An Intro To Influencer Marketing For Amazon Sellers

In this guest post, Adam Andrews, CEO of Ideal Influencers, gives an introduction to influencer marketing for Amazon sellers- how Amazon FBA sellers can leverage partnerships with social media influencers & bloggers to grow their business. The basic topics covered are the mindset required for success in influencer marketing, creating an influencer profile, searching & reaching out to influencers, and structuring a deal…

…Enter Adam…

Well, first of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Adam Andrews, CEO of Ideal Influencers. We help e-commerce companies exponentially grow their brands using influencer marketing.

Great, now that the introduction is out of the way I’ll get right to the content! The first subject I want to touch on is the mindset you must to have before launching a campaign…

Mindset To Profitability

Okay, like everything in life your mindset determines your results with influencer marketing campaigns. The mindset I drive into all my clients is patience and positivity. I focus on patience and positivity with all of my clients because in today’s fast-paced marketing world the ones who are winning are the ones who are patient and allow themselves to learn from the market and from their “failures” and mistakes.

This is a LONG-TERM game! Don’t play the short-term game. If you have to push back your launch a little longer because you don’t have all your influencer partnerships setup then do so. Don’t cut corners!

So if there’s one thing you’re going to need is to have a positive mindset. Even if the campaign completely fails to meet your objectives, there’s always something to learn from failure.

Okay, we’ve touched on the mindset behind influencer marketing. Before we get into the nitty-gritty of launching a campaign and those specifics I want to cover a few things Amazon Sellers need to keep in mind when reaching out to influencers.

Where is the most content for your product being produced at?

This is the platform that should have the most of your customers’ and potential customers’ attention. Besides your Amazon listing where is the majority of the marketplace creating content? Creating content around your product is key to building a strong brand and authority on and off Amazon.

Creating content isn’t as hard as people make it seem.

Step 1: Find where the majority of your content is being produced and promoted.

Step 2: Find a content creator (influencer or even just a great photographer/videographer) and reach out to have content created around your product.

Step 3: Use it across your listing, social media and emails to create authority.

Where is your audience buying from?

You want to choose an influencer channel based on where your customers buy and hang out and online, and what your campaign goals are. Suppose your audience is mainly on YouTube and Pinterest, but they make most of their purchases on Pinterest. Then if your campaign objective is sales, you’re obviously going to use Pinterest.

You can find out where customers are purchasing Find this out by analyzing your competition’s content and figuring out where they’re getting the majority of their traffic from. For instance, if their Youtube videos have a lot of views and a Call-to-action to Subscribe to their Youtube channel, but their Pinterest has a ton of CTAs to buy…you know purchases are happening on Pinterest. That’s a very easy way of figuring out which platforms are working best for your competition. Also, websites like similarweb.com make it easy to find out where your competition is getting the majority of traffic from.

What’s the best way to pay out your influencers?

There are many ways to structure payments to influencers. You’ll need to figure this out before negotiating.

• Coupon codes

• Amazon Associate 5% + 5% more paid weekly

• Free product for the influencer in return they create a blog post or YouTube video

• Giveaway to their audience

• Other payment structures

It’s important to choose a partnership structure before you do outreach, so you can negotiate from a baseline and a position of strength and authority. Make sure you have your stuff together before making an ask, or you will come across as unprofessional.

Onto choosing the Ideal Influencers for your campaign and audience.

Building Your Ideal Influencer Profile

The first thing you have to do is…

Build Your Ideal Influencer profile so that you have a working vision of who the influencers you want to work with are and where you can find them online.

You wouldn’t go into business without knowing who your ideal customers are, would you? You have to take influencer marketing just as serious.

So the way I go about identifying Ideal Influencers to work with is actually a simple process. I emphasize Ideal because nowadays there are so many fake/saturated influencers.

Using these fake/saturated influencers will produce you little to no results and hurt your brand. Here is the process I go through to identify Ideal Influencers to potentially form a partnership with.

Begin research by taking out a notebook in a quiet room with no distractions and thinking of whom my Ideal Influencer to work with would be.

It’s similar to the process of finding an ideal customer profile. These are a few of the things I ask myself about my Ideal Influencer.

• What qualities do they hold?
• Whom do they associate themselves with?
• What hobbies may they have?
• Where do they hang out online?
• What forums do they post in?
• What magazines/blogs do they read?
• What do they watch on YouTube?
• What is important to them?
• Where is their largest influence?
• Which platform? Etc.

When I am finished with this brainstorming activity, I actually create a profile of who my Ideal Influencer is.

So for example, if I’m looking for a male fitness influencer I will draw a stick figure in the middle of the page and describe in my mind and on paper who this influencer I am looking for is.

Using reference from the notes I took previously and creating a profile describing exactly who he is, what he does on a day to day basis, who his friends are, etc.

Once you have the Ideal Influencer profile built out then I do is start searching for them…

Starting The Search

I’ll typically start the search on the platform that the ideal influencer uses. . So say you’re launching a cooking product and want to use YouTube influencers. Great, I would start by manually searching for influencers by using keywords in the YouTube search bar. Open a new tab for every new influencer you find. Then I would move to different platforms like Grapevine – a great resource to find YouTube influencers.

While searching for these influencers manually and using platforms like Grapevine, keep a list of all the ones you want to reach out to and why.

• Email

• @names with links back to their profiles

• 1-10 of if you would work with them

• Interests of theirs /personal facts (something to connect with on a deeper level)

If you can’t find any personal facts to talk about don’t let it stop you from reaching out. Just communicate with them like you would anyone and be friendly.

From there I move onto outreach which is where I really differentiate myself. Here’s the outreach tactic I use…

Outreach

Take the time to structure your offer clearly and make the video below.

Hey {Influencer Name}

I love what you’re doing on your Instagram! Especially your post last week about {insert something you found interesting about their profile} I think you would be a perfect fit for my {company name} influencer marketing campaign we are putting together. We are looking to offer you {insert something VALUABLE so they’ll actually respond} and can’t wait to hear back from you. { Oh, by the way, I love cars too. We should talk about them sometime.} (Insert something they love other than whatever they’re known for and actually connect with them!) Anyways, I look forward to hearing back from you soon.

Adam (Head of Cool Marketing Outreach for {Insert Company Name})

After you do this track the emails (with a tool like Snovio email tracker) so you know when they were opened.

I also include a quick overview in bullets about what’s in the video.

• What you have to offer

• How it benefits them

• How to get in touch immediately (Calendar link, FB link etc)

If they have opened but not responded in 3 days send them a quick follow up asking if they got a chance to see the video and what they thought.

Side note: Make sure you make the first email to them about them. Not about you. I mention myself less than 2 times in the first email to them. They care what you can do for them. Make it known!

From there if they still haven’t responded I will do mass outreach via DM across all their social media accounts.

So here is my quick and dirty campaign setup checklist.

• Objective/Goal Of The Campaign

• Type Of Campaign Needed

• Budget

• Communication with Influencers

• Figure out what you’re going to promote

• Figure out the content that’s going to be posted and promoted. Videos, photos, etc.

• Set up posting times with the influencers and your team

• Make sure your links and coupon codes are operational

From there all you have left is to coordinate everything and launch your campaign!

If you need any help feel free to sign up for the Influencer Marketing Mastery Masterclass I’m hosting at the end of June and/or the joint webinar with LandingCube in July (for info below).

In Summary

In this post about influencer marketing for Amazon sellers, we started with the context of the Mindset to Profitability- patience and positivity. We also discussed how to find where the majority of your (niches) content is being posted, where your audience buys, what’s the best way to pay out your influencer, how to build your Ideal Influencers profile, how to search for them and finally reaching out to them.

Free Checklist:

Also, if you want a completely free influencer marketing checklist so you don’t make any beginner mistakes you can download it here. Adam doesn’t even require you to put in your email. It’s seriously free. Download it here