Instagram Influencer Marketing in 2018
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By DMITRY BILCHENKO
Instagram Influencers for Drop Shippers
So many desperate people tend to quit drop shipping after spending a lot of money and not getting the desired results with Facebook ads.
And it’s not surprising, as Facebook ads over the last year or so has become extremely competitive and expensive.
Does that mean that for those who are just starting out and do not have big advertising budgets the game is over…?
Not really, there is always hope.
The topic of Instagram Influencers in e-commerce communities gets more and more popular every month.
Some of the beginners who were almost ready to give up and quit, eventually took off from the ground and started hitting those sales. All thanks for influencers.
So, the main question – is it really that cost efficient and easy to make money from Influencers? Let’s dive in and try to figure it out by ourselves.
Real Influencers vs Fan Pages
First of all, let’s make sure everyone understands what is it the difference between real influencers and generic profiles.
On Instagram there are 2 types of influencers that you can work with.
First – public figure profile representing the real people or brands (let’s call it “The Real Slim Shady”)
The second type of Influencers are Fan Pages, that are led by simple mortals and usually do not have such a big following and influence (and quite often are spammy, so be aware).
This is just an example to show you the difference between these two types of influencers you can contact to promote, and to be honest, I think that this is not the best example.
Why? Because celebrities with such a high influence as Eminem will has nothing to do with your business or you will just have not enough budget for that.
But just to point out, if you take look at the link is his bio, you will see that Eminem as well has his own Shopify store where he is selling his branded merchandise.
So, what should you be looking for in order to actually start getting sales from Instagram? Well, from my experience I can suggest you to start with fan pages instead of reaching out for real influencers. First of all, they are really cheap comparing to influencers.
The average price per post usually starts with $10 for profiles with 10k+ subscribers and depending on size may vary until $300 or so for profiles with millions of subscribers.
Meanwhile, the price of the real influencers (with let’s say 10k+ subscribers) will usually cost you from $500 to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.
And what’s interesting is that in the majority of cases the quality doesn’t beat the quantity – if influencers are charging big money it does not mean that you will even get your money back.
Yes, their authority may boost your branding and give you some trust, but it will cost you a lot and will not necessarily bring you a positive return on investment.
Proven Strategy to Make Sales
Alright, so now as you’ve become familiar with the main terms, let me show you the proven strategy that I’ve been successfully using for more than a year. By using it I have made the good majority of the sales for my Shopify Drop Shipping stores.
All you need to have is an active Instagram profile, a text document to write down the information (I prefer to use Google Spreadsheets) and a little bit of patience.
Step One – Niche Research
Let’s assume that you’ve already chosen your niche and have the product that you’re willing to promote.
Now, what you have to do is become acquainted with everyone in your niche, so that you will know who are the influencers that may promote you, what are the prices, how big is your niche on Instagram and what are your competitors doing.