If you’re thinking about giving your products and services an edge — Then using Instagram Influencer marketing in 2022 is one of the most amazing strategies that can help you get there!
But let’s hold up a moment, what even IS Influencer marketing…?
In this post, we break down what it is, how it started and how YOU can navigate the pros and cons to take advantage of it! So let’s begin…
What is Influencer Marketing?
Simply put, Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that promotes your products and services online by acquiring endorsements or recommendations from celebrities and content creators.
You’ll find the best influencers on social media and through blogs. Other types of creators, such as podcast broadcasters, can also be beneficial for certain types of businesses. Influencer marketing is commonly used to increase brand awareness, but it can also result in a high number of conversions and purchases.
Pretty cool, right?
A Brief History...
Although influencer marketing began in 2006, it has evolved significantly over the last 15 years. Facebook and Twitter were still in their infancy, but Instagram wouldn’t make its debut until 2010. Influencers were originally mostly bloggers who shared personal experiences and marketed things they utilized daily (even monetizing their blogs with ads)
Today, it has changed dramatically in many aspects! While Influencers still share their personal experiences and promote items they use daily, many of them have now turned this hobby into a full-fledged career.
When it first started, any money a blogger got from a partnership was wonderful extra money, but not nearly enough to be called full-time income. Now in 2022, just about anyone can say “I’m an Instagram Influencer” with pride every time someone asks what their job is, and that’s where your business comes in!
Are influencers helpful for eCommerce?
Established Influencers earn money via brand sponsorships, deals and ads. Using Instagram influencers for eCommerce marketing is frequently touted as a great technique for startup businesses with a limited budget to get started selling their products online.
It’s almost impossible to open social media and not stumbling upon a 3-4 influencers promoting sponsored products. Everywhere you look, influencers are showing their latest delicacies, clothing, beauty products, and candles, and that’s just the start. Influencers are continually devising new plans to be sponsored on their favorite platforms, ranging from conventional posts to the dopamine-trip Instagram Stories to the latest reels.
But let’s take a moment to recognize the potential influencers who are gaining traction (the ones that REALLY come in handy).
These people simply love their favorite brands and items. Therefore they post about them. Granted, they’re presumably hoping for a brand contract in the long term, but they’re not making any money at the moment they’re posting.
Through these influencers with decent following, you can reach thousands of people for your startup idea – Ecommerce, dropshipping, you name it!
Strategies of Influencer Marketing for E-commerce
For a variety of businesses, influencer marketing has proven to be effective. Entrepreneurs who are just starting out must figure out how to collaborate with influencers who are still building their networks and growing on their platform.
Influencer marketing is being used by e-commerce companies in a variety of ways, and if you haven’t tried it yet, now is the time. Here are some top Influencer Marketing Strategies for Ecommerce Stores in 2022:
To promote their store.
The most common and obvious strategy for eCommerce firms to employ influencer marketing is to promote their online store. It’s simple for influencers to add a link to your eCommerce store while they’re talking about or endorsing your brand and products. It’s far easier than telling someone to go to Target or wherever books are sold because they can just add a link to your page, making it less likely for potential customers to get lost.
Share user-generated content.
Another significant advantage of influencer marketing is the ability to share user-generated content (UGC). In general, individuals trust other people more than they trust brands. Finding photographs and content from people outside of your team, on the other hand, can be difficult. When working with an influencer, you might ask for their content to be used on your page. Then you’ll be able to re-post their content, which will display your association with this influencer as well as their images and copy to your audience.
Use testimonials from influencers. More testimonials are needed on every website, but customers don’t always remember to leave a review or share their experience. When you work with an influencer, you may be able to capture their testimony and tale. You can provide your potential customers more social proof by putting their information on your entire site or the page of the product they’re reviewing specifically, making them feel more confident about making a purchase.
Offer a promotion with an influencer.
Offering a discount when working with an influencer is a fantastic method to boost campaign sales and return on investment. To begin with, having a discount code, particularly for that influencer, will allow you to measure their conversions, as we said previously. But, aside from that, many individuals will strongly consider purchasing if they can save money in the process. That can sometimes be the deciding factor in convincing someone to visit your store and make a purchase.
Work with micro-influencers.
As previously stated, working with micro-influencers is the way to go, especially for eCommerce businesses. If someone has a little following, don’t be afraid to collaborate with them as long as they have a good interaction rate. It’s easy to assume that if you’re working with an Instagram influencer, you must choose someone with at least 10,000 followers for them to use the swipe-up feature, but this isn’t the case. Such a feature is not required for a successful campaign. Instead, businesses may use a direct message strategy to persuade their small audience to learn more or buy by relying on the relationships they’ve built with them.
How Do You Build An Influencer Marketing Strategy?
Building a strategy can help you be more thorough and methodical, just like any effective marketing strategy. You’ll know exactly what you want to gain out of influencer marketing, and you’ll have a system in place to track your success.
1. Document your goals and key performance indicators (KPIs).
Any good strategy is built on the foundation of goals. There are numerous objectives you may set for your influencer marketing campaign when it comes to influencer marketing. While the most obvious benefit is increased sales, partnering with influencers can do more for your brand in the short term.
Here are some aim suggestions:
- Building Brand Awareness. When you work with influencers, you’re exposing your company to thousands of people who might not have heard of it otherwise. They’ll be eager to learn more about your company or follow you on social media if they learn about it from someone they can trust.
- Attracting a New Target Market. Be aware that persuading the influencer that your brand is relevant to their target market will take a little more effort on your part.
- Facilitating Lead Generation. Finally, influencer marketing can aid in the acquisition of additional leads and customers. Depending on your product, you may want your influencer partnership to direct their followers to a nurturing campaign so they can learn more about your brand. You may also send them immediately to your e-commerce store to begin selling.
2. Understand the Influencer Landscape.
Before you begin working with influencers, learn as much as you can about the influencer landscape. Understand the various types of influencers — we’ve talked a lot about micro-influencers, but there are also macro-influencers and celebrities to think about. In general, celebrities should be avoided since their fan bases are so large that their engagement rates are low, but their rates are frequently rather high. Before approaching anyone to pitch your brand, spend some time observing influencers and seeing how they promote brands. You’ll be more knowledgeable and able to make a stronger impression on the influencer as a result of this.
3. Connect with Influencers.
After you’ve double-checked that you know what you’re doing, it’s time to contact influencers. You may find brand influencers in a variety of areas, but the easiest place to start is with other people in your field. You’ll understand not only who your competitors collaborate with but also what size influencers they’re aiming for. Then you can decide if you want to look for people with similar-sized followings or something else entirely.
Why do people use Instagram influencers for their online store?
Instagram influencers are Instagram accounts with a large number of followers who can potentially “influence” other people’s behavior. The primary purpose of hiring Instagram influencers is to increase traffic to your store and, ideally, to allow as many of those visitors to place an order as possible.
Here are some quick ways you can leverage Instagram influencers to boost your online business’s sales:
➤ Search and approach influencers.
The first step is to find the right Instagram influencers. Choosing the right influencer is probably the most crucial step since it may make or break your marketing plan.
➤ Influencer posts your shoutout. After you’ve approached the influencer, you’ll work out a price and send them your marketing materials via email. The influencer will post your shoutout at the agreed-upon time to evaluate your goods and encourage their followers to visit your website as quickly as possible by clicking on the link.
➤ Influencer’s followers buy products from you. If all goes well, some of the influencer’s followers will be interested in your products, visit your website, and hopefully make a purchase.
The Pros & Cons of Using Instagram Influencers for eCommerce
Here, I will share some of big pros and cons of using Instagram influencers in 2022:
PROS
➤ Cheap Impressions.
When compared to Google or Facebook Ads, the impressions you’ll obtain from Instagram influencers may be less expensive. Using Instagram influencers, a CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) of 2-5$ is relatively uncommon. You have complete control over where your money goes when you work with Instagram influencers. You have complete control over which influencer you choose and how much you pay for their endorsement. With Instagram influencers, the potential for ROIs can be sky-high due to the low cost of impressions. It does, however, necessitate a low shoutout rate and an ad that resonates with the influencer’s audience. Because users can tag each other in the shoutout, your ad could go viral, resulting in many more impressions than you expected.
➤ Can be used on a low budget.
In general, you’ll need a few hundred dollars to get through the testing stage with Facebook Ads and start making money. Some people who are just getting started selling things online don’t have that kind of cash flow. Instagram influencers can be a solution to this problem because you can get a shoutout from a small influencer for $10 or less. As a result of this shoutout, tens of thousands of people could see your ad. If you negotiate the shoutout to be as low as this, you may only need 1 or 2 sales to make even. You’ll probably make a (little) profit if only a small number of those thousands of customers buy your stuff. Then you can just repeat the process to work your way up to more influential people.
➤ Followers “believe” an ad more if it comes from someone they know and like.
Another advantage of using Instagram influencers is that you can leverage the influencer’s built-in “trust factor.” When individuals encounter a paid ad on Facebook or Instagram that they haven’t seen before, they are likely to be cautious at first. When the same ad is put in the form of a shoutout by someone they’ve been following for months, they’re much more inclined to believe it’s a fantastic product.
➤ Can Increase your Social Proof. You might be able to receive a (paid) shoutout from one of these influencers if you have a decent product. Not only will this mention likely result in some purchases, but you can also use it to establish social proof by taking a screenshot and pasting it on your store! Future store visitors may notice the shoutout and think to themselves, “Wow, that’s Garret Clark, and he’s saying this thing is amazing; if he’s using it, I might as well try it as well!”
CONS
➤ No Full Control over the Audience.
When it comes to people you want to target with Facebook Ads, you have a lot of options. You can specify the hobbies you don’t want to target, as well as specific interests, historical behaviors, and geographical locations. This kind of control is not available from Instagram influencers. While you may choose which influencer you want to work with and thus which audience they have, some people in that audience may be folks you wouldn’t ordinarily target.
➤ Can’t Be Run on Autopilot.
If you’re employing Instagram influencers, you’ll need to be on the lookout for new people to contact and chat about perhaps posting your next shoutout. This might generate tension and consume a significant amount of your time. It’s not as scalable as Facebook Ads, where you can easily increase your marketing budget and scale your campaigns with a single click.
➤ Difficult to Find Influencers with Real Engagement.
Many influencers nowadays buy fake followers, likes, and comments to make it appear as if their audience is interested in what they have to say. They will be able to ask for more shoutouts and earn more money as a result of this. However, you (the advertiser) are in big danger because the false followers aren’t going to buy anything.
Wrapping Up
Influencer marketing is here to stay, and it’ll only grow in popularity in the coming years. Working with influencers may assist eCommerce businesses in achieving their objectives, whatever they may be. Influencers can help you grow your audience, boost sales, or just spread the word about your business. Whatever the case, now is an excellent moment to begin planning your influencer marketing approach.
Instagram Influencers can be beneficial to eCommerce in a variety of ways, but they must be aware of and prepared for specific situations where they may have an impact on their online stores.
Working with influencers can assist eCommerce businesses in achieving their objectives, whatever they may be. Influencers can help you grow your audience, boost sales, or just spread the word about your business. Whatever the case, now is an excellent time to begin planning your influencer marketing approach.
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