Are you looking for new ways to increase sales levels in your leather goods store? You're not the only one! Every retailer makes sure to keep it as high as possible. By using online marketing tools, you have a chance to stay among the best ones. That's why, with our business partners in mind, we leave blog posts dedicated to this very topic. Today we will take a closer look at the issue, which is the trendy influencer marketing. If you haven't tested it yet, it's high time to get to know it better.
Let's start with the basics - who exactly is an influencer?
The very name "influencer" comes from the English word influence, which translated means influence. Influencers are opinion leaders around the community they have gained with their work or views presented on social media. Each influencer started out with different motivations. It doesn't always have to be fame or getting an additional source of income. Therefore, when you discover the world of influencer marketing you will quickly notice that there are:
- experts - these are people who, in their channels, share with the community the specialized knowledge they have gained in a particular field,
- lifestylers - these are people who mainly review various types of products (you should look to them for support when advertising online leather goods stores),
- activists - these are people who are very much involved in various types of social problems, and with their activities they spread strictly defined ideas, which are designed to move the community following their activities to specific reactions,
- artists - focused on their work of an artistic nature.
It is worth knowing that influencers are divided into bloggers (those who run blogs) and vloggers (those who create video content on YouTube or Instagram). In marketing literature they are divided into:
- YouTubers,
- Bloggers,
- Instagrammers,
- Facebookers,
- Twitterers,
- Snapchatters.
Bet on opinion leaders who thrive on channels that are in the center of your target audience's interest. This will make it much easier and faster for you to reach potential customers with the promotion of your plating products.
How do influencers work?
The main occupation of influencers, in addition to spreading their own creativity related to recording videos, writing texts, or taking photos, at the same time deals with promoting, among their audience group, various kinds of products or services. His rating has a huge impact on the subsequent purchasing decisions of those who follow the communication channels of a particular influencer.
These recommendations can take several different forms. Sometimes an influencer recommends goods or services to his community on his own without specific compensation or benefits. He or she can also be encouraged to engage in promotional cooperation. This is done on the basis of a contract with a specific remuneration or in exchange for benefits in the form of free products / services of the brand interested in cooperation. What this means for you is that you won't always have to pay a monetary compensation. You can agree with an influencer to cooperate based on the aforementioned barter. However, it won't always be that simple... The remuneration expected by an influencer increases with his or her reach....
Types of influencers, and the reach of their message
Adequate influencer reach is a key element of influencer marketing-based activities. You need to decide how wide an audience you want to reach with recommendations of your leather handbags, men's briefcases, retro backpacks, or fashionable kidney pouches. You can use the support of influencers, who reach up to several hundred thousand people a day!
The division of influencers by reach includes:
- micro-influencers (from 500 to 10,000 followers), who very often choose to cooperate on the basis of barter, i.e. for a product.
- macro-influencers (from 10,000 to 1 million observers), whose recommendations will cost a certain amount of money (e.g., in a commission system, where you mutually agree on a percentage of product sales given back by you to the influencer).
- mega-influencers (above one million observers), where most often the cooperation is preceded by the official signing of contracts with a list of remuneration thresholds for the publication of specific posts/writings/advertising videos and penalties for failure to make commitments by both parties involved.
Most often, as the reach of the influencer's message increases, the level of his remuneration also increases, which is worth remembering when writing influencer marketing activities into the advertising budget of your online store.
What should you pay special attention to when choosing an influencer for cooperation? Here's a hint!
Below I leave a helpful checklist for you, so you can thoroughly vet a potential influencer for a successful collaboration. Contrary to what you may think, pretty pictures, interesting videos or posts are sometimes not enough....
- check the level of engagement of the influencer's community - the number of comments, likes or shares is of great importance for the reach of your advertising messages,
- verify whether a particular influencer does not already advertise competing products - it does not make sense to launch communication in the same channel at the same time with your biggest competition,
- find out how valuable is the content created by the influencer - if in his channels appears primarily sales by recommendations of various types of products, or remove yourself from the idea of cooperation ... in this way you will only fall into the "bag" of advertising and disappear with your products in front of others,
- remain vigilant and at the beginning of the cooperation keep an eye on the regularity of posts and the quality of the message - this way you will have control over the quality of implementation,
- give dedicated discount codes - this way you will know what percentage of product sales comes from a specific influencer.
We keep our fingers crossed! Good luck!