If we have learned anything during the Covid-19 pandemic, no one can predict what the future holds, but you can bet that influencer and digital marketing will continue to evolve and grow. As brands are increasingly finding creative ways to capitalize on influencer marketing, as an FBA Amazon seller, you should also look for a way to level up your social media game and therefore boost engagement, drive visibility and connect with your followers.
However, with millions of products for sale in the Amazon marketplace, getting your products seen with the right audience can be challenging. One of the most effective ways to expose the target audience to your products and brand is using an Amazon Influencer Program. As FBA Amazon sellers looking to level up their game successfully, you need to utilize the best strategies tried by the top social media experts for the Amazon influencer Program. We have listed the best ones below.
Who is Considered an Influencer?
An Amazon influencer is a person who has established themselves as an authority for a specific niche on social platforms, and this gives them the ability to influence purchasing decisions. They do that by explicitly promoting a product for sale on Amazon, and in short, they are the person you will need to represent your brand because they help drive Amazon sales.
What are the Different Types of Influencers?
a). Nano Influencers
Nano influencers have followers between 1-10K on their social media channels, and they usually have incredible engagement rates and an engaged social media following. These influencers are vocal promoters of the products and brands they love, and their followers appreciate their authentic reviews and recommendations. These Amazon influencers have developed a close relationship with their followers, and they take their time to engage with their followers and cultivate these relationships.
When to Use Nano Influencers
These Amazon influencers are suitable for small to medium-sized businesses with a limited marketing budget because these Amazon influencers are a cost-effective method of getting started with influencer marketing.
Where to Find Nano Influencers
You can find Amazon influencers on most social media sites, but the best platform is Instagram, especially when targeting millennials. In addition, you can use social media listening tools such as Falcon as they will help you know about mentions and brand tags.
b). Micro-Influencers
A micro-influencer is pretty similar to a regular influencer. Both influencers have loyal audiences, only that a micro-influencer has an average following, which means up to below 100K but over 10K. Micro-influencers are relatable to their followers and will have an engaged audience most of the time. These influencers specialize in a certain niche, making it easy for brands to create special sponsorships with micro-influencers.
When to Use Micro-Influencers
A micro-influencer is suitable for generating focused leads since they usually have a close relationship with their followers, just like the nano social media influencers. However, since micro-influencers are specialized in a particular niche, their audience is primed to hear marketing messages in the same specific niche.
Where to Find Micro-Influencers
You can find a relevant micro-influencer among your brand's followers, and these are consumers who are already fans of your brand. You can do this by searching hashtags for your brand or related to your niche or specialty.
c). Macro Influencers
Macro influencers are between 100K and 1M followers, and they usually have a broader appeal to them than micro-influencers. These influencers are internet-made celebrities, and they may also be bloggers, bloggers, podcasters, or social media stars.
Macro influencers have a large audience that they may have developed over several months or years of growing followers and nurturing relationships. However, because of their large follower numbers, they have a comparatively low engagement rate.
When to Use Macro Influencers
Macro influencers are the best for bringing awareness to your brand, services and products, and you can utilize this relationship to increase your engagement rates and boost your brand's reach. In addition, macro-influencers have a significant number of followers, and they can help you reach a bigger audience and increase your brand's reputation.
Where to Find Macro Influencers
Macro influencers are usually famous for being content creators such as podcasters or bloggers, or they could be social media influencers on Facebook, Tiktok or Youtube. Try to look for hashtags that may be in the same line with your industry, brand and niche to find macro influencers for your brand.
d). Mega Influencers/ Celebrity Influencers
Celebrities or mega influencers may have more than a million followers, and they are some of the social media's biggest celebrities who you will need to have a large budget to afford them. However, it's also important to understand that the audiences that these Amazon influencers bring are broad and may not be specific to your brand.
When to Use Mega Influencers
If you are working on a brand awareness campaign with a massive budget, you should, as these Amazon influencers will showcase your products before as many eyes as possible. This is great if your brand has an appeal across a lot of segments.
Where to Find Mega Influencers
These Amazon influencers are very popular, and therefore it's not hard to find them instead of looking for hashtags and brand mentions for your product or niche. In addition, you can look for accounts that qualify as mega influencers and see if they will succeed for your brand.
What are the Qualifications of an Amazon Influencer?
Even though the specifics and details for acceptance into the Amazon influencer program are not readily available, there are a few themes for Amazon affiliates and influencers, and they include:
- A substantial social media presence
- Ample and high-quality content
- A responsive community dialog and engagement
- Mutual relevance
In addition, since Amazon is the master of data, the approval process will also involve algorithmic approval. If your social media powers make it past the number, you move to the more qualitative parameters.
Notably, both the Amazon A9 Algorithm and the Amazon Influence Program love relevance. Therefore, you should find a connection between the endorsed product and the endorser, and your influencer power will grow.
How Does the Amazon Influencer Program Work?
The Amazon Influencer Program was started in 2017, and it is a uniquely different way which the industry's influencers use to promote the Amazon products they love. However, Amazon didn't start recently to use influencing as back in 1996, a popular affiliate program model known as Amazon Associates Program was introduced. It offered a percentage of commission to its network of associates who made sales by sharing Amazon links. The program is still there today and open to anyone who wishes to become an Amazon associate.
The Amazon Influencer Program works by giving Amazon sellers the tools they may need to select the best of Amazon's products. They can easily be recommended to their followers, hence earning a referral fee. In addition, Amazon Influencer storefronts are an excellent way for influencers to show all Amazon products they endorse in one place for all customers to follow and also follow along with what their favorite influencers are using. An Amazon storefront helps customers find all product recommendations from Amazon influencers in one place.
Amazon Influencer Marketing Process
Amazon Influencer marketing has been in the industry for years because it works, and it is pretty simple. Amazon Influencer Marketing works like a very persuasive ad to target customers that doesn't go away even when you finish your campaign and get a recommendation from the advertising network. It works by positioning products on content known to sell by sources familiar to consumers, and they like and trust them.
Below is how the Amazon Influencer Marketing Process works:
1. Retailers and brands build relationships with Youtube channels, media outlets, blogs, Publication Amazon influencers and social accounts with large audiences of their target customers.
2. The brands and retailers get their services and products mentioned or included on the Youtube videos and social media posts
3. Amazon shoppers and potential customers watch videos, see the recommendations from familiar sources that they know, like and trust and therefore make purchases.
4. Amazon pays the Amazon influencer a commission for referring sales. Notably, Amazon rewards brands for sending customers to Amazon to make purchases from them.
How Does Influencer Marketing Drive Amazon Sales?
How Amazon Influencer Marketing drives sales for retailers and brands is a simple process, and here is how it works:
1. Look for popular content from Amazon influencers that your target audience watches or reads when they want to make a purchase. For example, Suitable Gifts for Coffee Lovers, Fathers Day Gifts, Top 10 swimming gear, Best Makeup on Amazon and many more.
2. Follow the channels and blogs on their social networks and engage with their content by liking, sharing and leaving relevant comments. This helps to build a relationship with them and know you if they didn't, and then they will want to promote you and your brand.
3. After doing this for a while, reach out to a particular influencer and ask them to include you in the influencer content you found or a new piece of similar content.
4. Grow the relationship by reaching out to them now and then with a coupon code or a deal only meant for their audience
What are Some of the Best Influencer Marketing Strategies for Amazon FBA Sellers
Below are effective influencer marketing strategies that will help FBA Amazon sellers to reap maximum rewards from the Amazon influencer program, including:
1. Identify Influencers to Work with
In today's world, the market is saturated with influencers and more and more and coming up every day, which means you as a seller will have endless options. However, not all social media influencers will be the right fit for you and your brand, and therefore, you need to choose the ones to work with. But how do you know the right ones to use?
One way to find influencers perfect for your brand is to use Influencer agencies, but this can be a problem with a small budget or company, and you will have to make this decision yourself. However, three steps can help you find the right influencer for your brand, including:
- Identify prominent voices in your target area. For example, if you work in fashion, check out the latest trend and see which influencers are talking about them.
- Analyze each influencer's posts, background and values and all the previous campaigns they have been a part of. Also, check if their overall image will align with your brand identity.
- Calculate their engagement rates, choose posts and divide their followers' number of interactions (likes and comments).
Now that you have identified the influencers, what they stand for and how they engage their audience, you can come up with a plan of reaching out to the ones that are a good fit for your brand. Notably, even though the number of followers matters, the content and engagement rates matter the most.
2. Find the Best Platform to Focus on
Most influencers, especially the popular ones, create content on different channels such as Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter or Facebook account. Each platform uses different approaches and formats and has different audiences to inform your influencer strategy. You need to start by asking yourself why your target customers created an account and what they expected to find, then feed that thirst in a relevant way to your brand.
If you focus on one social media platform, Instagram will be the most obvious choice, especially if your target is millennials. Instagram makes a popular choice because it also has a shopping feature and stories and images, making it faster for social media users to buy the influencer's recommendation. However, even though Instagram is the current safe choice, you can take risks in new platforms before the big players do, but you should be clever in your choice of networks.
3. Match Size of your Brand to Popularity of the Influencer
Your company's size should be directly proportional to how popular the influencer endorsing you is, and this doesn't mean you need to have the same number of followers. However, it means that you need to be realistic about the reach of your influence. Notably, the company's size may affect the method you should use to find influencers. For example, big brands should work with influencer agencies, and small brands should use discovery and trend features on social media platforms to find their stores effective micro-influencers.
Nevertheless, your influencer choice should go hand-in-hand with your campaign objectives, where macro-influencers are great for driving product and brand awareness for you to check the view. On the other hand, micro-influencers are the right influencers if you are looking for a solid connection to the audience so that the KPIs might include sales conversions and clicks.
4. Convert Loyal Customers to Brand Ambassadors
Converting loyal customers to brand ambassadors is a way of capitalizing on your existing audience members who are perfectly primed to promote your products. If your brand already has a high engagement rate on social media, you may not need an influencer as your potential brand ambassadors could be right below your nose.
Some brands have taken advantage of this strategy, such as Glossier, where everyone's an influencer. They have mastered that the best recommendations come from people not receiving any financial incentives. This way, a brand will focus on reposting content from regular customers instead of super-polished influencer accounts.
5. Give Influencers Creative Control
Once you find the right Amazon influencer to work with, try to give them creative control s much as you might be tempted to tell them what content to produce. These Amazon influencers work best with creative control since they are the ones who know their audience better than anyone else.
One of the most significant advantages of influencer marketing is advertising your brand and products through trusted sources where someone in the audience already is feeling a personal connection. Therefore, in turn, you will need to trust them to communicate with their audience.
6. Make the Most Out of Influencer Relationships
Once you establish a relationship with the right influencer, you shouldn't miss out on any collaboration opportunity. Instead of sticking to the usual format where they will post a photo promoting your product, ask them to record videos of it, post a story of it or incorporate it into an interactive poll.
If you plan to host a brand event, invite the relevant Amazon influencers and allow them to create content about it. You can even ask them to collaborate on future projects that will eventually transform them into loyal brands.
7. Get Creative Enough to Stand Out
Creative thinking is an asset, and it's most important, especially in a saturated market. Even though this marketing strategy was revolutionary some years back, nowadays, audiences accept it and have grown accustomed to it and hence the challenge. Also, with the COVID-19 pandemic, more brands embraced social media marketing, making the competition even more fierce.
As an FBA Amazon seller, you should find a creative way to generate controversy, and it doesn't always have to boost your Amazon sales as it can sometimes cause more brand awareness.
How Much Do these Amazon Influencers Cost?
Referral fees have been there for ages since around 1760, when Robert Wedgewood started using endorsements from the Royal family to boost their pottery sales. The tactic has existed for this long because it works, but there isn't a standard rate in influencer marketing, and every influencer is handled on a case-by-case basis.
Some Amazon influencers are comfortable accepting free products while others work with small products at a fee, and for the big celebrity Amazon influencers, they demand a hefty fee. The Amazon Influencer program works by paying Amazon influencers decent market value, which is for the value they will bring back to our business.
Benefits of an Amazon Influencer
Amazon influencer marketing works best for e-commerce brands looking to boost their reach and drive sales for various reasons.
1. High Engagement
When you want a high engagement for your Amazon influencer program, you need to find Amazon influencers with fewer followers, such as micro-influencers, as they have higher engagements than those with 100K. In addition, you are guaranteed to get more referring sales from the micro-influencers because they have small followings and humble backgrounds and are more relatable and accessible to their followers. Therefore, when a micro-influencer posts a Youtube video or a post about your Amazon store, their followers quickly take notice and ask questions, and this will like convert to refer sales.
2. Affordability
Working with Amazon influencers usually depends on different factors, but most of them are generally affordable. A sponsored post from a micro-influencer in the Amazon influencer program will cost less, increase and drive sales since they have a trusted audience. Therefore, no matter how small or big your brand is, you can find Amazon influencers to suit your budget and boost your sales.
3. More Conversions
Thanks to the already established trust with micro-influencers especially, Amazon sellers are guaranteed to get the most out of your Amazon Influencer program while using them to increase their sales. These Amazon influencers effectively get conversions because they have mastered the customer journey and consumers view their recommendations with a lot of trusts. In addition, most consumers understand that these Amazon influencers are betting their brands on these endorsements and are unlikely to go back on the products, unlike when celebrity Amazon influencers recommend a product.
4. A Niche Audience
Since micro-influencers have fewer followers than celebrity Amazon influencers but have a specific audience, you can find the exact demographic you are interested in targeting. These micro-influencers attract an audience with the same passion, whether fashion, beauty or technology and the specific audience trust them.
How to Work with Amazon Influencers
1. Choose your Campaign
There are plenty of ways you can work with Amazon influencers to promote your brand and products and increase your Amazon sales, and this can range from affiliate programs to Instagram takeovers. Some of the most popular options used for Amazon advertising include:
a). Sponsored Post
This method involves having an Amazon influencer make a post featuring your product, also known as promoted posts. They are often identified by hashtags such as #sponsored or #ad. Some may be overly promotional than others. For these post types, it's crucial to allow the Amazon influencer to create content in their voice, as this will be a natural fit for their social page and feed.
b). Giveaway
This involves teaming up with one or more influencers to host product giveaways, and it's a great way to promote your brand or product. Since you are giving products away, you will get high engagement rates for these post types. This method can also help grow your brand's social following, especially if the contest rules need the participants to follow your account to be eligible for a chance to win.
c). Custom Discount Codes
Once you find Amazon influencers, this is another way you can work with them. It involves giving Amazon influencer promo codes, coupon codes or custom discounts to share with their followers. This method can also be effective as it's customized for a specific Amazon influencer, and therefore, it creates a unique opportunity to market to a niche community. In addition, it's easy to measure its impact on your campaign, especially when working with different amazon influencers.
d). Brand Ambassador
These are Amazon influencers who love your brand, and they are willing to promote your Amazon store while raising brand awareness and driving sales. Some are paid, while some brand ambassadors participate in these programs without pay and for free goods or for gaining access to new products.
2. Define expectations
No matter how small your budget or how short your influencer's Amazon campaign is meant to be, you can successfully define your working relationship in the marketing agreement. Below are some things to keep in mind when drawing up your agreement, and they include:
a). Number of Posts
For your influencer program, you will need to outline how many posts an influencer will be making on your behalf and the duration of the posts and where they should link.
b). Payment
The details are not mainly on how much the Amazon influencer should be paid, and it's more on what schedule or date they should be paid.
c). Prior Review of Content
This is important, especially if you want to approve and review the copy or imagery of a post before an Amazon influencer makes a post, and you should make this clear and set your due dates.
d). Future use of influencer-created content
When working with Amazon influencers, this is one of the biggest problems encountered as ecommerce brands may sometimes use the content after the campaign is over and it was not part of the initial agreement. However, the videos, photos and any other content an Amazon influencer may create on your behalf is among the most significant benefits of working with an Amazon influencer since you can repurpose the content across your marketing channels. Therefore, if you plan to reuse influencer content in the future for your Amazon page or Instagram, Twitter or Facebook accounts, ensure it's clearly explained in the Amazon influencer agreement.
3. Allow Amazon Influencers Creative Freedom
All Amazon influencers have a unique voice, and it has curated a specific look for their social channels, which enables them to engage effectively with their audience. While you may need to review an Amazon influencer post before its published, you should encourage influencers to be creative and promote your brand and products in a way that is also on-brand for them too.
How to Track Influencer Content Performance
The success of your product or brand means more than just getting an Amazon influencer to promote your brand, and you also have to come up with goals for the campaign and measure them at the end of the campaign to see how you have done. As much as your main goal is boosting your Amazon sales, you should have other goals to keep in mind, and they may play a significant role in helping you gain more sales. Some goals you can consider may include post reach, brand awareness, clicks, conversions, follower count and post engagement, to name but a few.
In addition, there are other methods to track your sales, including some sites, but for the other metric, you may have to depend on specific social analytics such as Instagram Insights. At the end of any campaign, you should look at what worked and what didn't, and you can use this data to guide how you come up with your next Amazon influencer campaign.
What is the Difference Between the Amazon Influencer Program and the Amazon Associates Program?
One of the significant differences between Amazon Associates and Amazon Influencers is that Amazon Associates direct their audiences to use Amazon affiliate links while Amazon influencers direct their followers towards the actual Amazon influencer storefronts that host links to all the influencers' products recommending or promoting. The unique Amazon URL is the main difference from Amazon Associates since Amazon affiliates have to work with Amazon to match product selections. Still, Amazon Influencers are free to promote any product they may want.
In addition, Amazon Influencer Program is a bit different, and it's an extension of the original Amazon Associates Program. It helps customers discover new products through trusted influencers and micro-influencers with considerable followers across their social platforms.
Like the Associate's Program, Amazon influencers also earn their commissions based on the sales they help generate. Still, some specific features and qualifications differentiate the two programs. Also, both users can build shopping ads and links and integrate them into their social media platforms.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Can micro-influencers create big results for Amazon Sellers?
Yes. When it comes to the Amazon marketplace and getting your products in front of the target customer or audience, it doesn't have to cost you an arm and a leg to work with an Amazon influencer. You have to research to find Amazon influencers that match your brand and spend strategically.
A micro-influencer with fewer followers can also give someone fair market value and a massive impact on your Amazon store, including direct sales. In addition, you are likely to get referral traffic for micro-influencers recommending your products through their Youtube channel or post because people take them seriously and make purchases.
2. How is the Amazon Influencer Program different from the Amazon Associates Program?
The Amazon Influencer program is meant for influencers with a large following on any social platform, and the applicants don't have to own a website. They only need a strong presence on Twitter, Youtube or Instagram. On the other hand, the Amazon Affiliate Program is available to anyone with a website. It only needs a user to send an Amazon store a sale within three months of joining. This is an excellent opportunity for a micro-influencer since it has a much lower barrier to entry.
3. How to find Amazon Influencers?
There are plenty of ways to find influencers to promote your products and help to increase Amazon sales, but it can be challenging to find an influencer who seems like a good fit. Once you have found potential influencers, investigate the influencers further before you reach out to them. You can look at their social posts, read their interactions with the commenters and also scroll through their followers while asking some questions such as:
- How often does the Amazon influencer
- How does the person communicate online, and is it on-brand for you?
- How is this person engaging with their followers?
- How genuine are the person's followers?
With these questions in mind, search close to you and identify the people aware of your brand and already using your products. You can check your fans and followers, search hashtags, look at top purchasers, and you should be an influence tool.
How To Use Influencer Marketing For Amazon FBA
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