How to Leverage Influencer Marketing for Your Shopify Store

With over 4.8 billion social media users, it’s plain to see why business owners should not neglect social media platforms when promoting their business. And so should you if you want to maximize the reach of your Shopify store!

The great thing about using social media for your business is that there are new users all the time, and social media users are highly active and engaged within their chosen social media platform.

If you’re thinking about the best marketing strategy, influencer marketing is the way to go! When I developed a marketing plan for my business, influencer marketing wasn’t as big as it is today.

I spent time and resources on various paid marketing strategies. Some worked, and others didn’t. It was like throwing dirt into a wall to see what sticks.

However, I would not recommend this approach as it is expensive and uses limited resources that could have been channelled toward something better that would improve ROI.

So, be sure to read this influencer marketing Shopify guide, which I created to avoid common mistakes when working with social media influencers.

You will also find valuable tips on choosing the best social media platform to use and finding the right influencers who align with your business and target audience. Let’s get started!

Key Takeaways

• Influencer marketing is a subset of social media marketing that involves collaborating with social media influencers to showcase brands’ products or services on their accounts.
• The success of influencer marketing is impacted by various factors, including choosing the best influencers to fit your brand and align with your audience or goals.
• Identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that allow you to track sales or measure the success of your influencer partnerships on social media.
• Choosing the right social media platform is also critical to the success of influencer marketing campaigns, as it ensures you can find your ideal audience.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a term you’ve probably heard often if you’re exploring various digital marketing strategies. It is a subset of social media marketing that involves influencer partnerships or working with an influencer to create sponsored posts to promote your products or services for your Shopify store.

Influencers are creators who drive engagement or traffic to your website, depending on your desired call to action. They have a huge follower count ranging from thousands to millions!

Due to their “influence” on their following, brands partner to promote their products or services on the desired social media platform.

It leverages social media’s popularity, especially the large number of active users in this digital era, to increase brand exposure and facilitate brand growth. The more brand visibility you get on social media, the more potential customers you can attract.

Important Influencer Marketing Statistics Business Owners Must Know

Using influencer marketing and social media to promote your Shopify store is a smart investment of your time, money, and effort. Here are crucial influencer marketing statistics you must know.

• The global influencer market has grown from $1.7 billion to $24 billion from 2016 to 2024. (Statista)
• Approximately 49% of consumers use influencer recommendations to make buying decisions. (Digital Marketing Institute)
• Social media influencers allow 51% of brands and marketers to acquire better customers. (Digital Marketing Institute)
• 61% of consumers prefer social media influencers with relatable personalities and trust them for recommendations. (Influencer Marketing Hub)
• About 34% of brands find choosing the right influencers the biggest challenge in launching influencer marketing campaigns. (Influencer Marketing Hub)
• Increased brand awareness is the primary KPI that 60% of Shopify store owners use to measure the success of their influencer marketing efforts. (Meltwater State of Social Media Report)
• Most businesses that use social media influencer marketing spend $10,000 or less for their influencer marketing campaigns. (Influencer Marketing Hub)
• Most brands (68%) prefer Instagram as a social media for working with influencers. TikTok is the next most popular social media, followed by Facebook and YouTube. (Klear State of Influencer Marketing)
• Influencer marketing strategy works best on a Gen Z audience, so this is the marketing method for brands with this target audience. (Klear State of Influencer Marketing)
• Working with micro influencers in a specific niche can produce 60% more brand engagement. (Emplifi)

Which Social Media Platform is Right For You?

These compelling statistics should convince business owners that this marketing strategy is among the best ways to gain exposure for your brand on social media, reach your ideal audience, and increase sales.

But before diving into choosing the best influencers for your brand and the best tips to launch your social media influencer strategy, I’ll share tips on choosing the right social media platform.

• Consider the nature of your business and your target audience
• Identify what social media your target audience uses
• Analyze the client demographics and align them with a social media demographic
• Know where your competitors are
• Let your products or services guide you

Tips for Choosing the Right Social Media Influencers

Embarking on an influencer marketing journey does not guarantee success, as does any marketing method. Your success relies heavily on finding influencers who are perfect for your brand and marketing objectives.

Consider the key factors that make a social media influencer a good fit for your brand.

1. Know Your KPIs

When launching an influencer marketing campaign, you must focus on key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs make your goals measurable and ensure you can track their progress.

Without these KPIs, there is no way for you to determine if you have the right social media influencers for your brand and if you increase sales or brand exposure.

Therefore, the best way to do before you find influencers is to know what your campaign goals are and you can set the requirements on which Shopify collabs work best for your brand.

2. Know Your Audience

Identifying your target audience is crucial in finding the best influencers that fit your Shopify store brand. You must match the audience of certain influencers with your ideal audience for your products.

The goal is to utilize your Shopify collabs to reach potential customers for your business. if these two are not aligned, you won’t be able to reach influential customers for your KPIs because you are promoting to the wrong audience.

Hence, when choosing influencers to partner with for your marketing strategy, research the influencers you want to work with. Avoid working with mega influencers simply because they have millions of followers on social media.

That number won’t make sense if these are not your ideal audience, as you won’t be generating any conversions from these Shopify collabs.

On the other hand, you can choose micro influencers as long as they are within your specific niche or you share the same type of target audience. For example, you can choose a lifestyle influencer if your products are within the lifestyle niche.

Or you can choose an Instagram influencer if your target market is Gen Z or active social media users. Understanding your ideal audience will help identify influencers that can increase brand awareness among that particular customer segment.

3. Consider the Engagement Rate

Another common mistake that Shopify store owners make when choosing influencers for their Shopify collabs is to focus solely on the influencer’s follower count. The engagement rate is a more powerful and relevant metric for influencer marketing.

For this reason, many brands choose to work with micro influencers over mega influencers.

Micro-influencers are those creators or influencers for your brand with a smaller follower count. Some influencers have millions of followers, but a micro-influencer could have 200,000 or fewer followers.

However, if you look at their content, micro-influencers tend to have a higher engagement rate than mega influencers, making them a better fit for your influencer marketing campaign.

While you can reach a wider audience with top influencers, you can establish more trust and loyalty with smaller influencers as they tend to focus on niche audiences.

Shopify brands that want to foster brand growth within a specific niche can benefit from this partnership, especially if you share brand values. This influencer strategy is more effective in increasing sales as the influencer has a stronger relationship with their audience than top influencers.

4. Quality Content

The type of content that influencers produce on their social media channels is another key part of the process of choosing influencer partnerships. Remember that influencer marketing means associating your Shopify store brands with an influencer.

Therefore, you must choose influencers based on their quality of content because you don’t want to associate your brand with anything less.

The perfect influencer should share your brand values, visuals, and voice. This approach to influencer partnerships drives brand visibility and increases sales and reinforces your social impact on potential customers.

5. Social Media Platform

As mentioned above, choosing the right social media platform is integral to your influencer marketing strategy. The platform determines where you can find your potential customers.

Thus, promoting on the right platform can make a huge difference in the success of your influencer marketing efforts.

Choose influencers that specialize in a particular platform on social media, whether Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. It allows you to reach your potential customers and allow new audiences to discover your brand.

Influencer Marketing Shopify Best Practices

Follow these best practices and tips for successful results when working with macro influencers and social media influencers.

1. Set your goals and budget

Influencer marketing is a paid marketing strategy. To succeed in working with social media influencers, you must set aside a marketing budget.

Determine how much money you want to dedicate to your influencer marketing campaigns.

Identifying the available funds will impact other aspects of your influencer marketing strategy, such as which influencers to work with and the nature of the campaigns.

There are various payment schemes available when collaborating with social media influencers. You can consider one or a mixture of the following:

• Licensing and rights to content – The traditional influencer marketing format is to post about a brand or its products on the brand’s page. You must pay the influencer to create content or post showcasing your brand. The licensing fee varies according to the influencer and their follower count, among other metrics. However, paying the influencer gives you full license to use the content for any purpose brands deem fit.
• Sponsored post – A sponsored post is another common payment scheme with social media influencers. The pay per post scheme means you will pay the influencers a one-time fee for an agreed number of posts, such as one post or video to their feed and some stories. The pricing can vary from one influencer to another, so knowing how much a certain influencer charges is crucial. You can also propose a budget based on their audience size or the number of posts required.
• Free product—During the initial days of influencer marketing, most influencers were paid in the form of free products in exchange for a post featuring that product. Identifying influencers willing to spend time and resources developing content for a free product is challenging unless they are highly interested in your product. Therefore, this would entail more research to identify the right influencers who fit this campaign well.
• Commission – Another common form of payment for influencer marketing is through commissions. Many influencers are interested in posting about your product on their social media channels in exchange for a code they share with their audience.If any of their followers purchase the product using their code or referral link, they will earn a commission in the form of a percentage of the customer’s total order value. Many influencers prefer this payment scheme as they are paid based on the campaign results, which motivates them to promote your products. It’s a win-win situation for influencers and brands.

2. Choose an influencer marketing platform

As mentioned above, the biggest challenge for brands is finding influencers to become brand partners or ambassadors. The problem is not the lack of social media influencers but aligning your marketing goals and audience with the right influencer.

Using an influencer marketing platform can simplify the search for the best influencer.

Shopify Collabs is one such example. This platform gives the brand access to social media content creators and influencers.

Use this platform to identify influencers within your niche and invite them to apply to your influencer marketing campaign. It simplifies your search for influencers because they send their application if they deem your products fit their brand and audience.

It also equips you with the tools to build and maintain relationships with social media influencers.

3. Provide a detailed brief

Create a detailed brief once you have selected your social media influencers for your campaign. A brief is necessary because it outlines your expectations from the influencer within a particular partnership.

When creating the brief, allow the influencers creative freedom to create content that aligns with their voice and audience expectations. This kind of partnership is more effective because it allows influencers to create more engaging and authentic content.

However, you can provide brand guidelines, especially if you want to include specific hashtags or keywords in the content.

The best creative brief must include the following:

• Deliverables – The expected content output from the influencer and in which platform.
• Compensation – The type or amount of compensation that you propose in exchange for the deliverables.
• Deadline – The expected date of delivery for the content.
• Content usage – Be sure to let the influencer know where and how you intend to use the content.
• Termination clause – Specify the activities or types of content you do not want in your campaign, especially since the influencer represents your brand on social media.

4. Measure and track results

The only way to ensure your influencer marketing strategy works is to track results and KPIs. You should track sales and measure other essential metrics, such as website traffic, follower count, and engagement level.

However, this depends on the specific campaign type and your defined objectives.

Summary: Is Influencer Marketing For You?

There’s no doubt that influencer marketing offers many benefits for your Shopify store. It is an excellent strategy for finding potential customers or reaching new audiences.

You can leverage influencers’ trust and relationships with their followers to influence your customers’ purchasing decisions.

But for that to happen, a few things have to happen first. You need to find the best influencer that aligns with your brand, has good products that are easy to market, and develops engaging content that piques your customers’ interests.

Hopefully, this guide has helped you become more confident in social media marketing.

You can use it to gain more brand traction or drive sales to your website. Either way, proper planning and a well-executed influencer marketing strategy can make that happen.

FAQs

How much do Shopify collabs cost?

Shopify Collabs is free if you have a store subscription plan, particularly the Shopify, Advanced, and Shopify Plus plans. However, a payment processing fee applies to commissions.

How to work with influencers on Shopify?

There are various methods for launching influencer campaigns for your Shopify store, such as reaching directly out to an influencer and offering them a discount code to share with their followers or to pay for sponsored posts. The campaign method varies according to your goals and budget.