Given that consumers spend a lot of time on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, social media marketing has become essential for promoting e-commerce brands and their products.
However, this also means that competition is fierce, and brands need to constantly come up with new ways to grab the attention of users and engage them.
Here’s where influencer marketing comes into play, giving brands access to new consumer pools and convincing users to make purchases.
Whether you already have a Shopify store or are planning to create one, influencer marketing is precisely what you need to drive traffic to your store and boost sales.
Now, let us give you the ins and outs of Shopify influencer marketing so you can decide for yourself if this is the right marketing strategy for you.
Let’s dive in!
What is Shopify Influencer Marketing?
Shopify influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing for e-commerce where you partner with influencers to promote your Shopify store and products.
Now, let’s break it down to help you understand.
Shopify is an e-commerce platform that allows you to create an online store, sell your products, and market and manage your business.
It even offers social media integrations, so you can sell your products on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, aka social e-commerce.
But no matter how great this platform is, you still need a good marketing strategy to attract potential customers to your Shopify store, otherwise, your e-commerce brand will fail.
The good news is that influencer marketing can help with that.
In fact, 57.6% of e-commerce brands use influencer marketing, according to the 2024 Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report.
But what makes this marketing strategy so great?
Check out the benefits, and you’ll understand.
What Are The Benefits of Shopify Influencer Marketing?
Here are some of the amazing benefits of influencer marketing that you shouldn’t miss out on:
- Increased brand awareness and reach. Influencers have big follower counts, which means they can expose your Shopify store to new consumer pools, increasing brand awareness and reach.
In fact, according to a 2024 Izea survey, influencers reach at least 83% of social media users between the ages of 18 and 60.
Of course, to make the most of this marketing strategy, you need to find influencers whose audience demographics and interests match those of your target audience.
- Higher trust and credibility. One of the main challenges e-commerce brands face nowadays is getting consumers to trust them.
Fortunately, 69% of consumers trust influencer recommendations more than advertising from brands, according to a 2023 Matter Communications survey.
Therefore, over time, influencer partnerships can help build consumer trust in your brand.
- Improved engagement. Influencers already have highly engaged followers who immediately interact with the influencer’s content.
An interesting fact here is that the fewer followers an influencer has, the more engaged their audience is.
According to HypeAuditor findings, as cited by Shopify, nano-influencers have the highest engagement rates (2.53%), while celebrities have the lowest (0.92%).
One of the reasons for this high engagement is the authentic and relatable user-generated content (UGC) that micro-influencers create, which resonates with their audience.
- Better conversions and sales. Collaborating with influencers in your niche will give you direct access to your target audience.
In other words, those followers are already interested in products like yours, so you have a better chance of converting them into paying customers and driving sales.
Moreover, the 2024 Izea survey also found that 51% of consumers have made a purchase after seeing a product used by an influencer.
Now, let’s move on to the types of influencer marketing campaigns you can run to promote your online store.
Types of Influencer Marketing Campaigns for Shopify
If you want your marketing efforts to generate the best results possible, you should diversify your Shopify influencer marketing program using various types of campaigns.
Sponsored Posts
Paying influencers to create and share posts promoting your brand and products is a very popular and effective marketing strategy.
Plus, it’s one of the easiest ways for influencers to make money on social media, making it a win-win solution.
However, you should know that according to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines, influencers have a legal obligation to disclose sponsored posts.
Therefore, if you want to avoid legal issues and build consumer trust in your brand, make sure your influencers abide by this rule.
Influencers usually indicate that a post is sponsored by using hashtags, like #sponsorship or #ad, or by adding a label, like ‘Sponsored by’ or ‘Paid partnership.’
Product Reviews
The Medill Spiegel Research Center (SRC) found that 95% of consumers check product reviews, and 86% consider them essential to their buyer decision process.
So, you should never underestimate the importance of good product reviews.
There’s only one problem.
If you pay influencers to create product reviews, that’s a form of sponsored content that needs to be disclosed.
Unfortunately, that makes it hard for social media users to trust that the product reviews are genuine.
Therefore, we suggest that you ask influencers to create authentic product review videos in which they mention everything they like and dislike about your product.
Don’t be afraid of the negative aspects because they show consumers you don’t want to trick them into buying, which builds trust in your brand.
Unboxings
Unboxing videos feature the influencer unpacking new products for the first time, presenting their key features, and describing their overall shopping experience.
Through this marketing strategy, social media influencers can increase brand awareness, educate their followers about your products, and convince them to make a purchase.
Likewise, a Google Customer Survey found that 62% of consumers interested in a particular product watch unboxing videos to learn more about it before they purchase it.
Shopify Hauls
Shopify hauls are a TikTok influencer marketing strategy where influencers share with their followers newly acquired products from Shopify stores.
Influencers usually talk about their shopping experience, the product features, and price, including special offers or discounts that will make users more eager to buy.
In essence, these videos are similar to unboxing videos, just without the unpacking part.
If you want to encourage influencers to create authentic Shopify hauls and unboxing videos, you can start an influencer gifting program where you send them free products to review.
Giveaways
Giveaways are a very popular Shopify Instagram marketing strategy.
These campaigns involve asking users to like and share a post and maybe tag a friend in the comment section for the chance to win a free product.
And since everyone likes freebies, users will be excited to participate, thus increasing your brand’s engagement rates.
So, if you want more social media users to learn about your campaign and get involved, you should ask influencers to promote or host your giveaways.
Collaborations
In this particular case, we are referring to a product-related or creative partnership between a brand and an influencer aimed at creating virality and driving sales.
It’s similar to the time when the famous fashion designer, Karl Lagerfeld, partnered with the chain retailer, H&M to create a special clothing line for them.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you need to find a celebrity for your campaign because even a micro-influencer with a very engaged following will do the trick.
For example, if you sell women’s clothing, you can collaborate with an artist influencer to create a line of t-shirts personalized with the artist’s artwork.
This strategy will create great publicity for both your brand and the influencer.
Social Media Takeovers
Social media takeovers are a great influencer marketing tool that you can use to enhance your brand’s social media presence.
This strategy involves letting an influencer post content directly from your brand’s social media profile, in their own voice, for a specific period.
Clearly, for this to work, finding influencers you can trust is a must!
Likewise, you need to make sure they post high-quality, authentic content, otherwise they can damage your brand’s reputation.
Brand Ambassadorships
Brand ambassadorships are long-term partnerships between brands and influencers.
What’s really special about these collaborations is that brand ambassadors are people who actually love your products and want to promote them.
In fact, any customer or employee who raves about your products on social media platforms is already a brand ambassador.
However, working with an influencer is better because they can advocate for your brand in front of new audiences and help you reach your target market faster.
On top of that, since they actually know and like your products, they can create more authentic content that builds brand credibility and consumer trust.
Affiliate Campaigns
Affiliate marketing is a very popular way of driving sales for your Shopify store.
In this case, you partner with influencers to promote your products in exchange for an incentive or a percentage of each sale.
The best part about affiliate programs is that there are no upfront costs and you only have to pay affiliates if they convince their followers to buy your products.
To make affiliate campaign management even easier, you can use Insense’s influencer marketing platform, which helps you find and work with multiple affiliates, send them affiliate links, and manage payments all in one place.
As you can see, you’ve got plenty of great influencer marketing campaigns to choose from, but where do you start?
Keep reading and find out.
How to Create a Shopify Influencer Marketing Strategy
Keep in mind that the following steps to creating a winning influencer marketing strategy apply to all the types of campaigns we just mentioned.
So, you shouldn’t skip any of these steps.
1. Set your goals + budget
A successful marketing campaign starts with setting specific, achievable goals and identifying the metrics that will help you measure its performance.
Some of the most common goals include increasing brand awareness and reach, driving traffic to your Shopify store, and increasing sales.
Once you set your goals, it’s time to analyze your finances.
Unfortunately, unless you find influencers willing to promote your brand for free in exchange for free products (aka product seeding) which is not very common, you need to pay for the content they produce.
Therefore, before you start your influencer outreach, you have to determine how much you can afford to spend on influencer marketing.
Then, you can decide which type of campaign(s) best suits your needs and budget.
2. Decide on the type of influencer for your niche
Based on the number of followers, there are four types of influencers you can work with:
- Nano-influencers: 1K–10K followers
- Micro-influencers: 10K–100K followers
- Macro-influencers: 100K–1M followers
- Mega-influencers or celebrities: 1M+ followers
However, as we already mentioned, their engagement rates decrease as the number of followers increases.
Thus, while it might be tempting to work with a macro- or mega-influencer, it’s not a very effective approach.
On the other hand, nano- and micro-influencer partnerships are much more affordable and can generate better results.
3. Find professional influencers
Finding influencers for your marketing campaigns is one of the most important and challenging steps.
After all, you need to find a collaborator who:
- Has the necessary skills to create high-quality and engaging content
- Offers audience demographics matching those of your target audience
- Takes their role seriously and provides deliverables on time
You can find social media influencers manually, using the most popular industry-related hashtags and keywords, or automatically, using influencer marketing platforms.
We recommend doing it automatically because the manual approach is very time-consuming, not very precise, and requires you to vet influencers yourself.
If you choose the automatic approach, you have two options: use Shopify Collabs or a more versatile influencer marketing software tool, like our very own Insense.
Shopify Collabs is a tool offered by the Shopify app that allows you to find influencers and manage affiliate marketing campaigns using your Shopify admin.
While this is a great tool, the main problem is that you can only use it to run affiliate marketing programs.
Therefore, if you want to manage multiple types of marketing campaigns, Insense is the better choice.
And the best part is that you can link your Shopify store to Insense in just a few clicks to effortlessly manage your campaigns and orders.
As for finding influencers for your campaigns, you can use our Creator Marketplace, which gives you access to over 20K vetted influencers.
You simply filter your search by industry, influencer, audience demographics, engagement rate, or price, and you get the results instantly.
Be Clear About What You Need
Even if you find the best influencer for your brand, you still have to offer them some direction so they know what you expect of them.
The best way to do this is to create a creative brief including the following information:
- The type of campaign you want to run
- The timeline of the influencer partnership
- The type of deliverables you want the influencer to produce
- The frequency of deliverables
- The type of compensation and when the influencer will get paid
The good news is that Insense offers a comprehensive Creative Brief template you can use to make this process easier and save time.
Track + Measure Results
Measuring the performance of your Shopify influencer marketing campaigns will help you understand what works and what doesn’t.
For instance, if your end goal is to drive sales, you can track referral traffic, conversion rates, and purchases to see if your campaign is performing well.
If you notice that it is not generating the desired results, you can make adjustments or use the collected data to optimize your future campaigns.
You can use Shopify Analytics to track sales, conversion rates, and where your customers are coming from.
However, that’s not enough to measure the performance of your influencer marketing campaigns.
Instead, you should use Insense’s Performance feature to track your influencer campaign numbers and spending, and check individual influencer posts’ performance.
Then, you can easily pinpoint potential problems and take proactive measures to remedy them quickly.
Finally, we want to give you some additional tips for successful influencer campaigns.
3 Tips for A Successful Shopify Influencer Marketing Campaign
Here are a few things you should keep in mind when planning your Shopify influencer campaigns to ensure their success:
1. Choose the right channels
Since Shopify allows you to sell your products directly on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, you can run influencer marketing campaigns on all these platforms.
However, if budget is an issue, you should prioritize the social media platform that your target audience spends more time on.
For instance, it’s a well-known fact that Gen Z users prefer TikTok, while millennials are more likely to hang out on Instagram.
2. Use discount codes and promotions
Everyone loves discounts!
Therefore, including discount codes and promotions in your influencer marketing campaigns is a great way to grab user attention, increase engagement, and convert them into paying customers.
On top of that, you can assign unique promo codes to each influencer to track how many sales they actually generate.
3. Build long-term relationships with influencers
Long-term partnerships help influencers become familiar with your brand and products, making it easier for them to create authentic content that aligns with your brand.
Plus, it makes your job much easier as you don’t have to constantly train new influencers on how to promote your Shopify store.
Likewise, these partnerships also offer content consistency in your marketing campaigns, which helps build consumer trust and customer loyalty.
Now, Over To You!
As you can see, influencer marketing can definitely help your Shopify store thrive.
And you’ve got plenty of influencer campaigns to choose from.
However, remember that finding the right influencer for your brand is the most important part.
To learn more about how our influencer marketing platform can help you achieve that and so much more, book a demo with Insense.
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