Ecommerce is a booming industry that has no signs of slowing. The recent coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the need for online shopping, and consumers are not turning back. Ecommerce sales for Q1 2020 were in excess of $146.5 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Statistics like this paint a pretty clear picture for ecommerce businesses — Ecommerce is going to continue to grow by leaps and bounds. However, the competition in the ecommerce industry will be fierce.
How can you keep your ecommerce business at the top of the food chain while boosting sales? One of the #1 marketing strategies ecom experts are utilizing is influencer marketing. If you’re not using influencers to promote and sell your products on social media, you may be missing out on serious profits.
To help you capitalize, we compiled the following how-to tips for using influencer marketing to boost ecommerce sales. Let’s dive in!
Know What Influencers To Use By Creating Influencer Personas
Before you jump into influencer marketing, you need to know what type of influencer you want and need to boost ecommerce sales. One of the biggest mistakes businesses make when it comes to influencers is picking the wrong influencer for the job.
Let’s say you have an online smartphone accessory store. To position your products correctly using influencer marketing, you should build out an influencer persona that fits your products.
Will the influencer fashionista with 200,000 followers be the right choice for your products? Probably not. An influencer in the tech, or mobile tech space with 10,000 followers may be a more ROI positive option.
When building out your influencer persona you should answer the following questions:
- How many followers does the influencer have?
- Can you meet the demand of sales from the influencer?
- What type of social posts is him or her posting?
- What social media channel does the influencer use?
- What does engagement look like?
Building out a strong influencer persona first will give you a good idea of the type of influencer you need to maximize campaign success for more ecommerce sales.
What Social Media Channels Do Your Customers Spend The Most Time On?
This is a very important question to ask in order to create an effective influencer marketing strategy to boost ecommerce sales. Especially when it comes to ROI. Why? If you market an audience on the wrong social media channel, you may be throwing money away.
Let’s say you sell women’s apparel online and want to leverage social media influencers to drive more traffic to your site and boost sales. Posting paid promotions via Twitter may not be the best idea, because you won’t reach the right audience at the right time.
Instagram and Pinterest may be a better option. Did you know that Pinterest’s user base is 72 percent female? For an ecommerce business with women’s products, Pinterest is a potential gold mine.
Products Are Not One Size Fits All When It Comes To Influencers
To effectively use influencer marketing to boost ecommerce sales, you need to be a bit savvy when pairing products with your influencers of choice. Some influencers have their own sub-niche that can be very profitable for online shopping businesses.
For example, a fashion micro-influencer may do artistic designs on shoes that his or her followers love. The designs themselves are unique, but the shoes the influencer uses can also be positioned for selling. If the influencer uses the shoes you sell in a design video, your sales could increase exponentially.
This makes pairing your products with different influencers essential. You may use the YouTube shoe artist micro-influencer for your shoes, but an Instagram travel influencer may be better for a stylish pack product you carry online.
Tap Into Influencer Marketing Platforms To Maximize ROI
Finding the right influencers to promote your ecommerce products via social media can prove pretty challenging. You need to find professional influencers in specific industries that also have the follower engagement and other key metrics for ROI positive campaigns.
Instead of banging your head against the wall trying to contact social media influencers online with the potential of wasting valuable marketing funds, utilize an influencer marketing platform like Scalefluence.
Influencer marketing platforms have the variety of influencers any business needs. From tech to fashion, these platforms have a network of social media creatives that know how to maximize ROI on influencer campaigns. This ensures you get the most bang for your marketing buck.
Wrapping Up . . .
The above tips on how to effectively use influencer marketing to boost ecommerce sales are only the tip of the iceberg. There are more ways to make influencer marketing part of your overall ecommerce sales strategy. The above, however, are among the top tips to get your ecommerce business moving in a powerful direction. Are you ready to boost sales with influencers?