Should Your Amazon Brand Consider an Influencer Marketing Strategy?
CEO at Profit Whales
Table of Contents
A good measure of a successful strategy for marketing your brand’s products or content is the ability to rank high on organic searches, which require a lot of trust and credibility.
Part of the key to success in marketing is tracking what works and what doesn’t. And while you’re testing various strategies that exist on the market, don’t forget to try influencer marketing, as it might be your ticket to success.
Organizations are increasingly turning to influencers to boost their brands, increase awareness and build engagement. But despite the long list of tangible measurable benefits, a large percentage of businesses don’t have an influencer strategy.
In this piece, we’ll demystify the tactics and metrics of influencer marketing and take a look at what an influencer strategy should factor into your marketing game plan.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that is widely used to promote a brand through an online influencer, wherein the brand and influencer collaborate to produce media content that promotes the brand.
When your social media strategy incorporates influencers, you can tap into the power of being at the top of the mind of prospective clients who follow your influencer’s company or brand.
Influencer marketing spurred as social media use increased globally. And while word-of-mouth marketing is still the most efficient marketing strategy out there, using it to boost your brand awareness seems like a logical thing to do. And influencers are your key to a much wider audience than you could’ve ever reached before.
Mostly because influencers have a much greater reach than your average customer and have the opportunity to get their strong word out worldwide.
Benefits of Influencer Marketing to Grow Your Business
Many companies have begun to realize that influencers can have an incredible impact on sales, from creating a buzz to building a whole new customer base. And with the uptake of influencer outreach comes a slew of other benefits.
Let’s list the most crucial ones…
🚀 Influencer Marketing Boosts Brand Awareness
Influencer marketing is a powerful way to raise brand awareness. It’s common for users to mention celebrities when talking about brands. Plus, consumers tend to trust opinionated influencers more than brands who simply present information through media channels.
Getting your audience to recognize and hear your voice is easy with influencer marketing. Social media users can learn more about your brand and story, about the products or services you have to offer, and about the people behind your brand.
Plus, partnering with a needle-moving influencer communicates to people that your brand is a leader in your industry.
🚀 Influencer Marketing Ensures Sweeping Reach
Influencer marketing provides a proven, trust-based viral strategy worth trying. Whether you’re looking to generate better leads, promote your blog, or generate more sales, this approach can really help.
Influencers can spread messages on social media platforms, popular eCommerce news sites and provide a source of capital for companies.
Marketers, investors, and advertisers often use them to meet their goals, with industry leaders taking advantage of the vast reach and visibility that influencers have.
💡 ‘Note: video influencers, who attract fans and subscribers with a variety of content (vlogs, reviews, tutorials, etc.), terrify traditional marketers. The thing is that video influencers typically have huge followings and can reach them in a cost-effective manner.
Gen Z now makes up 40% of consumers and spends 3 hours daily on social media and are especially attracted to video content.
🚀 Influencers Help You Establish Trust and Demonstrate Authority
It’s often said that the best way to build trust in your brand is to build trust in your product — that is, show how your product can help people.
To build trust and authority, you need to be able to show credibility. Explaining your credentials, showing proof of expertise, and what you’ve accomplished thus far can all increase your authority.
You need to control the channels you’re communicating on and how you communicate to give people what they need to see.
And certainly, there’s no better way to do all that than collaborating with a powerful influencer who can use and then promote your product to their audience. Everyone loves to hear the voice of someone they respect, listen to, and trust.
Years ago that voice was provided by the traditional marketing channel of advertisement. Today you have the opportunity to have that voice and have trust come with the influencer.
Influencers help brands build trust and authority for their brand. Brands can use influencers to show authenticity and a personal connection with their customer.
One influencer’s Tweet about a brand can cause an increase in sales, company’s worth, and credibility in general.
🚀 Influencers Easily Reach Your Target Audience
Influencers are becoming a more prominent part of the marketing mix and they are able to reach audiences that are difficult to find.
As the world becomes more and more connected and people look to a variety of channels to find what they’re looking for, people are turning to online influencers to learn about products and companies.
Using influencers can be a highly influential way to market your brand to your target audience because influencers usually have thousands or millions of followers on social media and they are known as those who can be trusted.
What’s more, they can help you take the right steps in your marketing so you can reach the right person at the right time.
🚀 Influencers Drive Purchasing Decisions
Social media has been taking off at an exponential rate, and its potential for reaching your target audience has increased. That’s the perfect environment for you to promote your products.
And since consumers are increasingly looking to influencers for recommendations on products that they should take into consideration when making a purchase decision, you should consider combining the use of social media with influencers’ marketing of your products.
Influencers drive purchasing decisions more than brands because they have a wide range of relationships with their followers. Precisely, influencers are trusted by their audiences, and their audiences are influential.
Teaming up with influencers to create engaging content is the key to driving your digital or social messaging strategy.
Is It Right for Your Business?
It seems that everyone is trying to find out how to get on the influencer bandwagon.
As a business owner, it’s easy to see the potential value of an influencer strategy — mutual support, social amplification, and reach high-performing content, engagement, and word-of-mouth effect. But it’s not easy to find the right partners and to determine if the additional effort is worth it.
This 2021 research shows influencers are most effective at promoting beauty or personal care products – that’s according to Internet users in top online marketplaces.
But, the main signs that you are ready to use influencers for your products’ promotion are described below…
🎯 You Have a Solid Offer
Many people often forget that a good product is the first step in starting your business. If you have a valuable product ready to sell, this is a great milestone. You have one problem solved in preparing for influencer marketing!
Next, it’s good to think about what niche your product is in and who your target audience is. Perhaps your product is vegan soap in an organic niche and the target audience is likely to be people who regularly care for their skin and take care of their health and environment.
With knowledge of your niche and target audience, you can determine which types of influencers would be a good fit to work with.
🎯 You Have a Social Media Presence
Before you launch your influencer marketing campaign, it’s essential to set up your company’s social profiles.
If your business already has a presence on social media, this will contribute to the success of your influencer marketing strategy. Your audience will get to know your brand, your products, and be given a platform to connect with you.
Businesses and individuals alike can create valuable content for their audiences that can help them make social media work for their brand. Whether you’re trying to boost traffic and SEO, or just trying to keep up with the competition – social media is the way to do that.
Many business owners worry about whether their organizations are creating a perfect social media vision that is well-aligned with their brand. The good news is that this is something that can be addressed easily with a plan of execution.
🎯 You Plan to Use Influencer Marketing in the Long Run
Influencer marketing is a powerful way to develop brand awareness, tell stories, and convert leads. But it is also a long-term strategy that can take much time to reach full effectiveness.
It may be tempting to focus on a single contribution in your marketing efforts, but you’ll see results and improvements if you focus on the long-term collaboration with influencers.
It’s incredibly difficult to avoid the allusion that influencer marketing is simply a fleeting phenomenon. A Facebook Ads that produces a traffic spike, a blogger rave, celebrities showcasing products on Instagram – all that will bring outcomes if you invest in long-term activities.
🎯 You Have a Budget for Influencer Marketing
We know influencer marketing can be a significant marketing channel for products and services. But if you don’t have a budget for the expensive process, the likelihood of success is much slimmer.
So set a budget before engaging with influencers.
A budget for influencer marketing is key because it allows you to be strategic when planning your campaign, ensures that you return from every influencer hunt with a minimum of wasted funding, and prevents overspending which, in the long term, will cost you more money.
Influencer Strategy: Tips and Tricks
If you’re looking to use influencers to ride the coattails of content marketing to attract an engaged audience, you may have some work to do to set things up…
⚡ Make your Relationship with Influencers Personal
In the digital space, influencers are seen as quantifiable assets. Meetings, content, giveaway involvement, and a variety of other activities are all standard components to building a relationship. These interactions are impersonal and ultimately create a disconnect with your loyal followers.
As a content marketer, your ability to reach out to influencers is arguably the most important skill you possess. Building relationships with influencers goes beyond the marketing pitches you might’ve created so many times.
Success hinges on harnessing your communication skills and professional experience as a whole. You must develop a personal connection that leads to mutual value.
“Here’s a radical proposition: the best way to leverage the power of influencers in your content strategy is to make your relationship with those influencers personal—not a standard business relationship.
⚡ Choose Influencers Whose Ideas Match Yours
You don’t want to spend a big chunk of your brand’s marketing budget on collaborating with influencers that have no connection to your ideas and values. You need to find influencers whose ideas align with yours in order to garner a good return on your investment.
⚡ Give your Influencers Creative Freedom
With so many creators pushing out content on a daily basis…how do you get your message to stand out?…
Without creative guests, your content will seem boring and have no clout. Let influencers guide the content so that it will be fresh and new.
Invite them to voice their opinions on your content, and you’ll notice a healthy return. Allowing influencers to have creative license to voice their opinions is a way to make sure they actually create something valuable for your company in return.
Marketing has undergone a seismic shift in the last decade as businesses have begun to depend on adopting more digital technology, such as social media, blogs, and more.
Many companies today are using influencer marketing in order to reach new audiences and grow sales exponentially.
Some companies are now heavily leaning on Instagram to drive customer acquisition and brand awareness while some companies are planning to ramp up blog content to drive inbound leads into their sales funnel.
However, you’re about to choose, building a relationship with influencers is crucial for cultivating connections with your customers in today’s challenging digital environment.
FAQs
- Document your goals & KPIs.
- Map the influencer landscape properly.
- Build an influencer strategy for the content promotions.
- Now find and research relevant influencers.
- Nurture relationships with them before the ask.
- Start early.
Influencer marketing works because it uses tactics like word-of-mouth marketing and social proof, which are now critical aspects of any successful marketing strategy. Customers trust their peers, friends, and people they admire more than the companies selling the products and services they buy and use.
The top social influencer platforms are:
- Facebook.
- Twitter.
- YouTube.
- Instagram.
The purpose of influencer marketing is to leverage an individual’s influence and power to promote a brand. When an influential person endorses a brand, their fans are likely to take note and put some trust in it.
We can pay influencers through the following means:
- Gifting or rewards.
- Camped event or trip.
- Store credit or rebating.
About the Author
Vitalii Khyzhniak
Connect @ LinkedIn
📢 An Amazon advertising and marketing expert, Chief Executive Officer at Profit Whales, a full-service marketing agency for Amazon brands, that accelerates sales growth using on & off Amazon traffic to give them an edge over competitors and diversify the revenue streams while increasing the business evaluation. Amazon Ads partner. Pinterest partner.
