Influencer Marketing for E-commerce: How to grow your Brand

Brand development is a vital factor for every e-commerce brand to grow and stay ahead of the curve in the competitive world we live in. In this age of social media, a lot depends on how we project our brand on social media platforms.

Influencer marketing is the practice of working with well-known social media influencers to promote our brand. As a brand development company, the use of influencers in the branding of a product can be a game-changer. 49% of the users say they rely on the recommendations from influencers on social media to make purchase decisions.

Not only brands, but an influencer promoting a brand on social media is also a big part of his/her personal branding strategy too. This promotion works both ways. As an influencer, it helps him connect to the general public through the product that he is promoting, thereby increasing his brand value among his general public.

Influencer promotions for an e-commerce brand help to leverage our consumer base to do the marketing for us instead of spending thousands on advertisements that may or may not work. Let’s assume we are a brand marketing agency with a business tie-up with a shoe producing company to plan branding strategy for them. Our shoe producing partner produces an authentic product that we believe in, and we advertise it genuinely in the market. Now let’s say we have a rival who too advertises an average product, maybe less genuine as compared to ours. But they have a contract with a big influencer who might be an actor, cricketer, a kind of trendsetter on social media, or the likes of them. Who might be winning this race? Yes, you guessed it right. It will be our rivals leaving us behind by huge margins. The reason being the presence of an influencer in their advertisements. We need to understand the mindset of a consumer.

An influencer builds up his identity, an emotional bond with his audience through his work. This stage of fame is utilized by the brands for the advertisement of their product. Naturally, more consumers will choose the brand endorsed by the influencer. This is the major reason why brand agencies spend big-bucks running behind trending influencers to advertise for their brand.

We have seen Jennifer Anniston advertising Aveeno body lotion. Now it’s no secret that the woman is a role model to her fans and women want to look as good as Jennifer Anniston (the woman never ages!) She is an inspiration for maintaining her looks despite her age. Anniston endorsing Aveeno not only draws skin-care enthusiasts to the product but also attracts other women who just happen to know the legend. This is a tried-and-trusted method for brands, and influencers like her carry a huge impact with their persona.

Influencers choose the brand they want to advertise for, by themselves. An influencer advocating our product is a sign that he/she may be genuinely interested in it. This makes the content more authentic which adds to our promotion campaign. Besides these, we need to keep in mind whether the subscribers of the influencer are our potential customers or not. Digital positioning of the influencers and research on the audience is key to digital branding and brand growth. Else, we might be doing more harm than good in the name of advertising.

We have influencer marketing tools available in the market that offer marketing tools such as letting the influencer choose the brand or product that the influencer is genuinely interested in to promote, providing the brand advertising company with a wide range of influencers instead of those who already are a known face in the market, and more. These tools also take care of all communications, post contents and monitor these contents. Brands use these services and can just sit back and relax whilst the rest is taken care of. Some of these tools are SwayPay, Dealspotr’s influencer marketplace, Heepsy, Shopify, etc.

A lot of big companies pay big-bucks to hire prominent celebrities to promote their brand, but instead, strategic influencers for online space are more helping to meet desired metrics. The world of digital marketing has become as competitive as businesses need their presence in all digital spaces if they want to be successful in what they do.