A Guide to Shopify Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is believed to be effective by 85% of the people surveyed by Influencer’s Marketing Hub for their Benchmark Report.

This result-driven Shopify Influencer marketing strategy will be the perfect addition to make your brand relevant and increase its sales.

Tap into the vast source of brand advocates and build your own Shopify influencer marketing campaign. This helps to build your tribe that will bring about customers and sales in return for attractive incentives.

What is influencer marketing in Shopify?

Influencer marketing in Shopify is how brands use popular influencers or creators from various social media platforms to promote their products or services. These influencers will receive some form of reward in return if they successfully drive traffic and sales for the business.

Shopify influencers are present in all major influencer platforms. The business needs to conduct thorough research on their niche market to find out who are the right social media influencers.

Shopify influencer marketing will expand the reach and awareness of the business as the audience of social media is spread vastly across the globe. This will enable the creation of a Shopify influencer network that will strongly stand by the brand creating brand credibility.

One of the most significant advantages of Shopify influencer marketing is that it brings down the marketing cost. What money is spent on Shopify influencers isn’t without getting some form of positive return from the influencer’s reach and influence.

Types of influencers

The types of influencers in social media are:

• Mega Influencer [ 1 Million+]
• Macro Influencer [100,000 – 1 Million]
• Micro-Influencer [1,000 – 100,000]
• Nano Influencer [Less than 1000]

These influencers are categorized based on the number of followers they have earned on their social media platforms.

While selecting influencers for your marketing campaign, it isn’t enough if you just consider the follower count of the influencer. What matters the most is how these followers engage with the content posted on the account.

To evaluate how well an influencer’s account is performing, the best way is to assess their media kit.

A media kit is a comprehensive file containing the influencer’s partnership details, type of content, performance metrics, testimonials, etc.

Here is a template of the media kit of an influencer

This media kit is the best way to decide how credible the influencer is and how relatable their content is for a larger audience to engage with.

Types of influencer marketing campaigns in Shopify

The types of influencer marketing campaigns in Shopify play a major role in providing a successful result.

You can choose from the following types of Shopify influencer marketing campaigns.

1. Sponsored posts

This is the most straightforward way of promoting a product or service. Usually, the influencer, depending on their platform of expertise, posts a simple photo or video about the business. This might not necessarily be personal experience or review, it might just be product introduction or launch. Influencers are bound to disclose that they are engaging in paid partnership while posting or using common hashtag #ad.

2. Giveaways

This is the best way to encourage people to try your products and also build your social media presence. You can organize a giveaway in collaboration with any popular influencer in your niche. Generally, certain terms and conditions are placed for someone to become part of a giveaway that includes but is not limited to following the business’s social media pages and sharing about the business in a story. This is an easy way to increase the reach of the brand.

3. Affiliate partnership

The most popular among digital marketing for e-commerce is affiliate marketing. Businesses partner with influencers to bring more sales in return for an affiliate commission. Creator marketing will benefit more from adopting this style and there are various affiliate marketing apps in Shopify to automate the entire process.

4. Reel content

Bite-sized video is the most relevant form of content consumed by most people. Creating engaging content in a given period to capture and retain the attention of the audience is significant. Businesses should collaborate with social media creators to come up with a seamless narration that positions the brand while telling an engaging story.

5. Live interactions

If you have more to speak about the business that cannot be conveyed in a few characters or under one minute, then live interaction will be your best bet. The live interaction can be in the form of an interview, demo, or casual interaction. This way of marketing will provide a platform to interact with the audience directly and gather feedback in real time.

6. Unboxing and Reviews

When you are not looking for just visibility but also genuine feedback for your products, then unboxing videos will be the right pick. Usually, influencers give a brief comment about everything starting from how friendly the website UI was to the payment process, packaging, post-purchase follow-up, and also genuine quality review.

7. Takeover collaboration

This takes a leap of trust from business social media accounts that are handed over to the influencer to tell the brand story in their voice. This style of creator marketing campaign assures that the business has nothing to hide and is up for friendly cordial interactions.

How to start Shopify Influencer Marketing?

To start Shopify Influencer marketing, follow the steps:

1. Set Outcome Expectation

Before delving into your Shopify Influencer Marketing journey, it’s crucial to establish a clear goal that aligns with your desired outcomes and sets the foundation for success. Defining a goal involves identifying the specific results you expect to achieve and determining the estimated budget required to reach those milestones. Having a clear goal will help you map the path that guides your actions and decisions to bring you to success. Furthermore, having a well-defined goal serves as a benchmark for evaluating the success of your Shopify influencer marketing efforts.

2. Choose an Influencer Marketing Platform for Shopify

There are various social media platforms available, each platform competent for different types of campaigns. Therefore, it’s imperative to select the appropriate campaign type and platform that aligns with your creator Marketing strategy for achieving your Shopify influencer program goals.

For instance, if your goal is to generate buzz and engagement around your brand, a social media contest or giveaway campaign may be effective.

Once you’ve decided on the Shopify influencer marketing campaign type, consider which social media platforms align best with your target audience and campaign objectives.

For example, Instagram is ideal for visual content and reaching a younger demographic, while LinkedIn may be more suitable for B2B marketing.

3. Approach Shopify influencers

More than reaching out to influencers with a large following list, it is important to pick the top social media content creators in your niche. Begin by conducting thorough research to identify and compile a list of influencers who are the best fit for your business.

Once you’ve identified potential influencers who can act as Shopify Brand Ambassadors, professionally approach them. Clearly articulate your intentions and discuss the terms and conditions of your collaboration with transparency. Alternatively, you can also create an influencer landing page where they can learn about your Shopify influencer marketing program and show interest by submitting their details.

By focusing on content creators who resonate with your brand and target audience, you’re more likely to achieve authentic engagement and meaningful results for your business.

4. Decide Influencer Commission

There are various ways to reward influencers like cash, coupons, gift cards, free products, etc.

In Shopify influencer marketing, there’s flexibility in determining the payout. You can offer uniform rewards to all participants within an influencer program or customize commission structure and mode based on social media brand ambassadors’ metrics such as audience reach, engagement metrics, content quality, or the influencer’s personal preference.

Setting up structured influencer commissions and paying with different modes can be managed effortlessly with the help of the Shopify Influencer Marketing App.

5. Measure the Result

Once the influencer program is established, staying on top of analytics is crucial for monitoring its effectiveness and optimizing performance. This involves tracking various metrics, including insights from influencer posts and key performance indicators (KPIs) specific to Shopify influencer marketing, such as sales, commissions, conversions, and more.

By monitoring these metrics in real-time or regularly, brands can identify trends, measure performance against goals, and make data-driven adjustments to optimize their Shopify influencer program.

There are Shopify influencer marketing automation tools that offer advanced features for tracking Shopify influencer marketing performance for insights to help continuous improvement.

Best Practices for Shopify Influencer Marketing

The best practices for Shopify Influencer Marketing that can help User Generated Content (UGC) reach a wider audience and bring more sales are:

1. Be Relevant: Customers consuming social media content will like to interact with a brand that understands their persona and communicates the brand merits in a way that is easy to understand and relevant to them. Therefore, it is important that influencer content while following trends also authentically addresses the customer pain points.
2. Ask Feedback: Know what your target audience likes to know about the brand. Engage with the audience and constantly get feedback on your content to improve the success of your Shopify influencer marketing campaign. Be a brand that customers are proud to be associated with. Represent the causes that your audience stands for. This will build a sense of trust and kinship which will eventually lead to lasting connection.
3. Continuous Interaction: Your customer interaction must not be limited to getting feedback and sending post-purchase emails. Make customers part of your content creation team by regularly engaging with them to know what they like about the product, what are key pain points to be addressed yet, and check if there is a gap in the market that you can fill. This is an effective way to stay ahead of the competition using Shopify Influencer marketing.
4. Incentivize: Being grateful is a sign of a trustworthy transparent partnership. Businesses can show their acknowledgment of the efforts of social media influencers and affiliates for positive partnerships with them by offering incentives. These incentives can be gifts, rewards, commissions, or shoutouts. Build a healthy relationship with the audience to maintain continuous support.
5. Build Community: The power that the oneness of community brings cannot be demanded but can only be formed organically through genuine connection. Thrive to build a Shopify influencer network for your brand through your content. Create forums, organize events, and form an ecosystem to nurture the business and the community.

Conclusion

While Shopify influencer marketing boosts sales, it also provides an immense opportunity to build the culture of the business and curate a Shopify influencer network that stands by the brand.

Learn from this blog how to strategize your Shopify influencer marketing campaign to explore its limitless potential and grow your Shopify store for maximized benefit.

Further Reading

• Ultimate Guide to Shopify Affiliate Marketing
• How to Create an Affiliate Program in Your Shopify Store
• How can Referral Marketing benefit your Shopify Store?
• How to set up your Instagram affiliate marketing?