What is influencer marketing and how can it help me?

Find out what this marketing strategy, which has been used for a long time by top brands, and more recently by anyone who works with or owns an online business, consists of.

You will almost certainly have heard or read these words with reference to different types of individuals, at least once in the last few years: Influencer, YouTuber, Blogger, Instagrammer. Who are these people and why are they called that? How can they help me increase sales in my dropshipping store? How can I set up an influencer marketing campaign in my e-commerce site? We’ll answer all those questions (and more) in this article.

Let’s start at the beginning, what is Influencer marketing?

This is a new (and, at the same time, old) online marketing strategy that involves contacting people with a certain role in different sectors on the internet to speak positively about your products or services.

We say that it is a new yet old strategy because the fact of including relevant or influential people in advertising campaigns is actually very common. However, an influencer is not the same as a famous person, as we have always known them.

Who can be considered to be influencer?

It has been proven time and time again that consumers, especially those looking for products and/or services on the internet, are looking for opinions from similar users when deciding whether to purchase or not. On that basis, online influencers are people with great prominence in this arena, that have a hook for whatever reason and are able to become a reference for millions of people who are eager to learn about their latest acquisitions, experiences or opinions.

One might say that influencers are a rather heterogeneous group of people, as they belong to or are involved in many different aspects of life: lovers of sport and healthy living, video game experts or people with a broad knowledge of the business world. It is difficult for our business to dedicate itself to a subject that does not have any influence or a significant number of followers.

What types of influencers are there?

Influencers often become known in the online world through different channels of communication. Depending on the channel in which they are most important, they may be any one of various different types:

• Bloggers: are writers or authors of blogs in which they talk about all kinds of topics, and who, because of the content they write, have managed to obtain a high volume of readers and people who follow their opinions. Depending on the number of readers and the importance of their articles, bloggers can become true opinion leaders.
• Instagramers: are a community of users of the mobile phone application Instagram, who, thanks to the photographs they publish and share, have also managed to have a huge number of followers, fans of whatever they capture with their mobile phone cameras.
• YouTubers: are professional users of the YouTube video platform who perform in, edit and share videos with opinions, experiences, tips or guides on any topic.

What all these people have in common is the importance and influence that they manage to transmit to their followers, as well as the economic reward that they obtain from their online communication channel. This monetisation is achieved in most cases through the sponsorships that companies pay for the publicity given to their products or services.

Advantages of influencer marketing for my business

If your online business is an e-commerce or dropshipping store for products like those we have at your disposal at BigBuy, influencer marketing can be very effective and of great help in increasing sales.

• This is known as native advertising, as internet users do not usually like to receive direct and invasive advertising. The fact that an influencer speaks well about your product and explains its operation and advantages affects your users more naturally, as they are more likely to pay attention and be influenced by such opinions.

• It improves reputation and confidence in the product, as influencers, although they may also be paid, tend to have pre-defined criteria for the most part. In other words, they are not usually going to be convinced to promote products or brands that might then give them a bad reputation. If the proposed product or service is of poor quality, they do not usually accept a collaboration.

• It increases conversion. It has been studied and demonstrated that the opinion of influencers increases the intention to buy among followers. It is important to know how to take advantage of this positive influence. When it comes to making agreements with your chosen influencer, you can also include things like posting links to your store, plan contests or hold raffles, in addition to the regular reviews. You can even agree on a commission with the influencer, whereby they would receive a payment anytime someone buys products from your online store with the promo code that he/she provides.

• Improve SEO positioning. A basic action when organising collaborations with influencers is that they include a link from their blog or social network to your e-commerce site. You know the importance of off-site linkbuilding for SEO, so you can also put that into practice.

What kind of sponsorship can I set up with influencers?

We have already covered the correct basis for designing influencer marketing strategies. Now we need to know the practical part of the collaboration and what the specific actions might consist of.

Some examples are as follows:

• Guest posting or product reviews. We have already talked about the advantages of guest posting in our blog. This is the search for external writers (ideally with a certain reputation) who can post material on your blog.

• Product placement.This consists of making subtle mentions and/or of placing products from your e-commerce store in different scenarios which are controlled by influencers. A photo from an instagramer or a video from a YouTuber, for example. You can use a product of your own, but without talking directly about it.

• Sponsored sections. There are bloggers who have sections sponsored by a brand or company within their own website. For example, if your online store sells cooking products, why not talk to a cookery blogger and create a recipe section made with your products?

This is the most important information to know when it comes to influencer marketing. Now the only thing that remains is to figure out which people would be the most appropriate ones to reach your audience and to work on establishing productive collaborations with them.