Over the last few years, technological developments and the habits of Generation Z and Millennial consumers have helped to ensure influencer marketing becomes an essential part of every well-rounded eCommerce strategy.
We’ve outlined 7 key reasons why online stores failing to embrace influencer marketing are missing a very important trick!
1. Influencer Marketing is the Easiest & Most Effective Way to Build Brand Trust
Surveys show that trust in a brand is the most important factor for shoppers when it comes to choosing to buy from a particular store. In research published by the Edelman Trust Barometer as many as 67% respondents said they agreed with the statement that “a good reputation may get me to try a product, but unless I come to trust the company behind the product, I will soon stop buying it”. The key takeaway here is that consumer trust in your brand has the potential to really impact your bottom line and your ability to secure customers for life.
However, as VWO states, trust is not a choice - it’s an underlying psychological state that can be influenced. Many shoppers that come to your store to buy a particular product from you for the first time will come from a place of uncertainty. It's your job to show why they should trust you.
This is where your influencers come in!
A whopping 92% of consumers around the world trust earned media signals such as advice from family and friends more than most other forms of advertising and messaging. Further, 8/10 consumers say they have purchased something specifically after seeing a recommendation by an influencer.
This means, it doesn’t matter how many times you say you’re trustworthy, your customers want to hear it from others, because this is what looks, feels and sounds authentic. This is why you need to leverage the power of influencers for your sales strategy.
2. It’s Much Easier to Find & Work with Great Influencers Today!
Once upon a time, it was difficult to find ‘influencers’ to advocate for your business because they were connected to success, high status, fame - people that didn’t look or sound like the majority of us.
In 2020, welcome the nano-influencer. Small, niche, highly engaged individuals with followings of 1000-10,000 followers on social media. Many of these influencers create valuable content around specific topics and are positioned as thought experts in their areas of choice.
As shoppers today respond to influencers that help them to live better lives and present images of something they could aspire to - these are the individuals your businesses want to team up with.
Luckily for eCommerce brands, it is much easier to find, connect with and benefit from positive relationships with today’s nano-influencers. You no longer need to pay big bucks, you simply need to connect with your most relevant ‘influencer next-door’ heroes.
Photo credit: Louise Thompson Instagram
3. The Right Influencers could Dramatically Boost your ROI
A well-thought out Influencer marketing strategy truly pays off when it comes to eCommerce conversion. Forget about brand awareness and woolly ideas of measuring success, your metrics here should be based around ROI.
In a recent study, it was found that for every $1 spent on influencer marketing, brands could expect an average $18 return. Hello! That’s an increase of 1700%!
4. Your Competitors are Probably Investing in Influencer Marketing More than you
If the mouth-watering ROI figures above didn’t highlight the huge advantage that influencer marketing can bring to an eCommerce business, you may be spurred on by the fact that your closest competitors are probably already planning and investing in their influencer marketing efforts.
Increasingly, brands are allocating a large portion of their budgets to influencer marketing activity. As many as 95% of marketers interviewed in one survey said they planned to use up to half of their budgets solely for influencer marketing!
5. You’ll Get Valuable Feedback from Thought-Leaders & Build Hype around New Products
By connecting with the type of thought-leader led influencers we’ve described above, you’ll also benefit from a community ready to provide you with valuable product feedback. By building strong influencer relationships, it can feel like you have a larger team around you, ready to help make your products as successful as they can be.
Your product development and R&D teams could massively benefit from insights provided by influencers before product launch. When a new product line eventually does get launched, any influencers that helped you perfect the range will feel all the more motivated to help you promote it!
6. Influencers Will Make your Online Experience More Engaging
62% of consumers say they watch product reviews from others before making a purchase. Even more impressively, it's been found that video content can help improve sales conversion by 85%.
By empowering your partner influencers to create user-generated videos for your brand, you’ll be in the best position to benefit from these conversion trends.
There’s no need to spend big bucks on video production inhouse - your most conversion-worthy video content will be the product-related videos your influencers create for you.
radd. turns Influencers into brand ambassadors on Laura Geller
7. Influencers are Becoming Even More Important
Asides from the current benefits influencer marketing will bring for you, defining your influencer plan now will also be the best way to ensure your marketing strategy is ready for the months and years to come.
Many of us are already aware of many of the current millennial habits - these folk are heavy online users and committed to the research process before committing to a product purchase. In order to cater for this generation, many retailers had to refine their tactics.
Now welcome to a whole new generational wave of change-up! All thanks to the ever more influential Gen Z consumer: This is the first generation to grow up online & the first to document their life on social media - they’re now grown up and their strongly impacting online shopping habits as we know them.
Social media is heavily influencing the relationship of Gen-Z-ers with retail brands. For this group, social media is far more than an online channel - it serves to provide a sense of belonging, a community of opinion, and helps affirm their daily lifestyle choices.
This group uses social media to get the opinions of their peers and to research recommendations - so it's easy to understand how the number of ‘likes’ or the tone of the comments beneath a product post would make or break their purchasing decisions. Don’t let this happen for your brand!
In Summary
If your eCommerce brand doesn’t have an influencer marketing strategy in place, now is really the time to address this. Our solution at radd. was specifically designed to help eCommerce brands like yours partner up with the right influencers and host impactful influencer-created video stories on your site.
If you’re interested in trying out radd.’s solution for leveraging influencer marketing for your own website, we’d be happy to arrange a two month trial with you.
Drop us a line here with your details and we’ll get back to you.