Turbocharging Influencer Marketing ROI.

Successful eCommerce marketers have been hiding an important secret. They’re all in on influencer marketing. Keep reading to find out how they outperform all their other channels with the help of influencers.

More Trust.

Influencer promotions can help skyrocket a brand’s ROI because influencer marketing is viewed more positively by consumers than traditional campaigns.

The key to making this work and delivering that high ROI is to set up the campaign so that the influencer feels like they’re promoting themselves.

How to Get Started.

The first thing you’ll want to do is setup giveaways with some strategically selected influencers. These will allow the influencers to provide value, i.e. your product or service to their audience. Influencers benefit from giveaways by providing value to their followers, and brands benefit from giveaways through increased brand awareness.

Now it’s time to start scaling. Collaborate with influencers that you’ve worked with multiple times to develop new products. This creates a strong investment between your brand and the influencer and provides an organic means for the influencer to market your brand continually.

Best Products for Influencer Marketing.

Note that influencer marketing’s effectiveness can vary depending on what types of products you’re selling. While influencer marketing can be used for non-tangible products, it’s most effective for brands who can offer physical products that are high quality. In other words, you want to offer:

• Quality products that influencers will feel comfortable promoting and actually using. Influencers, as a general rule, will prefer to promote high quality products that they feel comfortable marketing to their audience.
• Products which look great in videos and on photos. These can include products with interesting packaging, a unique design, vibrant colors, etc. If you plan to work with influencers, keep this in mind when determining final product and packaging design.

Types of Influencers Matter.

Not all influencers are created equal. When it comes to how effective their marketing is for your brand, you want to work with influencers who double as creators. Prioritize these influencers over generic celebrity-like figures who are famous for being famous. Creator influencers are going to care far more about the production value of their posts and videos; this, in turn, leads to better engagement and marketing for your brand’s products.

When you are looking for creator influencers, look for photographers, artists, writers, and other types of content makers. You will need to cultivate a relationship with these influencers; remember, they are people, not billboards.

Mixed Marketing Models.

The best type of marketing model with influencers is mixed model that combines sponsored posts with an affiliate model. Affiliate models provide influencers with a commission on sales and create stronger long-term partnerships for brands and influencers alike. These long-term relationships are more desirable compared to a one-off campaign or one-off sponsored post.

Influencer Reach.

You don’t necessarily want to target influencers with the highest follower count. Why? The larger the audience, the harder it is to create personalized messages and content that appeals to everyone. Subsequently, conversation and engagement go way down.

Opt instead for nano and micro influencers. Nano influencers have under 10K followers and micro have between 10K and 100K followers. If you choose nano influencers, try offering free products in exchange for posts; nano influencers are more likely to work on a “product to post” exchange compared to micro influencers who will most likely expect monetary compensation in exchange for sponsored content.

Remember, let your influencers have a good amount of creative control over the content they post associated with your brand. This allows for authentic content that people enjoy and are more likely to engage with versus generic scripts.

Tracking Success.

Attributing sales can be a tricky business when working with influencers. Affiliate codes are a great place to start but we recommend you add a post-purchase customer survey in order to get a more complete picture of where people discovered your brand.

And finally, remember that influencer marketing is all about organic growth and collaboration. Take the time to treat influencers as collaborative partners and you will find that the content they create generates far better results for all involved.