When trying to reach out to new customers for your dropshipping business, you need to be on the hunt for new and innovative ways of marketing to reach your company’s best potential.
Today, Patricia Garay a member of the Heepsy team, will walk you through some advice on how you can use influencers to market your dropshipping business.
Over the past years, influencer marketing has been a great solution for many e-commerce organizations. Some people think that this type of marketing is just for well-known companies and brands, but the truth is that influencer marketing can work for any industry, no matter how big or small they are.
As a dropshipping store, you might want to launch an influencer marketing campaign but not know exactly where to start. In this article, you will find tips and success cases of e-commerces that have launched a prosperous influencer marketing campaign.
What is an influencer?
Influencers are people, typically within a specific niche of the market, who hold power in getting consumers to act and buy products. Those niches tend to be fashion, food, video games, and fitness, but can also extend to beauty, travel, and many other markets.
In order to find influencers in your specific field, you can use influencer marketing platforms such as Heepsy, where you can discover more than 11 million influencers worldwide.
There are different types of influencers. To start, “Top Influencers” are those who have over 100,000 followers. Usually, these are people made famous by something outside of social media, such as sports or music celebrities.
However, some influencers are able to reach these ranks by gaining attention solely through social media channels. These “Top Influencers” are your most costly option when trying to promote your products through influencer marketing.
Medium-Range Influencers have between 30,000 and 100,000 followers and still typically charge a set or negotiated fee for their company collaborations. They may not be as big as some celebrities in name recognition, but they still hold the attention of a sizable base of people.
Micro-Influencers are those with between 5,000 and 30,000 influencers. They may charge a fee but are typically more disposed to accepting collaborations based on smaller fees and/or free products. While micro-influencers may have fewer followers, their engagement with their followers allows them to have a higher ratio of interest and consequential customer acquisition.
Heepsy allows you to search through and access influencers, later verifying which one's are the best for your campaign. Through their tools to check their authenticity, filters to categorize their niche and follower range, and contact information to connect you directly with the influencer, your marketing campaign will be empowered to make the best decisions with influencer collaborations.
How does influencer marketing bring revenue to your dropshipping store?
On average, businesses can generate $7.65 for each $1 invested in influencer marketing.
However, developing an influencer marketing campaign is not as easy as it looks. If you do it right and find the right influencers, you can attract lead customers and increased sales.
An endorsement of a celebrity vs an influencer is very different; that is why influencers can generate a better ROI.
The audience of these influencers perceives them as authorities in their fields, better known as KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders). Since they have earned this trust with their followers, once there is an endorsement mentioning your store or product, there is a high chance that these people will convert to be customers of your store.
Influencers have the ability to drive lead customers to a specific business or event or to make them try a specific food item. They have honest opinions about products and services because they have tried them and they usually collaborate with brands they are aligned with.
This is why it is very important to find influencers who share the same interests as your brand and who usually work in the same category as your dropshipping store.
If you decide to share a discount code with the influencer in your campaign, they will share it with their audience. If their audience matches your target audience, they will use that code because they will find it useful as something they need at the moment.
Taza, a mommy influencer based in New York City, usually does collaborations with e-commerce stores by sharing the product and a link to their website, discount code or promotion. She has great authenticity and engagement, which makes her audience find the products she shares very conveniently.
How can I succeed with an influencer marketing campaign?
Influencer marketing does not happen without effort, tact, and support. Fortunately, all three of those aspects can be streamlined with prior planning and knowledge of the topic. The tips below should be followed if you are working or planning an influencer marketing campaign.
Choose the objectives you want to reach with your campaign
What do you want to get from this campaign? Is it branding? Have more customers buy a new product in your e-commerce business? Increase traffic in a specific area?
Have a plan with estimations on what you want to obtain. Do research of companies in the same industry as yours that have done influencer marketing. Also, check other companies that have done this type of work and have succeeded. Learn from their mistakes and add those ideas to your plan.
Lastly, choose a type of campaign that fits your needs. There are many types of influencer marketing campaigns. From giveaways to discount codes, choose the best one for your dropshipping store.
If you are using a discount code, have a social media calendar to take advantage of different holidays that are happening around the year. Make sure you plan the campaign with enough time so you can launch everything before that holiday takes place.
Use an influencer marketing platform
Once you know your objectives, it’s time to find influencers. You can do this manually on Instagram or other social networks, however, this may take a while. If you want to learn more about how to find them manually, then you can click here to learn more.
Due to this, many e-commerce businesses save time by using an influencer marketing platform that lets users discover and analyze influencers very quickly. Heepsy is one of the leading influencer marketing platforms for e-commerce stores, and it’s very affordable. You can also cancel anytime.
Use the different filters they offer to find influencers in a specific location, with a certain engagement, or within a specific category. Your e-commerce can match their target audience with the influencer’s audience.
This is essential if your dropshipping store needs to make sure that it is aligned with the influencer they will be collaborating with.
Check the analytics of the influencer so you collaborate with real influencers with good engagement. For instance, a follower of a fitness influencer would be more likely to have their fitness equipment delivered through a company that the influencer promotes than that of someone they don’t routinely listen to and trust as much.
Check the brands they have been mentioning in their posts so you know what type of brands they usually work with. Furthermore, save those you want to collaborate in lists and reach out to them.
Where do you want to launch the influencer marketing campaign? Instagram is the most successful channel for influencer marketing, and you can find millions of influencers.
Depending on the type of campaign and your target audience, you might want to choose another channel. On the other hand, sometimes, campaigns might take two different channels. For instance, the influencer can share a giveaway on Instagram and share a video on Youtube, buying products from your site.
It is important to have a presence on social media. If the influencers are going to mention your e-commerce Instagram page, make sure you have a profile with some content. If you already have a social media presence, choose an influencer who has similar aesthetics to your business, so they are easy to identify with.
If you don't have an Instagram page for your dropshipping store yet, then you can click here to learn how to create and grow one!
Have clear communication in your proposal
By convincing an influencer to vouch for your product or promote it through their channels, they can dramatically increase your customer traffic from their follower base.
Communicate your ideas to influencers, and what do you want to do in the campaign. Do you need the influencer to share 2 posts and 3 stories? Be clear about that as well as timing.
Be patient with the influencer’s work. Sometimes they might be busy with other projects or working abroad, and might not be able to share the content at the time you want.
When working with influencers, share the steps that they should follow when creating content, but let them be creative. It is important that influencers create their own content and use their communication skills because that way they sound natural and more believable to their audience.
Always have an open communication mindset so there could be a long-lasting agreement that can result in recurring campaigns with the influencer to make it more authentic.
Report your results
The impact of the influencers you collaborate with on the marketing campaign is measurable and should be actively monitored. These metrics are typically done through a few sources.
UTM codes that are included to reference links influencers can use, allow companies to measure the traffic of an influencer’s followers via platforms like Google Analytics. (This tool here will help you with this)
Promotional codes that further incentivize an influencer’s followers to try your product allow a similar type of traffic analysis through that influencer’s platforms.
Additionally, data can be collected on the original influencers’ posts that measure the “engagement” their followers have with it, using a combination of likes, comments, and/or reshares. This can be accessed with appraisal reports directly provided by the influencer or as previously mentioned, a UTM code with Google Analytics.
Final thoughts
Influencer marketing can work for your dropshipping store and now it’s more important than ever. A carefully thought-out and executed influencer campaign can bring many benefits to your business and drive conversions.
To avoid the mistake of collaborating with an influencer who is not aligned with your e-commerce business, use an influencer marketing discovery platform that will help you find and analyze influencers in seconds. The prices of Heepsy currently start at $49 per month.
Launch an influencer marketing campaign and see results in branding, SEO, and sales, and build trust with your audience.
