Influencer marketing for dropshipping can be a fast way to increase your brand awareness on social media.
Influencer partnerships are a good way of gaining more exposure on social media, reaching new audiences, and working with people to create the best content out there.
This beginner’s guide will give you some tips on how to be successful at influencer marketing for dropshipping.
Influencer Marketing
Influencers are people who have built their audiences around a specific dropshipping niche and who have enough power to affect the buying habits of consumers across the world.
Influencer marketing in other words is an influencer receiving money from some individual or business in order to promote their business.
It is very common in the dropshipping business and youβll see many dropshippers contacting influencers for help.
They can receive their payments either through a gift, a discount, a free product, or a service they have done for you.
This type of marketing is popular across all social media but mostly on Instagram. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, nearly 70% of influencers are on Instagram.
Other social media platforms that are used for influencer marketing are:
- YouTube
- TikTok
- Twitch
- Snapchat
According to research done by Mediakix, 80% of marketers find influencer marketing as an effective way of promoting their brand.
Also, 71% of marketers stated that the traffic and customers from influencer marketing are high quality in comparison to all other forms of promotion.
Working with influencers is always a good idea because they have a lot of knowledge on knowing how to help you with increasing your brand awareness.
According to the same research, being in a collaboration with influencers is the best marketing strategy for your dropshipping store.
Influencers might charge different rates. It may be better to directly form a long-term relationship with an influencer compared to a 1-time collaboration.
Influencers may charge you more when you go for a 1- time collaboration.
π‘ Tip: Learn How To Make Money On Youtube Without Making Videos [2024].
Benefits of Influencer Marketing
The influencer marketing industry isn’t just any kind of industry, but a multi-billion dollar one. If it didn’t have any benefits attached to it, then it wouldn’t also be that popular. Here are a few benefits of using influencer marketing:
Reach
A great benefit of working with an influencer is the reach you can get on social media. Influencers always have a huge fan base and can increase your reach faster than any other marketing strategy you will try to use.
It isn’t just the reach, influencers can also assist you in reaching a specific niche.
If you are targeting home decor, for example, and speak to an influencer who is famous for home decor, then, your reach will grow even higher because you are both targeting the same area.
Engagement
Influencer Marketing Hub wrote an entire benchmark ebook on engagement rates with influencers.
It found out that micro-influencers had a higher engagement rate for their niche compared to influencers with a bigger fan base (those with over 100k followers/likes/subscribers).
Here are some engagement percentages of micro and macro influencers:
- YouTube – over 1.6% for Micro-influencers with less than 15 000 subscribers, and less than half a percent for those with over 500 000 subscribers!
- Instagram – nearly 4% for micro, and only 1.35% for macro-influencers.
- TikTok – 18% for micro-influencers, and only 6% for Macro-influencers. Mega influencers (with over 1 million followers) only had a 5% engagement rate!
Here’s a guide for Instagram Marketing for Dropshipping.
High engagement rates lead to high brand awareness, and that is where revenues also go up.
π‘ Tip: Read about What Is A Digital Creator vs Influencer + How To Boost Your Brand?
“The stats show you that it is better to be a big fish in a pond than a shark in the ocean”.
Check this out: Key Dropshipping Statistics & Facts.
Loyalty
Because influencers have a very loyal fanbase, when they will link posts to your social media page, their customers will also become loyal.
Of course, successful influencer marketing for dropshipping depends on the quality that you give from your content.
No matter how good an influencer is, if your content is lacking quality, influencers might even refuse to do a partnership with you.
Best Influencer Marketing Practices- Build the Best Influencer Marketing Strategy
No influencer will just randomly come to you and tell you that they will do all the work for you. The effort from your side is what matters the most. Here are a few great influencer marketing practices:
Set Objectives and Define a Budget
Before you start any plan, you should always set objectives you want to achieve. Do research on influencers who are operating in the same niche as you and who have big success in your niche.
Try using a social media calendar to plan out what you will be posting and show it to the influencer. That way, you have more clarity on what you are doing.
RECOMMENDATION: For simple store creation, try using Wix for Dropshipping.
Influencers all charge different prices. You want to define how much money you are willing to spend and then not get surprised whenever you are negotiating about the price with an influencer.
All influencers charge differently, some may charge per post, while some may charge monthly or weekly.
Use Influencer Marketing Platforms
There are many influencer marketing platforms out there that help you search for influencers. As we mentioned before, most of them are on Instagram.
You have to do your research before you can continue further. Here are a few influencer marketing platforms you can use:
- CreatorIQ
- AspireIQ
- Influsoft
- Neoreach
- Tapinfluence
- Influence.co
- Grin
There are many more marketing platforms, but we showed you the ones that are the most well-known. This can save you lots of time instead of trying to research endlessly for an influencer.
You can personalize your search on most of the marketing platforms we mentioned. Choose your niche, and you will get a list full of influencers that will show you what they can do best for your dropshipping business.
It is always important you align your research with your business. Don’t just choose any type of influencer that is out of your niche, the results will never be as good as you think.
There are influencers who might promote any product. It may not be a good idea to hire these because it just means they don’t have a specialty in any niche.
Choose Which Social Media Channel You Want to Promote On
Influencer marketing for dropshipping is effective when targeting audiences on social media.
Whether you are targeting your niche on many social media channels or only one, it all depends on what you are trying to achieve. Specify where you think your dropshipping store will be the best and target influencers from that platform.
Most influencers will have more expertise in only one social media platform. If it works for you, try to find a different influencer for every social media platform you are promoting on.
How to Reach Out to The Right Influencer
There are 3 different types of influencers:
- Micro-influencers – influencers with less than 10k followers. These types of influencers are rich in engagement rates. Because there are many micro-influencers, some of them may lack the experience or time to help you promote your content.
- Mid-level influencers – have over 10k followers, up to 100k. Have great returns on investments but most of them care only about financial compensation.
- Macro-influencers – the big shots with over 100k followers. Can get you great reach, but lacks engagement rates and sometimes may be very difficult to do business with. Macro influencers charge a lot of money and may not bring you the results you are looking for all the time.
Influencers won’t contact you by themselves unless you are already a really well-known drop-shipping brand.
That is why you have to know how to contact them in order for them to agree to partner with you. Not every influencer will just accept to help you.
The best way to reach out to them is by email. Try using a professional template explaining to them why you are reaching out and how you both could work together. Here is an example:
“Hi Jack,
My name is Tony, I’m the brand manager of dropshipping.com. I came across your social media channel account on Instagram after I saw a sponsored post of yours for home decor. What really caught my eye was the way you were describing home decor products and how you set up the text in the photo and description.
I was wondering if you would be interested in a collaboration with our company – dropshipping.com. I think you would be the perfect fit, as your expertise in the home decor niche matches our marketing strategy.
If you’re interested, let us know and we would be more than happy to send you more details.
Kind Regards,
Tony“
Track Results
Nobody ever said you have to only work with one influencer. Maybe you are promoting different niches and are choosing different influencers to target the niche you want.
It can be hard to manage a lot of influencers at once so it is always good to keep track of what you are doing, how things are going, and what can be improved over time.
Not all partnerships can go well with influencers, so don’t feel guilty about terminating a contract when you aren’t getting the result you are expecting.
It is important to track influencer engagement because it can give you insights into what content your audience enjoys most. It can also help you identify which influencers are driving the most traffic to your website or social media page.
Additionally, tracking engagements can help you manage your budget more effectively by identifying which influencers are providing the best return on investment.
What are some tips for tracking influencer engagement on TikTok? Here are some tips to help you better track the performance and results of the engagement. After all, you can’t improve what you can’t measure.
- Use a tool like Sprout Social or Hootsuite to monitor activity on your account.
- Keep track of key metrics such as likes, comments, views, and shares.
- Identify which content gets the most interactions and try to replicate the success by tailoring it to similar content.
- Regularly check in with your influencers to see how they are performing and give them feedback on adjustments for future campaigns.
- Be sure to track engagements across all platforms, especially referring traffic, from the said campaign.
Conclusion
This was our beginner’s guide for influencer marketing for dropshipping. Our main concern is that you set up the right strategy and succeed as fast as possible.
If you want to find out more about the best marketing practices for your online dropshipping store that is related also to influencer marketing for dropshipping.
