It's no coincidence that as we increase our ability to measure results in our marketing efforts, marketing's impact on revenue has come under increasing scrutiny. Closing the gap between that first impression to the sale is a high goal for most fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands. However, brands face more competition than ever, both online and offline.
Influencer marketing has become a trusted tool in many marketers' toolkits for many reasons, but one of those reasons is that it strengthens the bond between the product and the consumer due to improved reach and trust. And a typical ROI for influencer marketing is around €5 for every €1 spent, making it a worthwhile investment.
But how can you boost your sales with influencer marketing? We asked our influencer marketing experts to weigh in on why and how influencer marketing can boost sales for FMCG brands.
We uncovered these trends:
Read on for more tips on generating more sales through influencer marketing!
Influencers enjoy a higher level of trust among their followers than company websites or company social media channels. This comes through authentic content and real engagement that is quite simply harder for brands to pull off successfully.
A big part of selling is also creating trust in your product. Whether that’s how it looks, how it works, or anything else, honest reviews from influencers will do a ton to drive sales for your brand. And it’s easier than ever now to get started with influencer marketing.
When you're approaching influencers with the goal of increasing sales, keep a close eye on their engagement rates from previous collaborations. High engagement rates shows the audience takes the time to like, share, click on links, or otherwise interact with the influencer, which is a positive sign that their content resonates with their audience.
While influencer marketing platforms simplify a lot of the process, sometimes you still need that extra help to boost your campaign. Make sure you check whether or not you also get a dedicated customer success manager to help you create a campaign on your platform of choice! They’ll help you boost your campaign sales through:
Influencer marketing is a great option for more “traditional” ways of marketing and advertising - TikTok is a great example! People get more easily influenced by genuine product reviews, different hacks, and more. This gives visibility and engagement among both the influencers and your brand.
Generating sales is a key goal for multiple influencer campaigns. However, to continue growing in influencer marketing, you need to show results.
They wanted to drive awareness of the Luhta Sportswear stores and drive more foot traffic there, so they invested in influencer marketing, especially to reach a younger demographic.
“Boksi has created a lot of positive discussions internally because we can easily show the results of our campaigns. And because of that transparency, that’s one of the reasons why we plan to invest more into influencer marketing - it’s efficient, and it works," says Kia Luhtanen, Marketing Director at Luhta Sportswear Company.
“We’ve reached a younger target audience in more digital channels thanks to our influencer campaigns hosted through Boksi. As well, Luhta’s brands are more visible than ever to this vital demographic.”
Tracking actual signups or sales is essential to great campaigns, and easier than you think. There are multiple tools with which you can provide personalized codes or links to influencers. Your chosen influencers can then share your links on their own profiles and content, and you can track the traffic and sales generated directly.
This allows you to a) find the highest performing influencers, and b) the highest performing content. Once you know both, you can reuse the content in social ads, and start a partnership with the best influencers, which will build more trust with their audience and drive more sales.
There are two factors that you need to drive influencer sales: volume and product availability.
I want to emphasize a point often neglected in the FMCG environment and take a giant step back to the basics: consumer needs. FMCG brands grow by being easily purchasable, and that happens by:
Physically available is just that - consumers can get their hands on your product, preferably as easily as possible. Mental availability implies that you have established, at the very least, a minimal bond between your brand and your desired consumer. The consumer may not necessarily love your brand, but thanks to your marketing efforts, you have either created or strengthened the bond between your brand and the consumer.
So why does this matter in FMCG and influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is an effective way to reach new customers, and it's a much more effective sales strategy than convincing loyal customers to buy more. There are far more people who don't yet buy your brand, but often the focus remains on the consumers who already love the brand. Arguably, this is a mistake in a sales context, and influencer marketing can grow both your mental availability while also supporting your product’s physically availability through discount codes and the like.
Once you have that availability established, you can improve it through strategic use of multiple influencers to generate more volume.
Converting targeted followers to customers is hard to predict. That’s why using multiple influencers with the correct followers significantly reduces the risk of your marketing investment. Volume is the key word here - using an influencer marketing platform enables you to reach out to and manage multiple influencers for your campaigns, ensuring a high enough volume. Without volume, it’s also extremely difficult to analyze campaign results and learn what works for the next campaign. Volume is the key to effective campaigns, and that starts by simplifying the campaign management and influencer outreach.
Traditional marketing methods performed just fine until social media shattered the media landscape into many small pieces. Nevertheless, the basic idea still exists and works in the new media landscape.
Influencer marketing platforms like Boksi are essential to any campaign nowadays. The main reason is that data is not an additional plus, it’s the default. Basing your influencer marketing on data is THE way to run effective campaigns and generate sales.
However, while marketers hear every day that they need more data, rarely are there discussions on how to use the data and how to understand it. More data brings more problems if you aren't prepared for it. Luckily, good influencer marketing platforms solve this by automatically collecting detailed influencer data and creating a comprehensive report post-campaign, so you get exactly what you need, when you need it.
By the way, our automated data-based influencer marketing makes it more cost-effective compared to in-house influencer marketing, by saving your valuable time. You also end up saving money by picking the perfect influencers and their match-made-in-heaven audiences and not make the wrong choices based on gut feeling. (P.S. Boksi’s clients have been proven to have lower CPS).
Influencer marketing platforms are essential for any FMCG brand. Time is money, and these platforms help FMCG brands save time all the way from campaign planning (defining goals, setting budgets, and creating strategies) to execution. Influencer marketing platforms also allow brands to choose influencers by the best brand match, but also by performance data.
By reducing your time spent on manual tasks, you can focus more on the creative (and fun!) part of cooperating with influencers, coming up with the best ways to drive the best results together. And by analyzing your results later with robust dashboards, you can continually improve your processes and generate more ROI.
Influencer marketing is a powerful addition to your marketing mix, helping you build strong relationships with customers, increase sales, and gain virality online. However, to make the most of it, you need a platform to minimize the manual work.
Boksi provides leading FMCG brands with a deep network of relevant influencers, detailed reporting to prove results post-campaign, and handles all of the boring tasks like contracting, payments, and finding influencers.
We'd love to give you a complete breakdown of our platform - book a demo with us here and we'll help you start your 2024 with a bang!