What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is the use of “influencers” to promote products to a targeted audience. The goal of influencer marketing is to increase the sales and the credibility of a brand (brand awareness).

What is an influencer?

Influencer marketing uses influencers as opinion leaders in social groups to increase the sales of a product. Influencers are defined, as people with a strong presence and broad reach in social media such as Instagram or Facebook. Due to their extensive outreach, they are ideal for advertising and marketing purposes (since advertising reaches a certain number of people simultaneously, quickly and reliably). Besides, followers see influencers as role models in their subject areas. Influencers often specialize in specific topics that are relevant to them and resonate with their followers gaining credibility along the way. Popular topics include fashion, sports, and travel.

Nevertheless, influencers reach almost every niche in contemporary social media. Influencers enjoy a high reputation with their followers and often manage to create virality for advertised products or brands due to their vast reach and trust, and this is the reason why influencer marketing is invaluable for Amazon.

The Advantages of Influencer Marketing

A significant advantage of influencer marketing is that influencers have the power to reach a niche or target group. For example, for the Amazon category DIY, one can find an influencer who posts a lot about DIY and other crafts having this way a perfect niche. Another advantage of influencer marketing is its selectivity, on social media, users can choose for themselves which information and content they want to follow and consume. In contrast to television or print media, on social media people decide for themselves the content of advertising they receive. Usually, influencers only pair with products that represent their message and lifestyle to make their content as authentic as possible, making the strategy of influencer marketing a niche-focused and reliable choice.

Strategies in Influencer Marketing

A simplified communication strategy on social media is the so-called recommendation marketing. Recommendation marketing uses the close relationship among groups to spread a message across the network. Amazon can make use of both buzz marketing and affiliate marketing (see text later). Buzz marketing aims to create a conversation between potential customers, for this, the chosen influencer receives a product, and then this gives an in-depth review of the product. In many cases the product is review by the influencer even before its launch, so when the product launches, the community is already familiarized with the product, and since the recommendations come from the influencers, aka a trusted figure, people will believe the product, this is why recommendation marketing is so powerful.

What does Advocating Mean?

Advocating is also a popular advertising strategy in influencer marketing, and it consists of simple online product recommendations, which in this case are given by the influencer, and for this reason are considered particularly credible and authentic by the targeted group.

Affiliate Marketing as a Tool for Influencer Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a commission system in which merchants who for example, sell their products on Amazon, pay a commission to bloggers or in this case influencers who place a link to the merchant’s shop. In contrast to fixed advertising, affiliate marketing pays according to success, i.e., the more people click on the link and buy the product, the more money the influencer receives. Affiliate marketing has become an integral part of influencer marketing, as the links are a recommendation of the influencer and are therefore better accepted by the users compared to classic banner advertising, which is also placed on social media. In influencer marketing, affiliate links are often found; for example, in influencer Instagram stories. 

Why Does Influencer Marketing Work so Well?

According to statistics published by Gold media in 2017, 29% of all participants surveyed consider product recommendations from influencers to be particularly credible, while TV spots and advertisements in newspapers, for example, were perceived as less trustworthy. Only recommendations from friends and customer reviews were trusted in this case.

The critical factor is the close bond between the influencer and its followers. The impact of the influencers is often not even noticed, neither for good nor bad, and this trust can influence the attitude towards the company, the brand and finally the buying decision.

Why is Influencer Marketing Relevant?

Influencer marketing is very relevant because nowadays, with the number of options we got, many need to form opinions supported by others.so is not uncommon to orient ourselves by the opinion leaders of our social groups. Influencer marketing is also valuable because it is ideal for reaching a narrowly defined target group without much effort. Besides, there is a great advantage with this type of that “advertising,” and it is that it is often not recognized as such, making the strategy a powerful one.

The challenge in influencer marketing is to identify the right influencers and establish contact with them.  Because if an influencer advertises a product that does not correspond to its content, this can badly hurt its reputation and may lose many followers.

How do I find the right influencer?

To find the right influencer for your product is particularly important to look at the content shared by the influencer in question, and, fundamentally, your product matches with the content of the influencer. An excellent way to find this is through the „thematic search,” this research is done by searching for bloggers and influencers articles, entries and active posts which fit thematically to your product. One way to find this type of content is by searching for specific hashtags or keywords that are thematically related to your product, another way to locate the best-known and most influential influencers is by using paid platforms that allow you to find the right blogger for your product using keywords.

Influencer Marketing on Amazon

Influencer marketing is also very useful in the Amazon Marketplace. Mainly if a new product launch on Amazon, the right influencer and his network of followers will be able to push the product to the next level. For instance, if a new ASIN is created on Amazon by a seller or vendor, there won’t be a sales history yet, meaning that there are no significant Amazon keywords for this product in the search result pages.

Although it is possible to direct traffic to a product using Amazon advertising such as PPC campaigns, this can be expensive in case of doubt and very ineffective at the beginning due to a lack of sales history. However, if an influencer were to advertise the product deliberately, e.g., on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube, sending many prospective buyers to Amazon, this would be then registered by the A9 algorithm and rewarded with keyword rankings. Finally, if the influencer is chosen correctly, its followers will buy the product, which of course is the ultimate goal.