If you’re an avid reader of Martech Zone, you know that I have mixed feelings on influencer marketing. My view of influencer marketing isn’t that it doesn’t work… it’s that it needs to be implemented and tracked well. There are a few reasons why:
- Purchase Behavior – Influencers may build brand awareness, but not necessarily convince a visitor to actually make a purchase. That’s a tough predicament… where the influencer may not be properly compensated or the product sales aren’t where a company wishes to invest more.
- Momentum – Having worked with brands in the past, I know that it took months sometimes to warm my community up to a solution. When companies don’t see immediate results, they often run. I’ve had great results with brands that have worked with me for a year or more… but ones that just want to do a 1 and done test never work out.
- Tracking – In every customer journey, there are different endpoints… and not all of them can be tracked back to my work as an influencer. I may mention a brand in a presentation or podcast and my audience won’t use the custom URL, discount code, nor enter where they heard about the brand. To the company, it appears I didn’t perform. And, it’s frustrating to me that I didn’t get credit.
Ecommerce is an incredible industry to work in because the journey for products online is typically a pretty clean funnel. This is true with influencer marketing in e-commerce as well. It’s why there are YouTubers making millions of dollars a year in influencer marketing opportunities… they drop a link in the show description and thousands of their followers may add the product into their cart. With every click and conversion trackable, both the brand and the influencer are quite happy to work with one another to drive more awareness and sales.
The pandemic has moved much of our lives online, from how we communicate with each other to the way we shop. In fact, IBM recently reported that the pandemic has accelerated the shift to e-commerce by roughly 5 years.
IBM’s US Retail Index
Today, digital communities rule the world of commerce and brands are starting to realize the increasing value of investing in influencers — the social media micro- celebrities who have earned the trust of their audience and the power to sway their perceptions and purchasing decisions.
Why Influencer Marketing?
There are significant advantages to working with influencers and building brand ambassadors:
- Authentic Endorsements – When an ambassador truly loves a brand, they’ll post about that brand multiple times — sometimes without it being a #sponsored post — providing social proof.
- Diverse Audiences – Each ambassador has influence in their own community. They represent each of a brand’s target consumers and talk about the brand in a relatable way.
- Content Production – Because influencers develop their own content, you can scale your cross-channel content development as much as you wish… of course focused on influencers that best represent your brand.
- Event Management – Influencers are already investing heavily in live events and broadcasts, providing unique and intimate opportunities to showcase your brand to their audience.
- Lower Cost-Per-Acquisition – Brand ambassadors enable brands to get more for less, as brands can lock in rates with ambassadors up front in exchange for longer- term partnerships.
- Exclusivity – Brand ambassadors often agree to be exclusive to a brand among that industry, allowing brands to monopolize the ad space on their feed.
Aspire: Influencer Marketing Meets Ecommerce
Aspire is an influencer marketing platform built for ecommerce. The platform provides:
- Influencer Discovery – the ability to search for and connect with over 6 million influencers, brand fans, industry experts, and more with the click of a button.
- Relationship Management – efficiently manage influencer campaigns, affiliate programs, product seeding, and more — with no limitations.
- Automate Shipping & Tracking – ship influencers the products they want and even share tracking info — taking all the manual processes out of your hands.
- Promotions – Bulk create unique Shopify promo codes and affiliate links for every influencer, without ever having to leave the platform.
- Measurable ROI – measure the return on your influencer program with clicks, promo code usage, or even reach. Tell the full-funnel story of how influencers drive short- and long-term growth.
- Content Creation – Bring a human touch to your marketing channels with influencer content that’s quick to produce, inexpensive, and diverse. Then boost ads to build even more buzz.
- Shopify Integration – Leverage Aspire’s Shopify integration for a customized experience you can get up and running in minutes, including the ability to send and track products or promotions.
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