Best eCommerce Influencer Marketing Strategies in

When working with smaller brands, one of the questions they ask is how to use micro-influencers on Instagram to boost eCommerce sales?

We’ve all seen the incredible rise and popularity of Instagram influencers in the online marketplace.

It started with big-name pop-cultural influencers like the Kardashian sisters and has now trickled down to niche micro-influencers. This is a good thing.

Especially for businesses with smaller marketing budgets looking to make as big an impact as possible. Social media sites like Instagram have branched off into groups of followers specializing in certain niche categories,

This is the sweet spot for your business. Where you make the most impact on your product or services. And this is where the royalty of micro-influencers can help your company rule the social media world.

For a fraction of the cost of mega influencers endorsement, we discover how to use micro-influencers on Instagram to boost e-commerce sales for your brand.

4 Ways To Use Micro-Influencers On Instagram To Boost E-Commerce Sales

Increase Your Engagement

Micro-influencers on Instagram engage with their followers. They’re almost like online friends that users feel they know.

They look and sound like their audience. And their viewers trust their opinion. You can parrot off their techniques with your potential customers.

Once you have struck up an advertising relationship with your micro-influencer, increase your engagement with these base customers that share similar passions and ideals.

Answer questions, respond quickly to followers’ reviews, take notes, and heart comments made about your product.

Use Micro-Influencers Lower Prices For Posts to Your Advantage

The Instagram social posting ad costs are determined by:

How many followers does an account have?
Rate of engagement with followers
The specialty of your partnership with the micro-influencer

For product advertising with a micro-influencer, you would look at around an average cost of $200-$500 for a single post.

Compare that to anywhere from $5000.00 to $45 000.00 for a post by a celebrity or major social media personality.

You want maximum exposure and credibility for your buck, and partnering with micro-influencers can help you achieve this.

Approach your list of micro-influencers and see how many posts you can afford. Then determine how you can spread them out over the length of your advertising campaign.

Piggy Back Off Their Trust Factor

82% of surveyed Instagram users are more likely to respond to or consume brands or products recommended by a micro-influencer.

That’s an incredible power move for your small business or brand.

Micro-influencers hold incredible sway over their specialized corners of Instagram. Therefore, you don’t want to play the law of averages when embarking on your social media marketing.

Get the people who count in your corner and your sales conversion will speak for themselves. By teaming up with a recognized social media personality you bring credibility to your product.

Help Leverage Fresh Content

We, boring normals of the world, are constantly looking to micro-influencers for fresh content.

Discoveries that can improve and enhance our lives.

A revolutionary brand or product can get you excited.

When endorsed by your favorite micro-influencer, who raves about your company’s product, a natural human reaction is to want to try it out.

Micro-influencers, in turn, also need to come up with outstanding new posts and videos that relate and are stimulating to their followers.

The content machine needs to be fed constantly. This is how your brand can help satiate those starving for the next cool thing.

Come up with a thought-provoking and engaging ad campaign to run with your micro-influencer to create original content.

Types of Promotions You Can Propose With Your Micro-Influencer

Sponsored reviews
Product/service mentions
Advertising a special discount coupon
Educational ‘how to’ video
Photo product placement
In-depth blog post
Inclusion of relevant hashtags in related posts

Who Are Micro-Influencers?

Can you name any micro-influencers off the top of your head? Probably not. They’re not the big household names that take up the MSM’s screen time. You won’t find them on magazine covers or hogging up trending Twitter topics.

But the influence they peddle on Instagram amongst their followers is impactful. They have a powerful circle of fans who love what these individuals love and believe in.

And they support what these micro-influencers advertise.

Normally, these influencers have around 1000 – 10000 followers.

Mariah Carey or Joe Soap?

For major influencers like Logan Paul or Courtney Love, you can expect to pay up to half a million dollars just for a glimpse of your product on their desk.

But with micro-influencers, mostly, they’ll put their back and soul into showcasing your brand.

Why? Because it’s personal for them. Not just a paycheck. Mariah Carey posted a video about Bitcoin was paid a lot! Probably more than your business will make in the next ten years.

But Mariah Carey is worth a lot anyway, so she doesn’t have that much skin in the game. She’s not a crypto fanatic. Has never posted her thoughts on the Defi market or boosted young altcoins on her Instagram channel.

No, she got paid to make a video with a few rehearsed lines, cashed her cheque, and will move on.

Micro-influencers bring their dogs to the fight.

They’ve been pulling punches for their chosen niche for a long time. Developing their audience. Pandering to those followers’ questions, likes, and dislikes. They’re invested because it’s their passion.

That is why a micro-influencer can add actual credibility to your brand. This brings us to…

Why Work With Micro-Influencers?

Unless you have an enormous ego or your brand is a successful cash cow pumping out extremely good revenue, why wouldn’t you work with a micro-influencer on Instagram?

Engaging with and learning how to use micro-influencers on Instagram to boost e-commerce sales for your brand is a clever and visionary move.

Let’s look at some of the most obvious reasons for your e-commerce brand to gravitate towards micro-influencers to pad out your marketing plan.

How to Start A Good Relationship with your Micro-Influencer

Introduce your influencer to your brand and products. Share your vision, your ethos and highlight your uniqueness.
Explain your marketing campaign and ask for their input and ideas.
Discuss payments and compensation upfront. Make sure you are both on the same page with regards to expectations before you start.
Manage your expectations. It’s rare for a product to go viral because of one micro-influencers post. Your success will be determined by the style of your marketing campaign combined with your Instagram influencer’s input.

How to Find Micro-Influencers on Instagram

The great thing about social media and Instagram, in particular, is being able to do deep dives into your particular niche.

For example, take an Instagram influencer with around 100 000 followers. They mostly post about streetwear fashions.

If you look through their followers, you will find micro-influencers in that genre. These are further sub-divided. Maybe a micro-influencer posts mostly about winter streetwear.

Since your product is a bulky hoodie that turns into a backpack, this would be the perfect micro-influencer for you.

Most micro-influencers in specialized categories also follow each other, so you can do some in-depth research all by yourself.

However, you find all this inquiry too time-consuming and complicated. Some agencies can assist you.

Some micro-influencers even have agents or managers. But remember, you will pay extra for these supporting services.

Here are some other tactics for you to try.

How To Use Your Existing Instagram Knowledge

Look through your existing followers on your Instagram page to find micro-influencers that already support your brand, product, or company.

This is a win-win situation as you’ll both already have your credibility in check for working with each other. There is nothing more embarrassing than a lame, inauthentic brand influencer pairing.

Potential customers can smell the fakeness. They will scroll past you and be wary of your brand in the future.

Familiarity with each other’s brands helps.

It’s also good practice that when you discover new micro-influencers, to make sure you give them a follow and regularly ‘like’ their posts.

An even better practice is to like their follower’s posts concerning the type of product, brand, or lifestyle you’re promoting.

Another good way of scraping the perfect micro-influencer for your business is to use a tool like SocialRank that can filter followers down via:

Biography keywords
Geographic breakdown (location)
Targeted hashtag usage
Activity rates
Post times
Amount of followers

You can also compile your own list of all niche micro-influencers with followers between 1000 – 50 000 followers to target.

Micro-Instagram Influencers With Blogs

Now, this is one powerful fact that is often overlooked when learning how to use micro-influencers on Instagram to boost e-commerce sales.

A powerful source of micro-influencers significance in their niche is because 86% of them have their own blogs.

The authority they can maintain on their chosen subject on Instagram is backed up by their longer form blogs. Here, micro-influencers can delve deeper into a product, service, or issue relating to their specialty.

If you can promote your company via photos and video on these micro-influencers Instagram, you can double your impact by also featuring in their blogs.

This is how you use micro-influencers on Instagram to boost eCommerce sales best, by cross-platform posting.

There are many automated online tools to assist you in discovering these micro-influencers with blogs.

Buzzsumo and Klear are two, but a quick Google search will help you find niche influencers with blogs and additional online marketing means.

How to Use Hashtags

As with looking up trending keywords or tags, you can also find the most appropriate micro-influencers via an online tool like All-Hashtags.

You just enter your relevant ideas or product/brand/service specifications into All-Hashtags and it will generate corresponding hashtags.

Type these into an Instagram search and see which people with a good Instagram following are using and updating these hashtags.

Gathering Contact Detail Data Of Micro-Influencer

It’s always awkward having to ask for somebody’s contact details.

But if you can’t find an email, phone number, or Zoom details of your preferred micro-influencer in their bio, you’re going to have to drop them a direct message.

Create a spreadsheet with all your research to keep organized and add details as you go along.

You’ll soon find you have a handy workbook built up of potential micro-influencers that can help market and broadcast your business.

Making Sure You Have A Good Match In A Micro-Influencer Quality

Now that you’ve put a whole lot of hard work into your research and are ready to approach your chosen micro-influencers, there is one important question to ask.

Will this micro-influencers endorsement aid or harm my brand?

It’s difficult to determine what good quality content is. Some many metrics and algorithms contribute to what makes something popular, but does it make it prime?

Will the content this micro-influencer peddles uplift your brand and increase your online real estate?

Or will it do your product, brand, or service more harm than good.

So it’s crucial to do exhaustive research on your micro-influencer. See what the reactions and engagement are of their followers from past promotions they have done.

Check their other social media accounts.

Their Twitter, Facebook, Tik Tok, etc. will give you a glimpse into their philosophy, morals, ethics, and pop-cultural sensibilities and outlooks.

Make sure all photography, memes, and blog accounts of your brand will be of high quality. Approach this engagement with the utmost professionalism to save yourself from future headaches or groveling apologies.