Influencer marketing is a form of marketing where businesses partner with social media influencers to promote their products or services. Retail-specific influencers play a significant role in promoting products and driving sales for brands at specific retailers. Additionally, influencer campaigns can be a useful tool to help increase your audience reach and consumer product education, so they are informed prior to shopping. Here are the best ways you can use influencer marketing to your advantage in retail:
Choose Retailer-Specific Influencers
With influencer marketing on the rise, there are thousands of influencers to work with, so narrowing your selection is key. When it comes to choosing influencers, it’s important to look for influencers who are retail specific in stores such as: Target, Costco, and Walmart. By using retailer-specific influencers, you can drive their audience straight to the retailer. A simple way to find these influencers is through organic research and influencer marketing platforms such as Klear, Upfluence, and CreatorIQ. When researching influencers, remember to make sure they have a strong following and a high engagement rate.
Plan for Success
Once you find the right influencer to represent your brand, it’s time to create brand messaging guidelines for the influencer’s content. Creating a guide will inform the retail-specific influencer with what kind of content you expect from them to portray your brand accurately. This would include having the influencer unboxing your product out of the retailer’s packaging or shopping bag, a specific hashtag for your retailer (example: #Costco), going to the correct section of the retail store and including appropriate website links. It is also essential to make sure the influencer has reliability and a positive reputation in the desired retail store.
Create Promotions
It is important to keep your influencer and their audience happy to ensure a successful partnership. Many companies find that promotions will create long-term relationships with their influencers. Two simple ways to achieve this are promoting a giveaway of one of your brands products or give the influencer a unique discount code from your retailer to share exclusively with their audience. Both methods can attract viewers and persuade them to make a purchase from your retailer, since they are getting a special offer that is not available to the public.
Keep Track of Analytics
The best way to keep track of your influencer marketing campaign is by tracking the influencer’s analytics. You should track metrics like engagement rate and reach to determine the effectiveness of your retail influencer’s partnerships. By closely tracking these metrics, you can determine how effective your partnership with retail-specific influencers is. From there, you can adjust the content strategy accordingly to improve your campaign and drive more retail sales.
Most importantly, do the appropriate paperwork with these influencers. Be sure that your brand has usage rights so you can repurpose the influencer content into digital ads to drive larger audiences into the appropriate retail stores. And don’t forget to measure reach, impressions, engagements to share with your retail buyer showing you supporting the brand!
This guest blog post was provided by Marketing Maven, an integrated marketing agency. Interested in hiring influencers but don’t have the time or experience? Marketing Maven can help you find influencers based on your budget. You can either email them at info@marketingmaven.com or fill out their contact us form here.
