KASPIEN HOLDINGS Why should you bother with an influencer marketing strategy for Amazon? The short answer is that it helps your brand generate awareness, build trust, and drive additional traffic to Amazon. But let's unpack this a bit more.
Influencer Marketing Has a Long HistoryInfluencer marketing existed long before social media. Any person capable of swaying public opinion could and was used to promote products, political agendas, and more. The practice persists today in the form of dedicated influencer marketing strategies.
While social media didn't create influencer marketing, it did pave the way for thousands of new influencers to emerge and exponentially increased influencers' reach. These individuals with large social followings have become one of the main ways we as consumers discover new products, read reviews, and learn of new ways to use products. As marketers, utilizing influencers is not only a great way for us to reach new audiences, but also to stay competitive in the ever-saturated online realm.
Influencers Have Earned TrustWhen social media users choose to follow influencers, it's because they enjoy the influencer's personality, agree with their values, and/or respect their opinions. As marketers, we can capitalize on this existing line of trust by partnering with influencers. Through these partnerships, consumers are introduced to our products by people they trust.
Of course, this tactic only works well when there's alignment between your brand's and the influencer's personality and values. Incongruities creates the risk of alienating audiences instead of intriguing them, so it's crucial you do your research and find an influencer who aligns well with your brand.
Things to Consider for Your Influencer Marketing Strategy What are Your Brand Goals?Before you start an influencer campaign, it is important to consider the goals you are trying to reach.
- Where do you want to drive traffic - to your website or Amazon Brand Store?
- What is your primary objective - to increase increase brand awareness or sales?
All of these goals can be accomplished using influencers! Whenever you start creating a new campaign, tailor your guidelines and requirements to suit your goals. For example, if you want to drive traffic to your Amazon Brand Store, then require influencers to link your Brand Store in their bio and mention Amazon in their post.
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These small adaptations can be altered for any goal you may have and truly make a difference in the success of your marketing efforts!
Are the Influencers Aligned with Your Brand Image?Is the influencer congruent with your brand image?
We already mentioned the importance of alignment for the sake of engaging audiences, but alignment is also important for protecting your brand integrity. It's vital that the content influencers share is representative of who you are as a brand. An influencer who does not line up with your company's image may confuse or deter consumers, and harm your brand's reputation.
Do They Have Amazon Influencer Storefronts?If your goal is to drive sales and awareness to your Amazon listings, then you should seek influencers that have their own Amazon Storefronts.
Similar to Amazon Brand Stores, these pages on Amazon allow individuals to share specific products, linking directly to the listings. Influencers can have numerous sections on their store based upon category, use, seasonality, etc. This allows shoppers to easily locate and purchase your products from the influencers themselves.
Here are a few influencers' Amazon Storefronts:
- Carolena Huseby
- Jera Richardson
- Brooke Lynn
Is the influencer's content of high-quality?
When influencers feature your products, their work represents your brand as well. To uphold how your brand is perceived, work only with influencers who produce high quality content. This is an absolutely necessary part of designing your influencer campaign.
How Much EngagementDo They Drive?How many likes, comments, shares, etc. do they receive?
Though it can vary depending on your goals, in most cases, you'll want to work with influencers that have high engagement rates. It's not uncommon for influencers to have thousands of followers, but very low engagement levels. This indicates that the influence, effectively, has less influence; much of their audience doesn't care about their content enough to engage with it.
A large audience means greater visibility, but it is engagement rate that correlates to high conversion rates. As a good rule of thumb, 2%-3% engagement rate is common and 4%-6% is considered a good rate.
Which Social Platforms Should You Target?What platform does your target audience live on?
Your audience may be most active on Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn, for example. However, it's likely that the platform you should take full advantage of is Instagram. In comparison to other social networks, Instagram has an average engagement rate of 3.21%while there is only a 1.5% engagement rate across all other social networks. The more engagements that occur on the platform means the more users are actually absorbing the content being shared. Instagram is likely a prosperous route for you to take, but do your due diligence and research which platform is most popular among your particular audience.
What is Your Influencer Marketing Strategy Budget?Because there are so many types of influencers that target different audiences, prices vary. While some influencers with extremely large followings may charge $5,000 for a single post, on average, most influencers charge less than $250 per post.
How many and the type of influencers you want to hire all depends on your goals and budget. If you have a lower budget posts, you'll like partner with nano-influencers (1,000-10,000 followers) and micro influencers (10,000-50,000 followers), and likely include fewer deliverables.
If you want to hire fewer influencers with larger audiences, you should look at hiring mid-tier or macro-influencers. These influencers have more followers (50,000-500,000 followers for mid-tier and 500,000-1,000,000 for macro) and higher engagement levels, allowing for more exposure for your brand. Working with these types of influencers provides a great deal of visibility, but they target a more homogenous audience than you'd get by hiring many, smaller influencers.
If you do not have a budget to pay influencers, you still have one more option: product exchange influencers. This type of campaign is exactly what it sounds like; the brand sends free product samples to influencers who have small audiences in exchange for some type of post. While small, these influencers often have more engaged, grassroots audiences. When you partner with multiple product-exchange influencers, they can drive meaningful results.
Once again, your strategy should be driven by your goals. It may take a couple of tries to craft the ideal strategy.
How to Attribute Resultsto Your Influencer Marketing StrategyBecause influencer marketing can take multiple interactions over multiple channels before a shopper converts, tracking attribution can be difficult. Nevertheless, it's absolutely essential that you can measure the effects of your campaign. You (and your boss) need to validate that you're spending your marketing dollars in the best way possible. If you can't, then you're flying blind.
Fortunately, there are a few ways you can measure attribution for influencer marketing, including the Amazon Attribution program and manual data tracking.
Use the Amazon AttributionProgramOne way to determine the success of your influencer marketing is through the Amazon Attribution program. This platform offered through Amazon Advertising provides marketers insights into how their off-Amazon marketing tactics like search, social, video, email, etc. impact shopping activity and sales performance on Amazon.
This tool allows you to trackclick-throughs, page views, conversions, sales, and more, all organized by campaign, helping you attribute success to each strategy correctly. For each new campaign or strategy, you can create a unique trackable link for the given ASIN, which you can then give influencers.
Using this tool, you can identify which influencers are driving the most traffic and sales back to Amazon. If an influencer isn't driving traffic, you can investigate why. Is there content not promoting your product well, or is their audience simply not interested in your product? Based on your findings, you can revise your tactics or end the partnership and seek out a new partner.
Track Engagement Levels ManuallyTracking engagement on both your social channels as well as the influencers' socials is important for determining the success of your marketing efforts. To assess the campaign's impact, record engagement levels (likes, comments, shares, saves, impressions, and clicks) before and after the campaign so you can compare the difference.
If changes did occur:
- When in the campaign did it happen?
- Was it after a certain influencer posted?
- What did this influencer do to make this happen? Did they reach a certain demographic that may be very interested in your product?
Analyzing these numbers will allow you to make better future decisions and help you choose influencers who will more effectively help you reach your goals.
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Kaspien Holdings Inc. published this content on 17 August 2021 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 17 August 2021 17:53:01 UTC.
