How eCommerce brands can benefit from influencer partnerships
Brands can develop effective eCommerce marketing strategies by investing in aligned influencer partnerships and social intelligence data.
Forbes recently reported that 97% of Gen Z consumers say they now use social media as their top source of shopping inspiration. The question is not if eCommerce brands should invest in influencer marketing, but rather, how much spend should they allocate towards creators and how they can precisely measure campaign success.
With the right technology and access to accurate social data, eCommerce brands can target specific audiences, identify aligned creators, seamlessly integrate with online commerce platforms, and track KPIs to increase the ROI not just of their influencer campaigns but of their overall marketing strategies.
The quality (and source) of data matters
Traditional digital marketing data is no longer enough to give eCommerce brands the full picture of how their target audience is behaving online. With Google sunsetting the third-party cookie, frequent iOS updates, and ever-changing privacy laws that vary by global territory, social data is the new measuring stick for informed marketers.
Leveraging technology, eCommerce brands can use social data to validate audience assumptions, understand who’s talking about their brand (and how they’re talking about it), quantify their brand’s share of voice, and understand their competitors’ social strategies. Without access to social data, it’s impossible for eCommerce marketers to have an accurate picture of their full funnel or customer experience.
Affinity data identifies creators who are already aligned with your brand
Working with influencers is one of the best ways for brands to reach a highly specific audience. One of the most effective methods for identifying the most relevant creators for your brand is to use affinity data. ‘Affinity’, or “look-alike”, data helps marketers ensure they’re partnering with creators whose audiences have interests that align with their brand.
Seeing which creators are posting content that’s resonating with a target audience allows brands to not only discover aligned creators for brand partnerships, but also to reach as-yet untapped markets. Affinity data enables marketers to identify the most effective brand ambassadors from their existing audience and customer base, while also maximizing campaign engagement.
Streamline campaign workflow while tracking success
Historically it may have been difficult for eCommerce brands to track and measure the success of their influencer campaigns. But with the technology that’s now available, brands can automatically pull in social data to deliver the most accurate report on the success of their influencer efforts.
In addition to giving eCommerce brands a much better picture of the overall health of their social performance, technology can seamlessly integrate online commerce platforms like Shopify to maximize workflow efficiencies. Brands can automatically generate individual codes, set UTM (urchin tracking module) and pixel tracking, arrange product deliveries, and report ROI.
Social data can better identify creator whose content is most likely to resonate with consumers
If marketers want an accurate picture of how their target audience is responding to their brand’s messages, they need to pay more attention to the conversations happening on social media. By leveraging technology, eCommerce brands can better identify creators whose content is most likely to resonate with consumers so they can make better-informed investment decisions.
Understanding which partnerships will drive the highest ROI goes beyond vanity metrics like engagement rate or followers. Marketers need to be able to discern not only what types of content their target demo wants to see, but on which social platforms, and for that they need the right technology.
Running successful campaigns is about being able to measure, track, visualize, and even predict performance. With access to social intelligence, marketers can better understand where their dollars will have the most impact, with which creators, and on what platforms.
This article is courtesy of Taggermedia, an international influencer marketing platform.