As consumers find themselves spending more and more time online, the boundaries between social media and eCommerce have begun to disintegrate rapidly. Consumers are turning to their favorite TikTok celebrities, Instagram stars, and Youtubers for advice and recommendations on purchasing decisions. Coupled with the advent of fully integrated omnichannel shopping experiences, like TikTok shop, this has solidified the relationship between Amazon sellers and Amazon influencer marketing unlike ever before. As a result, eCommerce entrepreneurs have found themselves with the pressing need for a comprehensive Amazon influencer marketing guide to help them navigate the growing advertisement channel.
By utilizing Amazon influencer marketing, sellers are able to connect with potential customers in a new and more authentic way. Since influencers strive to make relatable and accessible content, they develop strong bonds with their audiences, positioning Amazon influencer marketing to really resonate with consumers and offer them the products that they want right now. Plus, by meeting consumers on the social media platforms they’re already on, with influencers that they already trust, recommendations become almost as valuable as word-of-mouth suggestions– driving brand loyalty.
Unlike celebrity sponsorships though, Amazon influencer marketing doesn’t have to come with a giant price tag. While large companies are utilizing influencer marketing, just as many Amazon FBA sellers are harnessing this strategy to run campaigns and drive new sales. Newbies to the world of social media marketing and influencer marketing, need not worry. In this blog post we’ll provide a complete Amazon influencer marketing guide, sharing the secrets to finding the right Amazon influencer and developing a cohesive social media strategy. We’ll also delve into the benefits of using Amazon influencer marketing for your eCommerce business, and how they can translate into measurable sales success.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is the partnership that develops between brands and popular social media content creators. These social media creators often have an independent following of fans, along with a level of authenticity and trust in their opinion that celebrities are too rich and famous to obtain. Influencer marketing leverages that audience in order to promote the partnered brand’s products or services, oftentimes strategically reaching new potential customers, and generating interest and sales.
Amazon Influencer Program
The Amazon Influencer Program allows influencers who focus on Amazon products to create a storefront on Amazon that showcases products they promote or use themselves. Each participating Amazon influencer receives a unique URL to their storefront, enabling them to share it with their followers. When customers make a purchase through this link, the Amazon influencer earns a commission on the sales.
What are the benefits of an Amazon influencer marketing guide?
The Amazon Influencer Program serves to create a mutually profitable relationship for both Amazon sellers and Amazon influencers and content creators–and even customers stand to benefit from influencer marketing. By directly linking sellers and influencers through a clear platform, influencers can monetize their social media platforms with an Amazon storefront, offer their followers authentic reviews, and sometimes even discounts. On the other hand, Amazon sellers can use the Amazon Influencer Program for a number of reasons, all ultimately benefiting their bottom line and brand reputation.
Authenticity
Unlike other types of eCommerce marketing, influencer marketing places a real human behind a recommendation, creating a sense of authenticity. Influencers build a strong connection with their followers by providing reviews that are honest and genuine, creating a sense of trust. By working with the right influencers, they can help establish your brand as high-quality and a good investment without it feeling forced.
User Generated Content (UGC)
First and foremost influencers are content creators. This means that they create engaging and exciting content to share with their followers on social media. When you work with an Amazon influencer they will create real content about your product and brand that resonates with their audience, encouraging them to make a purchase. This type of user generated content (UGC) is invaluable for marketing, because of its relatable style and accessibility.
Most content creators that participate in the Amazon Influencer Program will have a note in their contract with Amazon sellers stating whether or not they allow redistribution of content.
TIP: Make sure that any potential influencers that you plan to work with allow this so that you can leverage it for product listings, brand social media, or any number of other marketing activities.
Trackable Results
Amazon influencer marketing campaigns often come with very clear key performance indicators (KPIs) that are easily accessible for tracking. These metrics go beyond just conversions, although Amazon storefronts make those easily visible as well, and include social media metrics like engagement rates, click-through rates, and brand mentions. Clear data allows Amazon sellers to assess the effectiveness of an influencer in their marketing efforts and see the return on investment quickly.
TIP: Outside of tracking profits, engagement metrics can be especially helpful to Amazon sellers as they indicate success in other marketing practices. Increased engagement can lead to an uptick in brand awareness, show customer demand for a product, and more.
Audience Reach
Influencers typically have a substantial and highly engaged following, which will allow your Amazon brand to reach a specifically targeted audience. Not only does this mean that you’re increasing the number of potential customers you connect with by working with the right influencer, but it can also be incredibly useful for reaching niche markets.
Consider how effective influencer marketing can be for a company rebranding or even seeking to expand their demographics. By working directly with the right influencers on the proper social media channels in a community Amazon sellers can gain recognition, credibility, and, oftentimes, status rapidly for their products.
Improved Conversion Rates
Just like with all marketing campaigns, working with Amazon influencers is designed to increase your conversion rates. Since influencers are creators who understand their audience, these influencer campaigns often have high success and strong conversion rates when the product aligns well with their personal branding. Endorsements by influencers can act as a strong call to action, leading followers to click through their Amazon storefront, boosting sales.
At the same time many of the benefits of Amazon influencer marketing may not immediately correlate directly with increased sales. These types of benefits have long term success though, generating brand awareness, deepening audience relationships, and improving credibility. For example, by choosing potential influencers with a community that you’ve never been able to connect with over time your brand’s reach and reputation will expand to include new identities.
Choosing the Right Influencers for your Amazon store
While Amazon influencer marketing can be incredibly successful for your business, it still requires a solid strategy. To start, you should ensure that you’re choosing the right influencers for your business. They should align with the type of audience you’re trying to reach, share values with your brand, and actually find value in your products.
Before reaching out to potential influencers, consider the following:
Quality of Content
The right influencer for your Amazon business will have high quality content that can be easily repurposed as your brand sees fit. Not only will this help increase your return on investment, but it will also help make their Amazon storefront look more appealing to drive sales.
Type of Influencer
Not every influencer will be the right fit for your Amazon business. It’s important to
Micro Influencers
Micro influencers tend to have smaller audiences, but attract followers who are highly engaged with their content. While this type of potential influencer may not have as large of a reach if you’re hoping to develop greater brand awareness, they do tend to have extremely high conversion rates for Amazon sales through their Amazon storefront.
Macro Influencers
On the other hand, macro influencers have larger audiences that are generally less engaged with their content. These influencers can be the perfect people to work with if you’re hoping to see greater brand awareness and drive traffic to your Amazon store over time.
Budget & Compensation
Just like with all other marketing campaigns, it’s critical that you set a realistic budget and consider the costs of collaboration. Generally, the higher an influencer’s reach, the more it will cost to work with them.
In the same vein, it’s important to set clear expectations about how and when potential influencers will be compensated. This may be through monetary payments, affiliate fees, or free products.
TIP: Be sure that this aligns with Amazon’s policies for reviews to ensure that you don’t create problems for your Seller Central account.
Audience Relevance
It’s important to choose Amazon influencers whose content and audience align with your product niche demographic, or desired new market. To get a good feel for this it’s important to watch their content before reaching out and ensure that there’s a healthy amount of overlap, as well as potential for new interest.
Platform
Just like eCommerce sellers may focus on or prioritize one marketplace, despite selling on multiple, influencers often have one social media channel where they concentrate most of their efforts. Make sure that this social media channel aligns with the type of audience demographics that you’re hoping to reach, or is one where you can collaborate best with your branded marketing efforts.
How to Get Started with Amazon Influencers
If you’ve decided that now is the right time to start collaborating with Amazon influencers, it can be intimidating to get started. Once you’ve determined a list of potential influencers that align with your Amazon business and desired audience demographics, it’s time to actually reach out–which is often the most challenging part. That’s why we’ve put together a step by step guide to building a relationship with Amazon influencers.
- Reach out in a professional tone.
While the content that influencers create on social media is designed to feel friendly and relatable, that doesn’t mean you can approach them like you would a friend. That’s why we recommend reaching out via email to potential influencers, or their manager, for collaboration–especially if they have a larger following.
However, remember that there are exceptions to this rule. For example, if an influencer specifically states on their social media profile to “DM for collaboration” or if a mico influencer doesn’t list an email for business inquiries, messaging them in a professional manner may be more effective.
By reaching out over email to an influencer you have an opportunity to introduce yourself and your Amazon store professionally, as well as offer a structured proposal for working together. Email also helps to increase your chances of response, as compared with DM’ing a popular influencer who might receive thousands of messages everyday.
- Negotiate a contract.
Once you’ve connected with a potential influencer it’s important to negotiate a contact, just like you would with a marketing agency. While some influencers may have preset offers for a specific number of videos or promotional posts not all will, so it’s important to have a reasonable marketing budget allocated.
When negotiating contracts with Amazon influencers ensure that all content they create using your product can be “used in perpetuity.” This means that you can reshare content they make about your product or Amazon store on your branded social media channels again and again. User generated content has been known to be incredibly effective at driving Amazon sales, so working with content creators can have an incredibly high ROI–especially if you can continue to reshare it over time.
- Start collaborating!
Once you’ve ironed out all the legal and financial details with the right influencer it’s time to start your Amazon influencer campaign. Take some time to discuss what the content will look, sound, and feel like to stay in line with your brand voice and values. It’s also important that this remains a largely collaborative endeavor so that topics feel relevant to your Amazon store, while remaining authentic and relevant to an influencer’s audience.
Remember, you shouldn’t rely entirely on content creators to come up with ideas from scratch. Come up with a vision for any content, but remain flexible–the right influencers will understand how to bring the heart of your vision to life successfully and in their own voice. Plus, the best content will be a collaboration of ideas from both the Amazon seller and the influencer, highlighting the strengths of your brand and their audience.
- Monitor results.
Finally, make sure that you’re keeping an eye on the results of any Amazon influencer marketing campaigns that you run. While the Amazon influencer program tends to have a notoriously high ROI, engagement metrics are still important to monitor to verify that you chose the right influencer. Since Amazon storefronts are highly trackable, keeping data on the success of your campaign will help you make data driven decisions in the future.
Now is the perfect time to get started with Amazon influencers, especially with Prime Day right on the horizon. By collaborating with influencers across social media platforms you can reach greater audiences, drive brand awareness, and generate excitement for any sales that you plan to offer during the big event–all at a fraction of the cost of marketplace advertising costs.
If you’re ready to get started with Amazon influencer marketing, but not sure where to find the funds, check out Viably. Viably is a people-first banking and funding experience, designed to help eCommerce sellers grow their business the way they know best.
