Product discovery on social channels is taking place and a recent study by social commerce platform revealed that 80% of customers now rely on social media for finding out products. On Instagram, this growth rate of product discovery for brands is the highest now. Well, besides social platforms a whole array of influencers and freelance brand ambassadors across channels are also playing a great role in boosting audience engagement.
Many of these social influencers happen to be freelancers without any permanent commitment for any business organisation or brand. Freelancer brand ambassadors thanks to their free association with multiple entities and independent opinions are often more respected and relied upon. When freelancers voice their likes and dislikes and influence others with their opinions, they are more earnestly heard by their audience.
Building a Brand Personality
If businesses target an audience, they mainly concentrate on getting the attention of a variety of people. The different persons of customers help to know the principal customer characteristics based on a variety of factors including lifestyle, behaviours, demographics, interests and preferences, etc.
By understanding the target audience, influencers across channels help create an impression that fits a business brand. When you approach a freelance influencer, you should start developing a strong brand personality that must match the preferences of the target audience.
The social media platforms and influencers now are considered key elements of a marketing strategy because of the role they play in boosting customer confidence. No wonder, e-commerce businesses are relying on them in order to enhance their brand value and public recognition.
Gain Attention without Competition
Social media platforms and influencers have fully transformed the way advertising creates an impression. Unlike traditional ads, they don’t need to compete for attention and they would rather help people participate and engage gradually. This is particularly true for the freelancers who being non-committed to any specific organisations gain more natural traction.
Except in some cases where their collaborations can appear as promotions, mostly they create a content strategy for social media that blends naturally with content and becomes as engaging as regular posts. Audiences generally respond more positively to the natural content carrying social influencer promotions and that is why such advertising content is so successful.
Apart from gaining the organic exposure of influencers, brands also gain from the reach of the influencers with the ripple effect of shared and tagged posts. Such exposure, in the end, can lead to double or triple times the exposure for a single promotional content.
Social recommendations
Whenever we come across an ad from a well-known brand selling anything in particular as the best product, we consider it as non-credible as any other advertising claims. But when that same claim comes from a friend we give serious attention to it. Since most of us trust the opinions of close ones, including friends and family members, influencer marketing exploits this through engineering recommendations.
An influencer instead of coming with an outright statement claiming a particular product to be the best can just tell the users of the product to promote it further among near and dear ones. A customer consuming a certain food, or using a particular room cleaner can tell others how they liked the product and why. A social post from a developer company can also provide helpful app development tips to businesses considering building apps. Such a conversation without an air promotion helps to make an influence. Their positive impression on the brand can influence others. This is how Influencer marketing works.
Affiliate relationships
Another major way influencers and freelance brand ambassadors are changing e-commerce is through affiliate marketing. This is the most impressive way in which e-commerce is being transformed. The freelance brand ambassadors and influencers are now building multifaceted and durable affiliate relationships to serve the interests of several stakeholders in the process. It is really going to change online marketing in a big way.
Basically, it works in a simple way. A business brand contacts an influencer and they make an agreement. The responsibility of the influencer is to talk about the products of the brand, and in return, it will provide several links for affiliate purchases. These affiliate links created within the e-commerce store or business website will help the brand to keep track of the source of the purchases and the business based upon recommendations leading to sales will provide incentives. While most of the time, it is done very subtly and without creating much buzz, at times it is also done very openly.
Building Credibility and Trust
The principal impetus behind the success of influencer marketing is the strong credibility and the bond with the fans they enjoy. Several leading influencers over time became highly influential and popular brand ambassadors who can make a difference in marketing output. The credibility and bond establish trust leading to actual actions or sales. Thus the trust in an influencer easily gets transferred to a business brand without much effort. Since people trust peer recommendations and influencers are regarded by the fans as peers, the business brands become direct beneficiaries of this trust.
The social media stars such as Kylie Jenner or Kim Kardashian from their influencers status now have become freelance brand ambassadors influencing many people’s buying decisions across diverse niches. This becomes possible thanks to their established bond and the popularity of their social presence. People hoping to be like them easily get influenced by their choices. These influencers become instant personal confidence booster with recommendations of brands.
Micro-Influencers: a new promising way to influence customers
Micro-influencers are increasingly playing a big role in influencing e-commerce marketing. Micro-influencers are considered now to offer great value for brands of all types. Micro-influencers without being big names like Kim Kardashian can be more trustworthy, easily accessible and reliable within audience groups that matter for a niche brand. They can help to shape up a unique campaign targeted specifically for your audience. Here are some value propositions of micro-influencers.
Niche-specific: Micro-influencers generally target a very specific audience and the market as people like easy to access influencers.
Conversion rate: Micro-influencers ensure a higher conversion rate if you can maintain the right collaboration.
Affordability: Micro-influencers are a much more affordable option and can reduce your budget for influencer marketing campaigns.
Trust: Followers trusting micro-influencers can easily create a ripple effect by bringing in more audience and building trust.
Engagement: Micro-influencers help to build a much higher engagement rate as they remain easily accessible and appear with least air of marketing intent and bias.
Conclusion
Social media marketing comes as free and freelance brand promotion and influencer marketing comes as the least expensive marketing option. On the other hand, both can give better exposure to brands as they look least biased, unlike the traditional ads.
They appear as peers or regular platforms for social interactions and thus they get embedded into conversation easily. Influencers, freelance brand ambassadors and social media platforms will go hand in hand to reduce the impact of traditional ads further for e-commerce and online businesses.
