One of the most sought after and dreamy titles of younger generations is becoming an “influencer” and getting paid to promote products and services via social media. Becoming a brand influencer gives them a sense of importance and influence for the brand(s) they are working for. It’s a fun way for them to make money, if they are efficient enough to monetize their efforts. How can a brand take this “trend” and large reservoir of influencers and use it to help promote your Amazon products? Let us walk you through some of the key areas you should understand and consider as you build your own influencer program.
- Micro vs Macro Influencers
- Finding Influencers
- Influencer/Product Fit
- Setting Expectations and Payment
- Tracking Attributed Sales
Micro vs Macro Influencers: Which is Best?
Let’s determine our defined difference between a micro influencer and a macro influencer since there is an opinion factor here:
- A micro influencer in our case is someone who has between 1,000 and 10,000 followers and typically has a specific niche. They may have a smaller following, but their engagement is higher, their focus is more specific and more often than not, they are cheaper and more flexible to work with and contact.
- A macro influencer has 100,000 plus followers and are usually, celebrities, athletes, public figures, predominant figures in their communities, etc. Macro influencers are going to be more expensive to work with and much harder to contact and create a partnership with. Although, if you can afford to work with them, they payout can be nice.
*If you didn’t notice, I left out the range of followers between 10,000 to 100,000. “Micro” vs. “Macro” is loosely defined, but you get the difference between the two.
Pitted Labs recommends working with influencers who fall in the micro influencer category because they are easier to find, easier to work with, and generally have an active and focused following with great engagement.
Finding Influencers
There are many ways to find an influencer. You may already be following some, you can manually search on Instagram, YouTube, etc., or you can utilize an influencer platform and use data analytics to find your perfect influencer. There is no wrong or right way. What matters most is finding the correct influencer for your product and brand.
Influencer/Product Fit
Once you have identified if you want to work with a micro or macro influencer, now you need to find that influencer(s) that’s audience fits with your target audience. It may seem pretty obvious, but this is one of the most important steps to ensuring your influencer is best utilized and setting you up for a successful partnership. Here are some criteria you can use when determining or comparing identified influencers;
- Do they fit within your micro/macro following decision?
- How many paid/advertised posts do they have compared to organic posts? We don’t want someone who only has sponsored posts and stories.
- What is their engagement like with their followers? Are their followers commenting and getting answered back?
- Is your product something they would use without being an influencer?
- Does this influencer fit your branding?
If your influencer can pass the test of all of these questions, you are ready to move to the next step.
Setting Expectations and Payment
Before you move forward, make sure you have identified what they will post (image, video, story, etc.), where they’ll post (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Stories, etc.), what they can/can’t say in their post, the timeline (when and how often), the duration of the partnership (when and how long you will be working with them) and the compensation model (paid percentage of sales, free product, etc.).
Tracking Attributed Sales
As a Seller:
One of the pains of using an influencer to promote your Amazon products is not being able to properly track sales from the influencer, that is where Amazon Attribution comes in. As the seller of your products, you can use Attribution to obtain analytics and performance of your external advertising driving traffic to Amazon. You need Brand Registry and advertising capabilities to use Amazon Attribution, but it provides many great data points such as click-throughs, detail page views, add-to-carts, units purchased, and dollar sales. Follow this link to learn more about Amazon Attribution.
As an Influencer:
For the influencer, you can have them utilize Amazon Associates. This is Amazon’s affiliate marketing program to help influencers monetize their traffic. This allows influencers to easily create links to direct their audiences to Amazon and get a commission from each sale depending on the category and product they are advertising. Follow this link to learn more about Amazon Associates.
A well-researched and implemented influencer marketing campaign can be exactly what your product needs to boost sales on Amazon, regardless if you are in the launching process or trying to rank for additional keywords. Before taking the leap of hiring an influencer, it is important to take all of the above mentioned topics and do proper research to have a successful partnership.
