There is a famous quote by marketing Guru, Philip Kotler, “It is no longer enough to satisfy your customers. You must delight them.” And, influencers have mastered the art of doing so.As per stats, 80% of customers have made a purchase after seeing an influencer recommendation, which has propelled businesses to partner with influencers to upscale their marketing campaigns and experience significant growth. 

What is Influencer Marketing? 

Influencer Marketing is a practice that leverages the clout of people who have established a successful personal brand for themselves, predominantly on social media platforms. They are looked up to by their community and have a loyal follower base. Influencers have the ability to direct their follower's attention towards a particular brand and drive their purchase decision in a subtle manner. Their target audience both relates to them and aspires to be like them. There are numerous benefits of running an influencer marketing campaign, such as: 

• Influencer marketing exposes your brand to a wide set of audience.
• It ensures accurate framing of your brand’s perception. 
• Influencer marketing yields a higher conversion rate.
• Influencer collaborations offer long-term benefits by generating brand credibility and trust.

8 Tips to devise a Successful Influencer Marketing Campaign

Influencer Marketing is an amazing technique that aims to enhance your brand’s name in a creative manner, therefore demands diligent planning and smart implementation.  Set your KPIs Just like goals guide your campaign planning and implementation, KPIs guide your campaign analysis. Different influencer marketing campaigns may have different KPIs. For example, the dominant KPI for a campaign with affiliate links and discount coupons would be sales conversion but the dominant KPI for a campaign with a major message to spread might be clicks and impressions.  Specify your campaign goals Your campaign goals are a guiding light to your influencer marketing strategy. Prior to reaching out to an influencer, you must have an ultimate goal you wish to achieve through the collaboration, the message you plan to share, and the brand perception you wish to create. This would not only provide clarity to the influencer while creating content but would also shed light on the best possible ways to run your campaign.  Define your campaign budget Influencer Marketing is just one marketing technique under the wide roof of campaigns brands craft for their digital marketing. Therefore, a set budget must be defined in the initial stages after examining the influencer industry benchmarks. This would assist in staying away from unhealthy negotiations and would provide a structure with optimal utilization of monetary resources. Identify your target audience To identify your target audience, you must start by observing how your customers engage in the social media space and post that, create a customer persona with both behavioural and demographic elements specified. This would assist you in understanding your audience through the lens of influencers as the social media space is highly ruled by quality content creators. Choose the right influencers The influencers you choose would represent your business. They would be the face of your brand, even after your campaign ends because, content that goes online, always stays. Therefore, it is key to ensure that you choose an influencer that aligns with your brand’s values and has a follower base that you recognize as your target audience. Mass appeal is an added advantage with influencers but you still should choose one that is perceived as the industry expert of your niche.  Build your campaign brief You must prepare a campaign brief prior to pitching an influencer. Every influencer marketing campaign must have an exclusive brief containing the basic details about the campaign, such as the content expectation, main message, your brand’s perception, timeline of the campaign, etc. This gives the influencers an idea of how to create content that best caters to your brand image and when and how to deliver it. Select the best-suited campaign There are an array of campaigns that you can run depending on your ultimate goal, your target audience and the type of influencer you are deciding on working with. For example, macro influencers can be collaborated with for sponsored campaigns, or co-creation of products, and micro and nano influencers can be a part of giveaways, contests and even product reviews.  Tailor your campaign to the platform Lastly, it is imperative to tailor your campaign depending on the platform you are choosing to publish at. There is no “one size fits all” in the digital space. Almost every business is collaborating with an array of influencers to reach their target audience, but the ones that cater to the audience keeping in mind what they seek are the ones that are able to grab and retain attention. Also, Read Influencer Marketing Trends for 2023.

Conclusion

Influencers are like relatable celebrities in the social media space. People see them as their peers and not as brands. Therefore, they have a better connection with the audience, which is indeed loyal to them. Businesses have recognized the strong connection influencers have with their followers and are leveraging that for expansion and growth. If you are also looking for a way to reach out to your target audience and appeal to them in a subtle and aesthetic manner, then Influencer Marketing is the next best tool in your digital marketing toolkit. #ARM Worldwide identifies as a dedicated influencer marketing agency. We can help you build a strong influencer marketing strategy and improve your brand presence significantly.

Influencer Marketing promotions have become an absolute necessity for E-commerce businesses in 2021. They are quick and effective to increase brand recognition, trust and consumer loyalty. Data reveals that around 49% of consumers make online buys based on influencers' recommendations. Such is the potential of this powerful symbiotic relationship. 

When you launch an influencer marketing campaign for your business, the influencers’ followers become your audience, and in addition, they also bring in new ones! Here are five pro-tips to strengthen your E-commerce strategy, increase your social media exposure and reinforce consumer decisions:

Plan a Platform-First Influencer Mix

A well-planned influencer media mix will add a human touch to the brand. It makes the promotional experience through social media platforms more personalised and credible for your audience. Businesses should collaborate with influencers having different follower levels, be it micro, nano or mega influencers, as this will help in increasing their reach and allow them to tap into niche audience segments.

Brands can also organise quizzes, competitions, and contests for their consumers via influencers on social media to create buzz and enhance brand exposure. Influencers, too, can implement affiliate marketing by using customised URLs and promo codes to bring organic traffic to your E-commerce website. 

Sell Stories and Experiences 

People do not buy just goods and services; they buy relations, stories, and magic. Hence, businesses should focus on selling stories and experiences through influencers to build trust and relationship with consumers. Influencers can push consumers to break their 'media fasting' and support in giving your brand the required consumer attention and acknowledgement. 

Data says that influencer content performs 2.7 times better than regular branded advertising content through paid channels. Take brands like Urban Outfitters and Nordstrom; for example, they have collaborated with various fashion influencers to promote their brand stories on Instagram via innovative posts and reels. This made the consumers embrace brand authenticity and also assisted in increasing business revenue.

Amplify Your ROI

An influencer marketing campaign is fundamental to boost your E-commerce sales and to drive heavy returns on investment. Studies tell us that influencer marketing strategies offer an ROI that is eleven times higher than non-influencer digital marketing campaigns.

D2C E-commerce businesses should offer lucrative incentives through influencers in the form of referral codes or tracking links in order to increase traction and engagement numbers. Capitalising across social media platforms can be done, wherein influencers use hashtags/tags within their stories and posts to redirect followers and new consumers to your website. 

Brand Awareness & Promotion

In today's D2C landscape, brands can take advantage of influencer-created content to improve engagement, create brand awareness, enhance promotions and post more content without overwhelming followers’ feed. Influencers can help narrow the business sales funnel and get more leads for conversions by prompting relevant, targeted customer traffic.

Influencers can contribute to your website blogs and write product reviews to create more natural social interaction with your target audience, which can easily be converted into sales. For example, Glossier, a beauty brand, has an influential community called 'Glossier Girls' wherein followers can use their unique URLs and get a 20% discount on their first purchase. 

Beef up Brand Loyalty

Businesses should encourage consumers to give referrals by offering influencer-specific brand loyalty memberships, which will make them feel like a part of the influencer community. While collaborating with influencers, businesses should focus on GenZ and millennial demographics to re-share UGC (User-generated content).

Work on cross-promotions aggressively wherein consumers can see that the relationship between the influencer and the E-commerce business is positive. This will help urge more sales. Businesses should use influencer marketing platforms like Trend to enable them to verify preferable influencers, hyper-target consumers, and cut campaign costs.

Influencer marketing is an absolutely viable and essential strategy for us as marketers. The goal becomes to utilise an army of influencers supporting in building and developing the E-commerce business faster. It is not needed for a company to spend big bucks here, as there is a little known truth that more followers do not necessarily equate to more influence. 

It is critical to focus on setting your marketing campaign in sync with the influencers, your audience and your objective. Businesses must focus on cultivating trusting relationships with influencers to engage them with their brand and manage them to build a vast media network.