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Influencer marketing is when brands collaborate with online influencers to market their products or services. Influencer marketing has earned its place as a key marketing channel for eCommerce brands due to its impressive ROI, high influencer engagement rates, and strategic targeting of online audiences.
Two questions that instantly come to our mind when we read the title:
Who are the influencer? and what role do they play in e-commerce marketing? Let me take first question first.
Who are influencers?
Marketing is driven by trust, not the number of followers a person has on Instagram or Facebook.In the last few years, marketers found that influencers with a bigger number of followers don’t necessarily have authentic or engaged audiences.So the influencers with smaller audiences tend to have much more engaged and focused audiences. And this is ultimately what you want as a brand.You want to get the most targeted reach to your ideal customer.
There are 4 types of influencer:
- Nano-influencers (1,000–10,000 followers),
Nano influencers have 2x the engagement of micro-influencers
- Micro-influencers (10,000–100,000 followers)
Micro-influencers have engagement rates of around 8%. The power of using micro-influencers is that they all have a certain style which attract lots of people
- Macro-influencers (500,000–1 million followers)
These are the traditional influencers that everyone thinks of. They have around 500k-1 Million followers and have engagement rate of 3%
- Mega-influencers (1 million followers or more)
Mega influencer and celebrity are almost synonymous these days. They have an engagement rate of even lesser than 3%
Instagram has over one billion monthly active users, which makes it a leading choice among businesses when it comes to influencer marketing.Instagram influencers are modern celebrities. As a result of years of nurturing their audiences, these influencers have built large followings within their niches. These followers then trust the influencers’ recommendations when it comes to products, which then leads to sales.
What role do they play in e-commerce marketing?
Let me present you some data:
49% of users say they rely on recommendations from influencers on Twitter to make purchase decisions.
Nearly 89% of marketers say that influencer marketing campaigns’ ROI is the same or better than other marketing channels like SEO or PPC.
According to an Elite Study, only 1% of millennials trust advertisements, whereas 33% of them trust blog reviews when making a purchase.
Adweek reports says that, in 2016, 40% of people made a purchase seeing an influencer use a product on YouTube, Instagram or Twitter.
As long as we have the pursuance of social media and good content to influence us, influencers will continually be leveraged by e-commerce brands, both large and small, to sculpt consumers’ sentiments and outlook in the direction of a certain product or service.
As the popularity of e-commerce continues to grow, finding cost-effective advertising platforms will become more and more important. Influencer marketing is here to stay!
