Source: Pexels
Influencer marketing has implementation as a complete and independent tool for advertising goods and services. Most often, we can find brand collaborations with bloggers in cosmetics, clothing, and restaurant spheres.
And it’s not the whole list of how influencers can help. The main thing is finding the right approach to them and considering the niche in which they are most influential.
To be successful in influencer marketing, you should carefully consider your promotion strategy. In this article, we’ll figure out how influencer marketing can boost online deals.
4 Ways Influencer Marketing Can Increase Online Sales
1. Promote the Store
Online stores partner with bloggers primarily to promote the brand. It’s the most common and obvious way to use this marketing strategy. Opinion leaders talk about your company or products and link to you directly from social media.
Such marketing is successful because it doesn’t look like an advertisement, even if posts have a “Paid partnership” mark. Bloggers incorporate product mentioning into their content natively, which is why people trust them more than direct advertising.
According to a Statista survey, the most effective content for influencer marketing is Instagram (posts, stories, videos) and YouTube. It’s a way to visually present your product in action and direct shoppers to your page so they don’t get lost along the journey.
Source: Statista
You can track the ROI of your campaigns using a UTM mark or a specific link.
See how a micro-influencer Joëlle Anello fitted the ad of La Vie en Rose swimsuit into her general concept? It’s hard to distinguish if she dedicated this post to one of her daily routines or promotes something on purpose.
Source: Joëlle Anello Instagram account
2. Share User-Generated Content
Brands striving to succeed should always generate captivating images and videos. This is because visual content attracts leads on social media and retains an engaged audience. People simply won’t know about you if you don’t publish anything. However, quality content takes a lot of time, money, and effort.
Influencer marketing provides you with unique user-generated content. Original photos are more valuable than stock images or brand pictures because they’re more genuine. You can share it and save it as long as you want.
Finding the right influencers is a challenging task. Getting quality content is even harder. You can ask bloggers to use their content on your page and repost it. This trick will show your collaboration along with images and videos.
The screenshot below is an illustration of how Ellesse enriches its newsfeed with the ambassadors’ photos.
Source: Ellesse Instagram account
3. Provide Feedback
Marketing Charts statistics illustrate that the most valuable content influencers provide is reviews. Real-life experience is much more trustworthy when making a buying decision. Thus, brands inspire their clients to share their opinion.
Source: Marketing Charts
But customers usually forget to come back and leave feedback. Especially when they’re satisfied with the product. If they’re not, they’ll make you know about it. Opinion leaders can create reviews and stories so that you share them on your site.
The core thing is to fair play and not collaborate for the sake of positive testimonials. And don’t pay money for such a thing by no means. The secret will be revealed in any case costing you reputational loss.
Honest and helpful information on a product page or social media can be a source of social proof to give potential customers more confidence in their purchase.
An English businesswoman, YouTube star, and author Zoe Sugg mentioned the GHD Max styler in her video. This format is effective because it can show hair straightening and what effect is obtained after using this gadget. She shared her opinion on the product and left a link in the video description.
Source: Zoe Sugg YouTube channel
4. Attract the Target Audience with Discounts
Bloggers and ambassadors offer special promotional codes that give discounts on purchases. Viewers will be able to not only listen to the influencer’s advice but also to buy the product cheaper. As a result, you will increase sales and track how much traffic and conversions an influencer has driven.
The blogger can receive a percentage of the sales when using his code. Thus, they will encourage as many people as possible to utilize it.
If you analyze the audience of an influencer, you can attract the target audience to your brand. Some startups suffer because their audience boundaries are blurred, and they don’t know who to target.
If you test different categories of influencers and see whose audience is more responsive, you can understand who your end-user is. Each site has its specifics and people. For example, Instagram users are young and active people, predominantly 25-34 years old. While the majority of the TikTok viewers are users under the age of 20.
Source: Statista
To Sum Up
Advertising through bloggers can take time, especially if you are doing it for the first time, bringing a new product to market, or talking about a new event.
It provides brand popularization, product recognition, and a chance for a long-term brand relationship with the target audience. A competent marketer has to consider many factors when choosing an influential opinion leader.
One of them is alignment with brand values. Also, how well advertising will fit into the content. And third, whether the number of subscribers coincides with the audience engagement.
By choosing influencer marketing to promote your brand, you will get unique content, unobtrusive ads, and valuable traffic. As a result, your company will achieve more orders and profit.
About the Author: Kate Parish is the CMO at Onilab, a certified Magento migration company. She has 8+ years of experience in digital marketing and website promotion. Kate’s areas of professional interest include SEO, Magento PWA development, and online retail in general.