Using Influencers to Boost Your eCommerce Content Credibility

From Hollywood celebrities to fashion models, to business moguls, every industry has people who are powerful and influential due to their knowledge or perceived knowledge. In the current digital and highly connected world, there is an information overload and a fierce competition to get noticed.?Marketers and brands are focusing more on influencer content to get their content to large audiences and give their content marketing strategies an extra lift.?

This piece highlights the steps your ecommerce store can take to boost their content distribution and credibility using influencers. But first, a closer look at what influencer marketing means.

What?is?Influencer?Marketing?

Influencer marketing is the art of using influential people in a certain domain to create and distribute content.?Research shows that up to 92 percent?of consumers relay on referrals and recommendations from people within their social circles.??

The underlying strategy of influencer marketing is to expose the brand and products to the influencer’s fans in a natural and authentic way.?Influencers amass large followings by creating insightful, engaging, entertaining, transparent, and humorous content.?

Using influencers to Revive your eCommerce Content Marketing Strategy

eCommerce brands use influencer s in link building, relationship development, and content promotion. As a brand, you can partner with an influencer in multiple ways.?First, you can co-create content with the help of the influencer. Second, your brand can create content and allow the influencer to contribute or have a quote. Third, you can create content for publishing on the influencer’s blog, social media platforms, website, or any other publication.??

Below are roles that influencers play in content distribution;

Expanding the Brand’s Reach

As earlier noted, influencers command large following of loyal fans.?By posting information about your brand endorsing your products or services, influencers can open endless doors for your brand to be in front of your potential buyers.?

To get the best of influencer marketing, you need to first clearly define your marketing objectives.??A brand’s influencer marketing objective may include growing social media followers, creating brand awareness, building brand identity and credibility, building engagement, growing sales, and building customer loyalty.?

You also need to pre-define your target audience. This can be the brand’s total target audience or campaign-specific audience.?Also establish and clarify your brand voice and personality, and use influencer marketing to amplify this voice.?

Build?Trust?and?Credibility

Influencers command the trust and loyalty of their fans.?When they post content about your brand or endorse your products to their fans, they transfer this loyalty as their fans start viewing your brand through the eyes of the influencer.?

Brands seek to build trust with its customers and the market as a whole as well as gain industry authority, credibility, and expertise.??To build trust and credibility, you can leverage influencers to positively review your products or brand. This can be in the form of testimonials, recommendations, and brand commentary across social and other digital platforms.

To further boost brand trust and credibility, brands are opting for long-term partnerships with their influencers as opposed to one-off gigs.?This way, you establish a mutually-benefiting relationship that allows you to leverage their influence to build your own brand credibility over time.

Directing Your Consumer Purchasing Behaviour

Research shows that 44% of consumers are willing to consume a product or service recommended by an influencer.?With many regarded idols by their fans, and able to incline their follows’ buying decision towards certain products and brands, influencers are an effective tool to not only lead your potential customers through the buyer’s journey but ?also turn potential leads to buying customers.?

Influencers can direct your consumers’ purchasing behaviour through recommendations, engagement on various online platforms, expertise advice, and user-generated content to name a few. ?Whether it is their expertise or high-quality content, influencers bear a large influence on consumer buying decision – a trend that ecommerce brands and marketers need to take note when creating their content marketing strategies.

Build?Brand Awareness

One of the qualifying factors of an influencer is having a large following of loyal fans.?Allowing influencers to publish your content exposes it to a large audience and places the brand at the front of easily-convertible leads.?

Integrating Influencers into eCommerce Content Marketing Strategy

Your influencer content marketing strategy may not pay off optimally if its does not work in tandem with the rest of your ecommerce content marketing strategy.?Below are strategies to ensure your influencer strategy works seamlessly with the rest of your ecommerce content marketing strategy.?

Capitalise on Your Social Media marketing

While influencers have the potential of helping a brand achieve its marketing objectives within a short period, this largely depends on the platform used.?Social media is where many influencers command the largest following and have most engagement with their audience.

As an ecommerce brand or marketer, you need to create content that is easy to share and consume across multiple social media platforms.?

Let your Influencer Contribute Guest Post on Your Blog

Guest posts are an effective way to have influencers to talk about your brand in details and engage more with their audience regarding your brand and products.?They offer an opportunity for influencers to put forward their ideas and expertise and appeal to your audience.?

Have Clear Marketing Objectives

Before you bring an influencer on board, you need first have all your marketing details compiled including instructions, descriptions, and expected outcome.?This gives the influencer a clear idea of what to work with and the anticipated results.??