Harikrishna Kundariya — March 18, 2020 Social Media is no more just a way to connect with peers but also a way to market a business and sell around the globe.
As a significant number of people joined social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc, a few of them started to influence people by creating, curating as well as sharing their own stories, photos, and videos.
And this ultimately led to the emergence of social media influencers. As marketers are always on the hunt for new marketing strategies, influencers as a marketing weapon soon caught their attention.
As soon as influencer marketing entered the online marketing landscape, a surge in its popularity has been observed. In fact, it’s expected that the total ad spends on influencer marketing will be between $ 5 billion to $ 10 billion by 2020.
But does it work for the eCommerce industry as well?
In this article, we’ll be exploring how influencer marketing can help eCommerce businesses to boost sales. But before proceeding with it, let’s understand what influencer marketing is.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is a type of marketing strategy that emphasizes on certain key leaders in the industry with a significant number of followers to drive your brand’s message.
This is beneficial for brands because the influencers have an existing follower base and when they promote a product, it automatically reaches a larger market.
As influencer marketing can be highly targeted the ROI of influencer marketing is quite high. Nearly 89% of marketers believe that ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or a lot better than other marketing tactics.
But how can we use influencer marketing to skyrocket sales in 2020?
Keep reading to explore!
How To Leverage Influencer Marketing For Boosting Sales
Giveaways and Contests
If you’re an Instagram user then you must have seen many giveaways and contests organized by an influencer in association with some brand.
In such contests and giveaways, people need to follow a certain set of rules like following a specific page, tagging a few more people and like the post or comment. The more people get engaged with the post the more it increases brand awareness and attracts the attention of the target audience.
The reason behind the increase in popularity of such giveaways is that people love free stuff and when they get it by winning a contest, it adds a feeling of pride in them.
However, in order to do such giveaways and make it successful, you need an influencer who has a significant number of followers that are highly targeted as per your niche. Furthermore, you also need to set a contest prize that is valuable to your audience. Or else it may not appeal to a large number of people.
Acquire Reviews From Trusted Experts Aka Influencers
Another way to leverage influencers for your marketing strategy is by asking them for getting real reviews. These influencers are the trusted source of information for their audience and if you manage to win their trust, you allow their audience to trust you too. Just like when a friend of yours recommends a book to you, the chances of you buying the book increase. It works the same way with influencer marketing.
However, when you engage with influencers you pay them and that can make them biased regarding your product but people prefer honest reviews. To do it in the right way, you can ask the influencer to mark out some pros and cons of your brand or product and share it with their audience. In this way you make your brand look honest in front of your target audience. After all, no brand is flawless.
Also, you can use the review made by the influencer to improve your product because they know what their audience prefers the most.
Instagram Stories
Have you ever used Instagram Stories?
Well, most of the influencers and your audience do. Nearly 500 million users now use Instagram Stories every day. Moreover, 1 in 4 millennials and gen Z-ers look for Instagram stories before buying desired products and services. And 36% of businesses use Instagram Stories for product promotion.
While Instagram is the most preferred medium for influencer marketing followed by YouTube and Facebook, Instagram Stories are the second most used format for Instagram influencer marketing after Instagram posts, followed by YouTube videos and Instagram videos.
The primary reason behind brands leveraging Instagram stories is that these stories allow people to connect immediately with a brand. So in order to leverage the true potential of influencer marketing, you’ll need to ask influencers to share stories involving your brand or product. If done in the right way, Instagram stories can help you to create brand awareness, increase engagement rate and ultimately increase sales of your products.
Add-On Sales
So you have decided to promote a specific product with the help of influencer marketing but won’t it be great if you promote some more related products as well?
Of course, it would, especially if you’re an eCommerce business. To do this, add a section of related products on the landing page that you’re using in the post that has been promoted by the influencer. According to a report by Shopify, these methods of upselling and cross-selling can help you to bring more sales and revenue. Try out various ways that you can use along with your primary offering and increase the average sale per customer through influencer marketing.
Testimonial Videos
One of the best ways to leverage social media and influencer marketing is to ask influencers to create testimonial videos of your product and share it on social media.
Influencers are influencers for a reason and that reason allows their audience to trust their reviews and recommendations. When influencers create a video with your product and share it with their audience, the audience starts to believe more in your brand because they get to see its real application and by a trusted source. In this way, you not only increase your sales but you also gain the trust of those followers that increases the chances of them following your brand as well.
What else would you need?
Influencers To Operate Your Account
Yes, I am not joking. This can be a great way of leveraging influencer marketing. Ask an influencer related to your niche to take over your social media handles for a few days and operate it however they like.
Influencers have their own set of followers which they can drive to your account. In this way, you’ll get a surge in your follower base which can then help in boosting leads and conversions. To use this method, you can either give access to your account to an influencer or ask them to create posts for you which you can share.
Moreover, as the influencers understand their audience they can be hugely helpful for your brand to create content that appeals to your audience.
But if you try this method, do not forget to announce it in front of your audience as well the influencer’s a few days prior to it. Also, try to create some buzz around it continuously for a few days to get the most out of it.
To Wrap Up-
Influencer marketing has become one of the most popular marketing methodologies in the current situation. Businesses worldwide are using it for reaching a wider audience and if you aren’t doing it then you’re probably missing a big piece.
The opportunities provided by influencer marketing are enormous. However, influencer marketing can’t work alone, you need social media marketing and content marketing to support it. The process includes creating highly valuable quality content, sharing it in a strategic way so that it can reach more people and of course engaging with the audience to establish a relationship.
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