Influencer Marketing for E-commerce-11 Hacks to Succeed in 2024

Did you know that more than 2.71 billion people are expected to buy goods online in 2023-2024? If you are an e-commerce store owner, this is pretty exciting news for you, right? It’s an incredible opportunity to boost your sales and build a personal connection with the target audience. But wait, as the days of white and black fliers, radio announcements, and newspaper advertisements have almost become obsolete, how to achieve this goal? Well, the best way to achieve this end goal is through Instagram influencer marketing. As per Socialpubli, 93% of marketers use influencer marketing, and 89 % of marketers said that the ROI from influencers was better than other channels.

With the increase in the average number of persons who spend time on social media, it’s time for e-commerce owners to ditch traditional marketing for influencer marketing. But how can e-commerce brands use powerful social media channels to boost their sales? How can brands grow their Instagram followers and make a mind-blowing online presence? As an e-commerce owner, all these questions will be in your mind. It’s your lucky day, as we will answer all these questions one by one in this blog.

• E-Commerce and Influencer Marketing- Is There a Co-Relation.
• Can Ecommerce Store Owners Turn a Blind Eye To Influencer Marketing in 2024?
• 5 Top E-Commerce Brands That Use Influencer Marketing.
• Influencer Marketing Strategies for E-Commerce Growth
• Influencer Marketing Tools for E-Commerce Owners
• Is Influencer Marketing Still Viable In 2024?

E-Commerce and Influencer Marketing- Is There a Co-Relation.

Many online store owners often ask a question. Why focus on influencer marketing when you can spend money on SEO, PPC, and online ads? Well, the question is valid; all the mentioned methods can prove a game-changer for e-commerce brands if executed properly. Let’s say you want to buy a new dress; your first step would be to visit e-commerce stores selling the branded dress, right? Next, do you check reviews of fellow customers? Do you ask friends and families if they have preferences? In todays’ digital age, peer recommendations from the social media community aka, influencers, act as social proof. Consumers consider influencers more authentic and are inspired to try the products promoted by them.

Consumers don’t trust brands that use celebrities with a blue tick and huge followers. Instead, they look for genuine influencers like micro-influencers with a small following but genuine engagement. These influencers drive brand awareness and sales by promoting their favorite products in their creative content. 

 As the brand collaborations grow, influencers don various hats, from quality content creators to affiliates. It’s the popularity of influencers that e-commerce giants use famous influencers to promote their products online. The best part is even small establishments can compete with global players by collaborating with niche influencers; sounds exciting, right?

Can Ecommerce Store Owners Turn a Blind Eye To Influencer Marketing in 2024?

Can e-commerce owners use traditional marketing to compete with brands that are using influencer marketing? If brands don’t want to lose the online rat race, traditional marketing will be a big mistake. Why? Influencer marketing is not a random shot in the dark. In fact, the popular marketing strategy allows you to identify and reach out to a target audience led by a trusted social media influencer. Online store owners can create loyal customers by collaborating with famous influencers who love your brand and align with your brand image.

According to recent studies, e-commerce store owners can gain massive profits by following the not-so-old Instagram influencer marketing trend. If you are an e-commerce store owner looking for ways to increase brand awareness and boost sales in 2024, it’s time to follow influencer marketing strategies for e-commerce enlisted in this blog.

5 Top E-Commerce Brands That Use Influencer Marketing

• SHEIN: SHEIN is one of the most trending eCommerce retailers specializes in women’s accessories and clothing. They shipped to over 150 countries and made $10 billion in sales as of 2020. The store often partners with well-known influencers to promote their products to their target audience.
•  Sephora: Sephora is another popular beauty brand that collaborates with micro-influencers and brand ambassadors. They have an influencer marketing program called #SephoraSquad, which is known for its unique and innovative approach compared to other influencer programs. Moreover, the #SephoraSquad hashtag on Instagram consists of approximately 76,000 user-generated posts.
• Mother Raw: Mother Raw is an eCommerce brand that offers a wide range of plant-based and organic dips, dressings, and condiments. The brand works in collaboration with various lifestyle influencers to empower its audience with the knowledge and tools to make healthy food choices.
• Petco: Petco is a top-tier retailer that specializes in providing pet food, supplies, accessories, and services for dogs, cats, birds, fish, and small animals. Their eCommerce platform boasts an extensive inventory of products, including treats, toys, bedding, grooming essentials, and much more. Petco frequently collaborates with veterinary professionals to ensure that their customers receive the best possible care for their pets.
• Levi’s: Levi’s, the American clothing company, partners with influencers to promote its ecommerce store. Recently, Levi’s has focused on raising awareness of its sustainability efforts and the impact of overconsumption in the fashion industry. To achieve this, Levi’s collaborated with two mega-influencers, Jaden Smith and Emma Chamberlain, who created videos highlighting the importance of mindful consumption and sustainable materials. The objective of this influencer marketing campaign was to encourage customers to purchase second-hand items and invest in quality, sustainably sourced products.

This is only a small list of brands using influencer marketing to promote their products and services. If you too want to become a part of the list, we can help you. We will help you to collaborate with the right influencers who have a large chunk of the target audience as their followers.

Influencer Marketing Strategies for E-Commerce Growth

Why do e-commerce brands love influencers? Because audiences look up to influencers for product purchases. To market products successfully, brands have to choose influencers that are the right fit for their brand and make the promotions look believable. The audience must feel they love the products influencers are promoting, and they are not endorsing any product just for the sake of earning money from brands. Also, you don’t want influencers to speak against your brand as they come with massive followers, which can prove disastrous for your brand. To avoid these rookie mistakes and grow your Instagram followers organically, follow these strategies in 2024.

• Micro-Influences Can Give a Boost To Your Business. 

Marketers say influencer marketing is expensive; we agree if you work with celebrities like Kendal Jenner or Gigi Hadid. But what about micro-influencers? Influencers with less than 10,000 followers but highly engaged ones can give a boost to your business. According to a study by eMarketer, as the follower count increases, the engagement decreases. In 2024, collaborate with Influencers that have highly engaged audiences and are famous in their niche.

• Do you Know Who the Real Influencers are?

Reach out to influencers who don’t align with your brand values, and your campaign will be dead in the water. The hardest part of the campaign development is to find a resonant match for audiences. And, finding the right fit influencer is not like finding a needle in the haystack when you have the right tools by your side. Tools like Mention and Famebit can help brands in this process. When finding ideal influencers focus on 

1. Engagement rates
2. Stock profile images
3. Unnatural comments
4. Any other red flag

• Work it out with your Social Channels

If you are well versed with your target audience, find out the right platform that resonates with potential buyers. To make your influencer marketing campaign a success choosing the right platform is extremely important. For instance, if you run an Instagram influencer marketing campaign but your audience prefers TikTok, it will be a disaster. To choose the right platform, analyze your audience and your campaign objectives. Find out which site your customers use the most. Do you want to drive sales, traffic, awareness, or engagement? The success of your campaign depends on the platform and influencer.

• Develop your Goals and Find Key Performance Indicators

To develop a successful strategy, you have to develop the right goals. For influence marketing, you can have several goals like boosting sales. However, influencer marketing can do more for your business than just increasing sales. It can help you increase brand awareness, facilitate lead generation, and attract new target segments. After developing your goals next, you have to identify key performance indicators (KPI). KPI helps you to track campaign performance and determine what the key areas of improvement are. For instance, if your goal is brand awareness, KPI will track visits to the website or followers on social media.

• Are you Using Instagram Shoutouts?

Brands can send a simple direct message to influencers or pages asking for their shoutout prices. This will give you a faint idea of how to promote your products and services. Brands can feature their products on pages with millions of followers at a very low price if they research pages and send them shout-out messages beforehand.

• Offer Discount codes through Influencers

One strategy e-commerce brands can use to drive sales is to offer free products through influencers. To make the campaign more interesting, make sure you offer code to followers of a particular influencer. By doing so, customers will purchase products because of two reasons. First, it’s endorsed by the influencer they trust, and second, it’s available at a discounted price. 

• Share User-Generated Content (UGC)

Ask influencers to share UGC. Why? Because people trust influencers more than they trust brands. But finding creative content and images outside your team can be a challenge. To save this problem, you can always ask influencers to share UGC. You can repost their content to display your partnership with the influencer and their content. 

• Testimonials from Influencers Work 

Reviews are crucial for an e-commerce brand. Reviews accelerate the entire purchase process. But can brands solely rely on customers to share their experiences? No, but brands can capture influencers’ testimonials and their story and add them to their website. Putting influencers’ reviews on your site, you provide social proof to your potential customers that will motivate them to purchase the product. 

• Partner with a Right Influencer Marketing Platform

With more than 500,000 active influencers on Instagram, finding and connecting with the right influencer can be challenging. And, one wrong collaboration can waste all your efforts and put your brand at risk. This is why it’s always a good idea to work with a reputable influencer marketing agency like Social Sensei to quickly find, filter, and collaborate with the right influencers.

• Build Loyalty and Awareness with Influencers

Associate your brand with the right influencers to create a strong position in the digital marketing landscape. Social media is an amazing platform to showcase your company’s visual identity. Second, it gives room to send the brand message in a voice unique to your brand. This aspect helps e-commerce brands to boost their sales. When customer’s favorite influencer is associated with a particular brand, they will become loyal to that brand. 

• Cross-Promote your Online Store

Cross-promote your online store using influencer marketing. When influencers promote or talk about your brand on different platforms, they easily provide a link to your e-commerce store. Influencers can add a link directly to your page, giving a direction to potential customers.

Influencer Marketing Tools for E-Commerce Owners

Use the right e-commerce tools to connect with hundreds of powerful influencers. These tools help in overcoming many challenges likes abandoned carts faced by e-commerce site owners. Here is a list of tools e-commerce brands can use to grow their online brand.

• Shopify: It’s an influencer marketing platform that comes with amazing features. With this tool, brands can add influencers to specific customer groups and provide offers and discounts.
• SwayPay: It’s a simple payment option that comes with the additional feature of discounts. It offers discounted rates for promoting products through an influencer.
• Dealspotr: Through this tool, you can connect influencers with brands and provide discounts to customers through their website. With this tool, you no longer have to spend time searching for influencers with specific discount codes; the tool will do it for you.
• Heepsy: It is a popular influencer marketplace that acts as a bridge between brands and more than 11 million influencers.

Is Influencer Marketing Still Viable In 2024?

By now, you have got a clear idea of how influencer marketing can grow your e-commerce business. But, wait, as we are approaching 2024, does it make sense to use influencers to grow Instagram followers organically? Do influencers help in improving the social media visibility of brands? Let’s find an answer!

Nobody trusts advertisements any longer. And if you are relying on the traditional ads to attract customers, you are missing out on a million-dollar opportunity. Even if the product looks goods forced promotions can discourage customers from purchasing the products. On the other hand, if an admired person promotes a product or service, consumers will be motivated to purchase the product. Although influencer marketing is not new, it still can provide a first-mover advantage to businesses. Let’s look at the benefits of influencer marketing for e-commerce:

• Establish a Presence in an Already Existing Market: are you struggling to create a solid market in the already competitive e-commerce landscape? Fret not; influencer marketing will help you out. When you launch a new product, it is difficult to generate a response from customers; this is where positive word of mouth from influencers will help you out.
• Increase Sales/Conversion Rates: According to recent studies, 49% of people rely on influencers’ suggestions for purchasing products. Through influencer marketing, you can improve conversion rates via a single post.
• Increase Goodwill: When popular influencers talk about your brand, it boosts trust and brand loyalty.
• Gain Quality Customers: Choose an influencer that belongs to your niche to interact with customers that matter for your business.
• Brand Reach: According to the World Federation of Advertisers, 83% of marketers consider brand awareness as the main reason for influencer marketing.

Want to grow your e-commerce business with the help of the fame of influencers? How do you choose the right influencer who gives a boost to your business? How to organically grow Instagram followers and build a strong brand presence on major social media platforms? Social Sensei has answers for all your questions? So, what are you waiting for? Kickstart your e-commerce growth journey with us!

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