Influencer marketing in your ecommerce campaigns
Since the birth of commerce, word of mouth has always been the best channel to convince people to opt for a particular product or brand. When it comes to buying, there is no better impulse than the recommendation or suggestion of someone we trust, admire, or consider an expert on the subject.
In recent years, these people can also be found on the web 2.0, where they have managed to become renowned icons in a specific sector and are able to act as trusted prescribers for their followers with their own content.
These people, the so-called influencers, have been able to generate content around a topic that is sufficiently attractive, creative, and logical to arouse the trust, interest, and admiration of thousands of users. As a result, they have become perfect channels for recommending products and companies to many people and with a veracity and influence, sometimes much greater than that of an acquaintance or family member.
It is not surprising, then, that when a user reaches large numbers of followers and fans, he or she becomes a powerful and far-reaching speaker for sales.
66% of online shoppers say they trust the opinion of other online users as much as a family member or friend. Global Trust in Advertising — Nielsen (2015).
The power of influencer marketing
As new communication and advertising models have been created, companies have had to adapt (or should have to) to these changes and direct their communication strategies towards market trends that move users. That is why with the emergence of influencers a new advertising channel has emerged that provides credibility, trust, notoriety and many impacts and impressions.
With an influencer marketing campaign, an ecommerce, brand, or online business can improve its image, increase its notoriety (both online and offline), promote its products, and quickly relate to its values. Not to mention other benefits such as using a very effective customer acquisition channel, generating sales and engagement at the same time (40% of influencer marketing is used to generate engagement) and achieving a higher ROI than with traditional ads.
In Europe, we have influencers that reach an outrageous figure of more than 24 million followers, so it is not surprising that these influencers have become perfect platforms to achieve a great reach right in our target audience.
It is true that influencers of this caliber are out of reach for many small and medium-sized ecommerce, but influencers with a smaller number of followers, with more segmented topics, small but tight-knit communities and loyal followers, can be a very good option to start attracting customers to an ecommerce.
The number of followers can be an indicator, but not the main one. What can help you identify the power of an influencer is their engagement, their relationship with their followers or their notoriety on other online platforms.
In recent years the importance of influencers has been growing by leaps and bounds, becoming true idols of the masses for users and a very valuable branding and communication tool for companies. But not only companies have realized the value of these users for their marketing and communication campaigns, but they themselves have also realized their value for these campaigns.
In addition, influencers build relationships, so it is no longer enough to make a cold transaction with them. Now it is no longer enough to offer product samples so that they talk about them in their posts, it is no longer enough to buy influencers with products or token amounts of money. Now you must invest in influencers, offer them something differential, creative, unique, such as experiences, trips, unique moments, etc. or pay large sums of money as if they were another employee of your staff (or even more depending on the level of influence and popularity of the influencer you choose).
How to choose the right influencer for my ecommerce?
When choosing an influencer, don’t base your choice on whether that person buys your products, benefits from your services or is a follower of your brand, because he or she probably won’t do so. Keep in mind that this influencer does not have to be your customer but should be the ideal channel to help you multiply your impact by making your products and content reach thousands and thousands of people in your target.
But be careful, it is very important that for your campaign to work, the influencer has an affinity with the brand, that their values, messages, themes, and publications are related to yours and those of your consumers. That is why it is essential to identify and know the influencers related to our sector or market niche, because this way we can directly impact our target audience.
Do not make the mistake of basing yourself only on followers, it is true that this is what attracts the most attention, but it could be (and in many cases it is) that part of those followers are robots, fake or inactive accounts, so in the end that influencer will not impact as many users as believed. Also, remember that quality is always better than quantity, and that depending on your strategy, type of campaign and objectives, an influencer with 9,000 or 10,000 followers may be more effective than one with 150,000.
When choosing between one influencer or another, analyze the engagement of their publications, if they interact with their followers, if the followers are active users and fans of that influencer or if on the contrary, they are just appearances and their publications have hardly any comments. Keep an eye on your competition, we don’t want to repeat influencers with them! Followers will not give credibility to our brand’s publications if this influencer has previously appeared with our competitors’ products.
Finally, and although it may seem obvious, we must choose an influencer who has followers from the country where we want to sell our products or make our brand known. It will be of little use to have an ecommerce with sales only in Europe and be well known in the USA or Japan.
If you are not very involved in the influencer world, don’t worry, the creators of applications also realized the importance of influencers for the communication and advertising of brands and companies, so they developed specific tools to find influencers on social networks. Some examples of these are Followerwonk, Buzzsumo, Klear or Klout.
Before you start looking for influencers, you must be clear about your online marketing strategy and the role you want these users to play in your social media strategy.
