If you scroll through your social media feed frequently, you may have come across a specific form of influencer marketing. From flaunting their favorite snacks to showing off their most-have makeup products, influencers are everywhere and finding new ways to attract sponsorships from new and established name brands and companies.
Influencer marketing is not a new concept. It began, formally, nearly 15 years ago and is an effective way for brands to promote their products and services using public figures who are adored by their large and growing follower bases.
Influencers have the power to influence and encourage people to buy a specific item or type of item.
That is why many ecommerce and retail stores are utilizing influencers and micro-influencers to increase their sales and create brand awareness in specific niches or spaces. However, before we dive into how you can utilize this marketing strategy to improve your brand engagement, let’s explore some interesting stats surrounding influencer marketing.
Statistics on Influencer Marketing
Here are some indications of just how powerful influencer marketing can be.
- For one dollar spent on influencer marketing, several brands and companies have earned $5.78 in return, on the high end.
- According to the State of Influencer Marketing 2020, around 66% of brands plan to increase their set budget and spending on influencers.
- Around 49% of followers buy products recommended by their favorite influencers.
- 86% of women consult through social media for different product purchases.
- When it comes to teenagers, 70% trust online influencers rather than movie stars or other celebrities.
These percentages clearly show how influencer marketing is crucial for the success of your business or budding brand. Not only that, it helps your brand capitalize on new consumer trends and allows you to grow more over time.
Below we have discussed our top tactics to apply influencer marketing for your ecommerce store. So take a look and implement them in 2022 and beyond.
4 Influencer Marketing Tactics for Your Brand
Here’s how you can increase your brand engagement using influencers that people love, follow and typically agree with.
Offer Creative Freedom
If you want an influencer to put forth their best effort and enhance your brand engagement, you need to trust them entirely. That’s because an influencer is a creative individual who knows about their audience and is well-aware of different social media platforms, trends, and analytics.
It means that you should allow your chosen influencer to enjoy creative freedom while creating content for your brand, without giving them too strict of content guidelines. Of course, you can communicate your brand’s story and vision, but imposing too many ideas on an influencer could possibly generate poor results.
Once the influencer has worked on your campaign, you can review the work before publishing it on your network.
Imposed marketing or ideas doesn’t look authentic, and many followers recognize that as soon as the campaign launches.
As per a survey, 77% of influencers have agreed that creative freedom from brands motivates them to work hard and gives them space to produce new ideas. So, in a nutshell, if you don’t want your investment on an influencer to go to waste, keep this in mind and take note of the difference it makes.
Be Generous
You can’t enjoy a significant upside from your campaign without being generous. This means that you should pay your influencers fairly for the time and energy they may have invested in your project.
If you want to build an established brand, you can reward the influencers for building a solid relationship. This tactic helps encourage influencers to give their best and produce exceptional results for your brand.
Shockingly, many brands pay below average and sometimes request influencers to work with them for free. This can be off putting and downright insulting to the creator.
This strategy might work if your brand follows a particular cause that an influencer can relate to and is passionate about, but that is quite rare. Brands that don’t pay are typically ignored by top influencers. Top influencers know the power they hold and understand their own value.
Many retail stores have small budgets and can’t spend much on influencer marketing. So should they leave the idea of partnering with an influencer in an ad campaign?
No, they shouldn’t; instead, these brands should offer free services or goods to appreciate the influencer for the hard work they plan to put into their projects.
If you want to experience good results, being generous is key to a positive influencer marketing experience.
Apply Relevant Hashtags
A relevant hashtag helps boost your brand’s visibility. It is imperative since, without your brand’s presence on relevant hashtagged pages, you can’t experience good customer engagement, let alone eyeballs on your content.
Finding the most relevant hashtags can be a challenge, but you should use them to increase your overall engagement rates. Moreover, you can also have your chosen influencer recommend relevant hashtags and ask them to use specific hashtags to reach your target audience.
While implementing this marketing tactic, ensure a good blend of standard and unique hashtags. Then use this mix on all your posts and stories and encourage influencers to use them. You can even make it a requirement.
This powerful strategy can help boost campaign results and might also prove beneficial in building your brand’s image.
A resource to find relevant hashtags that may suit your brand can be found here.
Leverage Micro-Influencers
An influencer with a smaller number of followers (between 5,000 and 50,000) might not catch your attention because of their relatively low follower count. But the truth is sometimes the public resonates with micro-influencers much better than those with a considerable following (1M+).
Micro-influencers usually have a trustworthy, passionate, and strong relationship with their followers and are in a better position to influence their audience.
In addition, when you work with micro-influencers, you also reduce your spending. This cost-effective strategy helps you look after your finances and simultaneously achieve your campaign goals.
Final Takeaway
In this article, we discussed how influencer marketing is rapidly growing and is providing an opportunity for brands to reach out to more of their target audience through an influencer’s loyal fanbase.
However, for an influencer campaign to be successful, there are a few tactics that you should implement. As we highlighted, you should pay influencers fairly and give them the freedom to be creative.
In addition, if you want to increase engagement for your brand, find relevant hashtags, and if possible, find micro-influencers to connect with a passionate audience more efficiently.
If you can incorporate these suggestions, influencer marketing may be fruitful for your brand.
