Use influencer marketing to boost your sales on the full-service Shopify platform. Follow these steps that will help you identify and activate organic brand ambassadors from your community. We'll also give you tips on how to boost your growth on Shopify in the long run.
Full-service platform Shopify, unlike Amazon, is not an online retailer but provides brands with the infrastructure and software to cover all aspects of e-commerce business. Originally developed for startups and to support small e-commerce businesses, Shopify now hosts more than five million web sotres on its SaaS platform. So owners can create an online store, take orders and payments, manage shipping, inventory and analytics, and develop their own communication strategies for the platform.
As a result, it may be exciting for your brand to consider an influencer marketing strategy on Shopify as well. On the Kolsquare blog, we explain in general terms how Shopify and influencer marketing can go together.
In some posts on the Kolsquare blog, we give reasons why especially partnering with nano-influencers or brand ambassadors can be effective. The former usually have a small following but are much more interactive. The latter are true fans of your brand, which you can take advantage of. Both are highly trusted, which is why you should definitely take advantage of their authenticity!
As with any influencer marketing strategy, the choice of influencer is crucial. Who aligns with your brand values? Whose followers match your brand’s target audience? Who cooperates with your competition and is therefore not eligible for a partnership?
A data-driven approach helps you identify influencers for your next campaign. You can either search for influencers manually or save time and resources by using platforms like Kolsquare and their technology. For example, Kolsquare also offers a credibility score. The number between 1 and 100 indicates how credible the influencers are, that is, whether your followers are real or fake. Read on the Kolsquare blog how you can also identify fake influencers and avoid a scam.
You can search influencers for your online store on Shopify using two different methods: outbound or inbound.
→ Inbound is an effective strategy because you need less money. Creatives who know your brand are more likely to accept and promote free product samples. This can save you up to 52% of the costs incurred.
Free gifting can certainly be a way to get your product out there and convince influencers to use it. However, there are a few things to keep in mind! Read the Kolsquare guide to free gifting as an influencer marketing strategy again.
There are different types of activities for working with influencers on Shopify. As already mentioned, you can opt for product sampling. You send your chosen influencers one or more products for free, but then have little control over the content that is created. Influencers can evaluate your products without bias, and so should you. Be transparent and open, that’s how you benefit the most.
You can also sponsor content. Unlike before, you work out in dialog with the influencers what the collaboration should look like. What kind of content do you want and what ideas do the creators bring to the table? If you sponsor content, you can also give your influencers affiliate links. Fashion retailer NA-KD, for example, does this regularly. Creators choose a few favorites from the online store, present and style them in their Instagram Stories and then give their followers 20% off the entire assortment for the next 42 hours.
Kolsquare Tip: Connect your Shopify store to your Instagram profile. To do this, simply click “+” next to the Sales Channels heading in Shopify’s settings. This will open a dialog box where you can add Instagram as a sales channel. Log in to your meta account page to authenticate your Instagram account. Your Instagram profile should definitely be converted to a business profile during this process, otherwise the connection won’t be possible. Finally, Instagram notifies you that you can tag products, which are then just directly connected to your Shopify store.
As mentioned, there are a few ways for your brand to grow on the platform through Shopify and collaborating with influencers. You can use affiliate links, start a referral campaign or give out discount codes that creators give to your followers.
It is important to know that 97% of people look for good deals when they buy new products. Something new is always fun, but if you’ve scored a bargain on top of that, doubly so.
The Kolsquare x Shopify API allows brands to track promo codes very precisely and thus measure their success. This way, you manage to effectively improve the ROI of your campaign. Moreover, this is interesting because Shopify allows you to create thousands of affiliate links, but determining the data without software is almost impossible. So, in the end, you can optimize your processes and investments.
If you are now sure to try influencer marketing on Shopify, but you do not know exactly how much influencers cost, we recommend our guide to safe price negotiation.
Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, a data-driven solution that allows brands to scale their KOL Marketing strategies and implement authentic partnerships with KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders). Kolsquare’s technology enables marketing professionals to easily identify the best Content Creators profiles by filtering their content and audience, and to build and manage their campaigns from A to Z, including measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors. Kolsquare has built the largest community of influencer marketing experts in the world, and offers hundreds of customers (Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, El Corte Inglés, Lacoste, …) the latest Big Data, AI and Machine Learning technologies to drive inspiring partnerships, tapping into an exhaustive network covering 100% of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers in 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. As a Benefit Company, Kolsquare has been pioneering Responsible Influence by championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations to inspire change.
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