How to grow your ecommerce startup with micro-influencers

I’m sure you’ve read a million tips, tricks, and insights on creating a foolproof marketing strategy for an ecommerce startup. However, only a few are able to get it off the ground and successfully drive it to success.

Most such tips, tricks, and insights generally boil down to the same old boring pointers - research your business idea, hire a great team, or carefully mull over your cash flow.

Does a marketing strategy for an ecommerce startup based on these age-old tactics guarantee success? Not really.

In fact, 9 out of 10 startups fail to thrive. I’m sure you’re wondering why these startups fail despite a foolproof business plan, adequate capital, and skilled resources. Here’s why.

Many times, ecommerce startups overlook the potential of micro-influencer marketing.

You may be surprised to learn that collaborating with micro-influencers is an excellent way to gain the trust of your potential customers. It can help drive tons of traffic to your ecommerce site and generate revenue for your brand.

In this post, we’ll explore how you can grow your ecommerce startup by leveraging micro-influencer marketing. But first, let’s take a look at who micro-influencers, are and why your ecommerce startup needs them.

Who are micro-influencers and why do you need them?

Typically, micro-influencers are people with social media followers in the range of 1000 to 100,000. Micro-influencers are trusted by their followers. They share their thoughts, opinions, and views on social media platforms.

Over the years, micro-influencers have become increasingly popular. In fact, studies have found that the followers of micro-influencers are more engaged than those of bigger influencers on social media.

Collaborating with the right micro-influencer can help you reach a more engaged, niche audience. Micro-influencers can help you generate sales-ready leads for your products without having to run from pillar to post. Studies have found that 82% of people are more likely to act based on recommendations from micro-influencers.

Here’s a real-life example that showcases how micro-influencers can aid a marketing strategy for e-commerce startups.

Swedish startup, Daniel Wellington, has leveraged micro-influencer campaigns successfully to become a well-known watch brand. The company collaborated with several popular micro-influencers and gave them free watches and special discount coupons to share with their followers.

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Image via Instagram

This means:

Carefully selecting and collaborating with the right micro-influencer can easily help you take your ecommerce startup off-the-ground, drive torrents of traffic, and generate tons of high-quality, sales-ready leads.

But it is not as easy as it sounds.

Finding the right micro-influencer for your ecommerce startup can be a daunting task. Remember, teaming up with a wrong influencer will only lead to a waste of your precious time and marketing resources.

The rule of micro-influencers marketing is simple. You’ll need to look for micro-influencers who share content related to the products or services you’re offering.

Fortunately:

There are many easy-to-use influencer marketing tools that can help you discover the right micro-influencer for your ecommerce startup.

Platforms like Grin can help you discover and collaborate with top micro-influencers from your industry and niche. You can also run, manage, and track the performance of your campaigns using Grin.

How to Create an Effective Marketing Strategy for Your E-commerce Startup

Now that you know why your ecommerce brand needs micro-influencers, let’s take a look at how to develop a marketing strategy leveraging them.

1. Get Micro-Influencers to Review Your Product or Service

One of the best ways to grow your ecommerce startup quickly is to have micro-influencers review your products. As thought leaders in their industry, micro-influencer recommendations can help you increase brand awareness and drive more traffic to your website.

Share free samples of your products with them so that they can showcase them in their social media or blog posts. Here’s an example of an Instagram post by a micro-influencer. Their review garnered over 2.2K likes.

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Image via Instagram

2. Get Micro-Influencers to Promote Your Offers

Offers, coupons, discounts, and deals often encourage buyers to make a purchase. Offering discounts for your products could prove to be a powerful weapon to drive traffic to your ecommerce website.

Ask your micro-influencers to promote your discount codes and ongoing offers. This will help you reach out to a wider audience who may, in turn, purchase your products. By sharing discounts and promotional offers, micro-influencers are able to provide greater incentives to their followers. This can lead to an increase in your leads and even conversions.

Create exclusive promo codes that your micro-influencers can share with their followers. Better yet, use your micro-influencers’ names in the discount coupons, like the one shown in the screenshot below This will help you make your micro-influencers feel special. It will also make it easier for you to track the number of customers that each micro-influencer was able to drive to your business.

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Image via Instagram

3. Pitch for Guest Blogs to Drive Traffic

Yet another brilliant way to use micro-influencers to your advantage is by pitching guest posts. This will help you reach out to a wider audience, drive more targeted traffic to your ecommerce site, and get more user engagement on social media.

Furthermore, it will help you build high-quality backlinks to your site, which will help you boost your ecommerce site’s SEO.

But before you jump into action and start pitching your guest posts to micro-influencers, make a list of websites of your intended influencers; their respective domain authority, and their daily traffic stats. Don’t forget to check if their audience fits your set of buyer personas. Also, look for the social signals to understand the number of shares and comments their posts get on an average. And check for any guest blogging guidelines.

Now that you have all of these details in place, start reaching out. Pitch several topic ideas and allow them to take their pick. Once they agree on a particular topic idea, start working on the final draft.

Wrapping Up

So there you have it. Everything you need to know about effectively using micro-influencers in your marketing strategy for your ecommerce startup. Now it’s time to go ahead and start putting these strategies into practice.

Do you have any other tips for growing an e-commerce startup with the help of micro-influencers? Let us know in the comments below.