Leveraging Influencers for E-Commerce

Since the pandemic swept countries worldwide, influencer marketing has become an indispensable part of every marketer’s growth strategy, especially when it comes to e-commerce. Brands that are selling online need marketing channels that will reach their target audience, offer a seamless online shopping experience and offer a high return on investment. That’s where influencer marketing comes in as a highly adaptable, measurable, and scalable solution for e-commerce.?

As spending on social media ads increase, marketers turn to influencer marketing to have a more holistic approach to digital marketing as it is a highly versatile strategy that can be adapted to reaching different e-commerce goals. Some popular marketing includes driving brand awareness, increasing website visits, and accelerating conversions.?Below are some ways where influencer marketing would be the key strategy to amplify e-commerce:

Product Discovery

When it comes to creating attention-grabbing content, influencers are experts in their own niche categories. They know what works and what doesn't work when it comes to presenting your products in an engaging way to their audience. Due to an influencers' abilities to capture the interests of their public, their followers actively turn to them for product recommendations and reviews. A survey reveals that 61% of consumers find influencers more trustworthy where only 38% find brands as more trustworthy. This shows that consumers are much more receptive to influencer content and view their posts as more genuine and truthful. In addition to that, today's consumers turn to social media for product discovery with 52%?of TikTok users say they search for products and shop on the platform. On Pinterest,?80%?of users say they’ve discovered a new brand or product on the platform. It’s clear that social media platforms are great for product discovery as it seamlessly provides visual and video content. Social media is also the birth place of viral trends and social media platforms have also begun to realize this and are quick to equip their platforms with social commerce features which are being leveraged by influencers to create engaging content to promote their brand partners.?

With that, e-commerce brands should harness the power that influencers have in their marketing campaigns in order to boost product discovery and increase purchase intent. A great way to get started is to send out product samples to your influencers and invite them to share a review with their social media followers. Through this, you may even come across influencers who are existing users of your product that would help add even more authenticity towards the influencers' promotional posting about your brand. An unboxing campaign is also a great way to generate excitement about your brand and showcase your products. A live unboxing on platforms such as Twitch, Instagram, or YouTube means that audiences can engage with influencers in real-time as they reveal the product, conduct a product demonstration, and highlight its best features.?

Drive E-Commerse Store Traffic

For brands with an e-commerce store, one of the most important ways for customers to engage with you is to visit your online store. Influencers can drive interest in your brand and help push people further down the funnel by using a call to action or sharing a link to your store. E-commerce brands can leverage influencer content throughout the entire consumer purchase funnel. Depending on your marketing goals and where your target audience are in the funnel, you can have different content directions to best suit the phase of your marketing journey.?

If your target audience are still at the first stage of the marketing funnel example, which would be the awareness stage, your influencer marketing content strategy should be aimed to create awareness. For example, you could have macro to nano influencers promote your brand with a photo post. To lead your consumers down the funnel, the next content direction for your influencers could be to educate your consumers about your brand by getting influencers to do an unboxing on Instagram Reels that showcases the various products your brand offers. As your consumers are being led down the funnel until the "purchase" stage, your content direction would change to fit the stage that your consumers are at. At every stage, your influencers could drive traffic to your e-commerce store with a link in their Instagram bio, a link in their YouTube video description or a link sticker in the Instagram Story etc.

Boost E-Commerce Sales

As aforementioned, influencers are valuable partners for?driving sales?thanks to their highly engaging content and their ability to drive consumers down the purchase funnel. Brands should choose influencers not solely based on how large their follower base is, but on the ability to accurately reach your brand's target audience.

E-commerce brands can work with influencers to drive sales by targeting specific audience niches with tailored influencer content. Through an influencers' content that appeals to specific audience demographics, influencers will have a much higher chance of converting new customers to your brand as opposed to simply having digital banner ads.

There is no single formula for creating a winning influencer marketing strategy as every brand has it's own unique product USPs and different target audiences. Moreover, the digital marketing landscape is constantly changing as today's consumer behaviours are shifting rapidly as well. Nonetheless, every e-commerce brand should incorporate influencer marketing into their strategy in order to keep up with the digitally-inclined audiences of today.