Influencer Marketing Strategy Essentials: A Complete Guide

Tom Fishburne told us, “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” This explains why influencer marketing has been growing since it first appeared. The best marketing feels like getting a recommendation from a dear friend you trust or even a stranger on the internet who shares part of their life with you. But is it always effective? And how can you, as a business owner, use this to scale?

This article will help you understand influencer marketing and how you, as an e-commerce business, can maximize its potential. 

What is Influencer Marketing? 

Influencer marketing is an advertising method in which influencers help businesses increase their brand awareness by promoting their products or services on their platforms. The concept of influencer marketing isn't entirely new; it can be found back in the 1920s, when advertising was just starting, and companies used celebrities and well-known figures to put their products in front of potential customers. 

However, influencer marketing as we know it today started to grow with the rise of the internet and social media platforms in the mid-2000s. With platforms like Instagram, Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube, influencing was no longer an activity reserved for A-list celebrities. Nowadays, influencers come in all shapes and forms (shoutout: micro-influencers). But for brands, they all serve the same purpose: a direct connection with their audience and community.

How Effective is Influencer Marketing?

According to a study by influencer marketing hub, most businesses earn 5.20 USD per dollar spent on influencer marketing, which is a significant return and makes it a cost-effective strategy in general.

However, as with any other marketing method, its success will depend on how efficient the strategy is. 

What Makes Influencer Marketing Effective?

According to Business Wire, 63% of marketers believe influencer posts or influencer-generated content performs better than other brand-directed materials.

Influencers and content creators are masters at building parasocial relationships. The following and community they build on social media platforms become their friends – their followers look up to them and care about what they have to say. So, when they recommend products to their community, it's like they've received a product recommendation from a dear friend.

How Does Influencer Marketing Work?

While some businesses have an influencer program in place that influencers can apply to, others decide to contact a few candidates who are a good fit and work something out based on what works for both parties. But even when the details can look different depending on how you manage your e-commerce business, the main steps are these:

Find Influencers

Find relevant influencers who have an engaging audience interested in your product. For example, if your company sells fitness gear, look for fitness influencers who post workout videos.

Contact Them

Reach out to your chosen influencers with a message explaining your interest in collaboration. Ask them what a potential collaboration would look like. Some influencers will reply, while others may not; it's a numbers game. Remember that collaborating with you and other brands is their way of paying bills, so you need to use messages that present this as a good opportunity for them. 

Negotiate Terms

Once someone replies, it is time to start negotiating your terms as per your campaign goals. Big influencers typically have set prices, whereas smaller creators might be open to flexible collaboration terms. 

Understand that the size and popularity of the influencer will influence whether you reach a mutual agreement or adhere to their set packages. Make sure to have a clear budget in mind so you can have clear limits when it comes to negotiating (you don’t want to end up in a collaboration that costs you more than you can afford)

Put an Agreement in Place

Once all the terms are clear, it is a good idea to make an agreement outlining the collaboration's goals. 

Start your Collaboration and Monitor Results

Once the agreement is done, you can start working together. The influencer shares the content they agreed to, and you have to set clear expectations and stay on top of them to make sure this collaboration pays off. 

It is also a good idea to nurture good communication, as this is a great way to build long-term collaborations (which means less time spent on outreach)

How is Influencer Marketing Paid?

Some influencers negotiate a flat fee for each promotional post they publish. Others charge a flat fee and a commission on the sales they generate. Some just charge commission (this is the most common in affiliate marketing). This fee typically considers different metrics, including the number of followers, engagement rates, and their niche. Sometimes, an influencer would charge based on other key performance indicators, like on a per-view basis, but this is not common.

Some influencers (new influencers building their social networks) are compensated with free products or services rather than money, especially prevalent in industries like fashion and beauty.

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Influencer marketing and affiliate marketing

Combining a good influencer marketing strategy with affiliate marketing creates one of the most cost-effective ways to get more sales. 

Affiliate marketing is based on commissions, meaning that if you find influencers who are happy with this deal, you don’t need to invest in it upfront. You will only pay for the sales you get from their endorsement, and the influencer will get revenue based on how much they sell, so this will likely lead to their content being more intentional when it comes to selling.

Set up your influencer & affiliate program with Social Snowball

Are you prepared to step up your influencer marketing campaigns? To start an influencer campaign and integrate it with affiliate marketing that will produce noteworthy outcomes, follow these steps:

1. Set your goals and choose your program

The first step is defining clear objectives for your program. You need to be clear about whether you want to increase brand visibility in some niches, generate leads, or drive sales. Your goals will guide you through the whole process and also help you understand the results you are getting from your marketing efforts.

Based on these specific goals, you can start working towards it. To start, all you need to do is click the "New Program" option from the Programs menu on your dashboard. This takes you to the program builder page, where you can choose rewards, rules, and other details configurations, including how you will compensate influencers and what you want the content to look like. 

2. Decide the type of influencer you want to work with

Now that you have your goals in mind and your program is ready to go, it is time to decide what type of influencers are the right option for you. There are a few you can choose from:

• Celebrities with millions of followers and an equally high cost.
• Then you have macro social media influencers or bloggers, creators with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc., who have a high reach but high prices.
• Micro-influencers have narrow, highly engaged audiences under 100,000 followers. They can deliver great content with a lot of engagement and probably are more open to discussing an affiliate program as a form of compensation (which doesn’t mean any micro-influencer will accept)
• Nano-Influencers: Nano-creators are those creators who are starting out and have small audiences with considerable engagement. They are more open to negotiation and easier to contact.

3. Set criteria to shortlist the right influencer

If you sell watches but the influencer you work with is in the cooking niche, no strategy can help you achieve a good ROI. You have to make sure the influencer’s content, audience interests, and values match your brand and verify that their followers match your target audience. Look at engagement rates to gauge audience interaction and evaluate the quality of the influencer’s content.

This will also help you understand if their followers are real or fake. There are many fake influencers who buy fake followers or bots to loot brands and earn money unethically.

Once you have done all this and an influencer joins your program, it's a good idea to send them a welcome email highlighting the program rules and details. 

In addition to the onboarding email, you can share:

• Other influencer campaigns that performed well.
• Your social media marketing guidelines, if applicable.
• Other assets and tools that can help your creator's content strategy.

4. Create resources influencers can use to promote their links

Yes, influencers create content, but providing some branded elements is a great way to make sure they are following your brand’s style. You can do anything from creating dedicated landing pages that highlight key product benefits to high-quality promotional content like images, videos, and social media graphics they can use again and again or share previous content such as TikTok or Instagram posts to refer to.

If you are not a huge design person but want to create these assets yourself, you can easily create an account with Replo and install it in your store. This will give you an easy tool to make sure you create different landing pages and banners that influencers can use in their marketing campaigns.

All you need to do is customize the page to match your branding and edit the content so it talks about your affiliate program. This interface would be a kid's game if you know how to use Shopify.

    5. Decide how you will pay influencers

In this step, you will sort all the payment items so influencers can get compensated for their work. You can include commissions and different coupons so they can share them with their audiences. These settings are essentially a first draft, and you will probably need to be flexible when it comes to commissions, especially if you work with influencers with good engagement and a lot of experience. A good way to start is to research affiliate programs in your same niche and see what the standard commission looks like. 

6. Reach out

Reaching out to potential influences is probably the most time-consuming part, but there are a few things you can do to make the process easier: 

• Have some templates in place, and make sure to personalize them.
• Follow your target influencers for a while before reaching out, this will give you a better idea of the type of collaboration they would like to engage in. 
• Reach out to them on their target platform instead and make sure your business account is active so it doesn’t look like a spam message.
• Genuine conversations are a great way to start a collaboration, so if you see an interesting post on their profile, tell them about it. 

7. Onboard influencers and get to work

Congratulations, you landed your first influencer collaboration! The best way to make the most out of it is to make sure the onboarding process is easy to complete. You should use digital tools to send contracts and create a good welcome sequence with all the information influencers need to promote your brand quickly. You can also set up automatic emails for updates and reminders to keep them informed and use analytics tools to track campaign performance by measuring sales. 

This approach lets influencers focus on creating great content and makes sure your strategy goes as smoothly as possible (without adding more to your plate)

Conclusion 

Influencer marketing is a great way to reach new audiences and build a trustworthy relationship with new customers, and combining it with affiliate marketing only makes it better. However, as with any other business and marketing work, having the right tools to make it happen can be the difference between a tedious, unsuccessful process and one that you can easily manage. 

And if you want to know more about what Social Snowball can do for your e-commerce business, you can always book a demo and find out.