers in user-generated content campaigns doubles the social proof that you already get from influencer marketing and opens a door for you to deeply benefit more from word-of-mouth marketing. 

Example: 

In 2015, Adidas wanted to launch a user-generated content campaign for its new collection. The campaign was called “ #myNEOshoot ”. For this, it collaborated with Selena Gomez, who is a celebrity influencer and a mega influencer with more than 360 million followers on Instagram. 

Selena created influencer-generated content in the form of a video, in which she promoted the user-generated content competition of Adidas. 

5- Ask your influencers to integrate links in their stories

Story links, especially if you are depending on Instagram influencers, are a direct door to your eCommerce website. Therefore, ask your influencers to include links in their stories to your website or straight to the product or service they are promoting. 

6- Take advantage of new technologies

The year 2023 is full of new technologies that you can integrate into your influencer marketing campaigns:

• Augmented Reality (AR)

Augmented Reality (AR) technology in eCommerce allows customers to virtually try on and test the products via their devices, such as their smartphones. Research shows that 71% of customers say they would shop more often if they used AR (threekit, 2022). Therefore, it is obviously a great idea to work with your influencers on promoting your products using AR technology. 

Today, Snapchat and Pinterest are leading the way in the use of AR technology for marketing purposes. For example, you can collaborate with influencers on Snapchat and ask them to make use of the AR technology offered by the platform to encourage your customers to try it as well; and hence, promote your product. 

• Virtual Influencers

Virtual influencers are another new technology that you may find a little odd, but that is expected to be the future of influencer marketing for eCommerce with a potential to grow by 26% in market size by the year 2025 (Candid, 2022). Also, according to Forbes, virtual influencers appeal to a younger audience. 

Many brands today are collaborating with virtual influencers to market their products. 

Example:

• Miquela is a virtual influencer that has almost 3 million followers on Instagram, which makes her a mega influencer. Many brands are collaborating with her to market their products, such as Ambush, a clothing brand in Tokyo. 

7- Repurpose Influencer Content

Influencer-generated content is usually very attractive and eye-catching; therefore, it is very tempting to use it for other purposes. There are many ways you could repurpose the content of an influencer; however, you should make sure to include this in your initial agreement with them:

• Use the influencer-generated content for the visuals and copy in paid ads on the same platform or other platforms.
• Add the content to your eCommerce website, or to your own social media platforms as posts, stories, or highlights. 
• Integrate the content into your email marketing campaigns. 

8- Understand and follow the rules and guidelines of Influencer Marketing

You might think that this is not a strategy. Oh, but it is! It is an extremely important strategy that if you do not consider it, you risk sabotaging all your other efforts in influencer marketing.

In other words, understanding the guidelines and rules that regulate influencer marketing for eCommerce can save you a lot of trouble. Such rules include those set by the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to protect you, your eCommerce brand, and the influencers you are working with. Such guidelines include:

• Make sure your influencers are disclosing the paid sponsorship and that they are doing that using simple and clear language.
• Do not pay your influencers to promote products they haven’t tried.

9- Constantly measure your Return On Investment (ROI)

In order to know whether your influencer marketing campaigns are succeeding or not, you need to constantly measure your Return On Investment (ROI). 

To measure the ROI percentage of an influencer marketing campaign, do the following:

• Subtract the cost you spent to launch the influencer marketing campaign from your total revenue.
• Divide the result by the total cost.
• Then multiply by 100

Generally, there are many KPIs that you can use to measure the success of your influencer marketing campaigns, such as:

• Number of new followers on your eCommerce brand’s social media platforms
• Number of new visitors on your eCommerce website
• Number of newsletter signups
• Amount of sales generated through affiliate links
• The number of conversions

This strategy is very important because it will help you identify which influencers you should develop long-term relationships with and the ones with whom you should end your partnerships. 

10- Diversify the ways you work with Influencers

Source: envato

The ways you can work with influencers are becoming countless with every passing day. Of course, in choosing how your eCommerce brand can collaborate with an influencer, there are many things to consider, such as your products, objectives, goals, KPIs, budget, target audience, location… etc. 

However, we advise you that, after taking all these things into consideration, you try as much as you can to diversify the way you work with influencers. In other words, in your influencer marketing campaigns, try to make a mix of the following:

1. Work with some influencers who can accept taking samples of your products for free in exchange for their advertisement and product endorsement. This is known as “Product Sponsorship”. 
2. Work with some influencers who will advertise your products in exchange for a fee or a payment. This is known as “Paid Promotion” or “Paid Partnership”. Do not forget to ask the influencers you are working with here to clearly disclose this sponsorship or paid partnership and make the words “Sponsored by” or “Paid Promotion” visible in their posts, stories, or even blogs.
3. Have at least one brand ambassador. Brand ambassadors are usually celebrity influencers with whom your eCommerce brand has an established long-term relationship.
4. Work with influencers who can take over your platforms during events or post their influencer-generated content directly from the accounts of your eCommerce brand. This is known as a “Social Media Takeover”.
5. Partner with influencers to launch giveaways and contests just like we discussed in previous parts of this article.
6. Work with some influencers who will get paid a commission every time a customer purchases from your eCommerce store using their referral link or special code. This is known as “Affiliate Marketing”.
7. Establish a partnership with an influencer or a celebrity, in which you create a new product and name it after them. These are known as “Co-Branded Products”. 

Tip: Of course, we are not asking you to use all these ways to work with influencers at once because some of them may not be even relevant to your goals or suitable for your target audience. However, what we are saying here is to not focus on only one way and to diversify as much as you can and as much as your goals allow you to.

Final Thoughts:

We have established that influencer marketing is becoming indispensable for eCommerce marketers. Carrying out a successful influencer marketing campaign can sometimes be challenging, but with the right strategies and tools, its effectiveness is incomparable. 

In addition to all the previously discussed strategies, Converted.in is offering you a great complementary tool that will greatly help you. It is a marketing automation tool that will:

• Segment your target audience, which will help you implement the first strategy we talked about in this article.
• Create, customize, launch, and automate personalized ads, SMS, and email marketing campaigns, in which you can tell your customers about your partnerships with influencers, or in which you can even integrate your influencer-generated content. 

Book your Demo now to bless your eCommerce business with the benefits of influencer marketing.