How to Use E-Commerce Influencers to Get More Sales for Your Store

“Influencers” – you’ve probably heard the term before. Heck, you might even know a few influencers yourself! But what exactly is an e-commerce influencer? And why is there all this hype around them?

There’s a lot to get to, and we’ve got it all laid out for your right here. Learn all there is to know about influencer marketing in this fully-fledged guide. Let’s go!

What Is Influencer Marketing in E-Commerce?

Influencer marketing in e-commerce is a strategy for generating leads whereby you pay individuals who are popular on certain social media platforms to promote and endorse your products or services. Those individuals are known as influencers. Ideally, the influencers you hire will be recognized as reliable resources of knowledge on the sort of products you’re selling.

For example, you wouldn’t want to hire an influencer who is most popular among work-from-home moms if you’re selling beard grooming products. You get the point. Make sure the influencer you choose to work with has an audience that matches or at least overlaps with your own.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to choosing the right influencers. Whether they're Facebook experts, YouTube phenoms, or TikTok celebrities, most influencers are using Instagram to boost conversions. Before we dive deeper into how to use influencers to drive sales, let us give you a rundown of the perks to expect when working with an e-commerce influencer.

Benefits of E-Commerce Influencer Marketing

When choosing an influencer to partner up with, your mind should be focused on the profit motive. But, there’s more to a successful e-commerce influencer marketing strategy than simply making a buck.

Here are some examples of how to use influencers to drive sales:

1. Buff up Your Brand

Establishing a popular small business brand is sometimes challenging work, but e-commerce influencer marketing can give you the leg-up that you need to get the ball rolling in the right direction. Having the reputable voice of an influencer singing praises about your brand can do wonders for your business – in fact, 89% of marketers say that the ROI from influencer marketing matches or exceeds that of other marketing channels. Indeed, this is one of the top benefits of e-commerce influencer marketing. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to give your brand recognition a boost!

2. Earn a Better Reputation

Whether it’s Shopify influencer marketing or any other influencer marketing examples, it all boils down to trust. Why do influencers have ‘influence’? Because of the trust their audience has in their judgment and perspective.

You can think of e-commerce influencer marketing as an online form of word-of-mouth advertising. And if you’re not convinced that influencer marketing is effective at building trust in your brand, consider the fact that 40% of millennials feel that their favorite influencer actually understands them better than their friends. While we would recommend that those millennials spend less time on their phones, we can’t fight the stats (and neither can you!).

3. Rank Higher on Search Engines

Generating unique content is one of the keys to improving your SEO, but there’s a limit to the impact you’ll make by writing your own blogs and recording your own videos. Influencer marketing can take your search engine result ranking to new heights!

Think of it like a slingshot. Since successful influencers will already have developed an effective SEO strategy of their own, they’ll be able to transfer some of their momentum into your business simply by promoting your brand and subsequently increasing organic traffic to your online store. The results could be a great bump up for your business’s rank when potential customers search for terms related to your products or services.

4. Monitor Engagement With Ease

There are a few ways you can go about tracking your e-commerce influencer engagement.

Social Media Platforms

First off, since e-commerce influencer marketing happens on social media platforms, you can easily use the data that each of those platforms provides through their respective ad account dashboards. Most platforms provide metrics linked to demographics and reach, but not all (see how Apple’s iOS14 update has impacted the type/amount of data gathered by Facebook Ads).

Special Promotions and Discount Codes

The second way is to give the influencer a special promotion/discount code that their audience can use at checkout when purchasing from your online store. It’s a pretty straightforward approach that provides a lot of extra insights that can help you determine the success of your influencer ad campaigns.

BeProfit’s UTM Wizard

The third way is to have the influencer include a unique URL with UTM parameters when they promote your business. By using UTMs, you can make full use of the UTM wizard in the BeProfit Shopify calculator app – which allows you to uncover all of the details you need to know in order to optimize your marketing strategy.

With BeProfit you’ll get accurate ROAS and conversion rate measurements for each of your ad platforms, accounts, campaigns, ad sets, and individual ads. And that’s just one of the numerous advanced features BeProfit has for Shopify sellers.

5. Target Your Niche

As we mentioned earlier, the ‘right’ influencer for you to work with is one who has an audience that resembles yours. One of the greatest parts about working with influencers is that they often specialize in areas that are hobbies, and so their audiences are almost guaranteed to be members of a niche (the same niche as the influencer, naturally). If you’re looking for a surefire way to present yourself to your niche audience, e-commerce influencer marketing—coupled with a bit of help from marketing efforts like TikTok ads—is it.

How to Measure Influencer Marketing Success

To solidify the success of your influencer marketing ventures, be sure to take the below factors into account.

Monitor Platform Interactions

When it comes to influencer marketing, monitoring platform interactions (e.g., retweets) is important because it can give you a sense of how popular your content is and how well it’s resonating with your target audience. This information can help you determine which influencers are worth working with and help you create content that’s more likely to be successful.

Track Impressions

Tracking impressions is important for influencer marketing because it allows businesses to see how many people potentially see their content. This information can help businesses determine which influencers are most effective at reaching their target audience and allocate their marketing budget accordingly.

Measure Traffic Before and After

The purpose of measuring traffic before and after an influencer campaign is to quantify the change in website visits that can be attributed to the influencers. This information can be used to determine the campaign's effectiveness and optimize future campaigns.

Assess Quality of Influencer Content

When considering an influencer marketing campaign, it is important to first assess the quality of their content. This will ensure that you are associating your brand with engaging content.

Develop Coupon Codes

Developing coupon codes is important for influencer marketing because it incentivizes customers to make a purchase. When customers are given a discount for following an influencer, they are more likely to make a purchase. In addition, providing a discount encourages customers to spread the word about the product or service. This type of marketing helps build brand awareness and increases sales.