Influencer marketing for an ecom brand (on a shoestring budget)

[Hassassin]

HOW DO WE TAKE OVER THE FrACKING WORLD?

Ahem. I mean: What catapults a brand to the front of the pack and distinguishes it from competitors?

That question has been sending me down a loong rabbit hole as I put together our flagship ecommerce product.

And it’s a tough one to answer.

Partial answer: It boils down to the precious first impression with a new product + it’s ability to live up to a good reputation.

You’ve felt how powerful this can be.

Especially if you’ve ever unboxed an Apple Mac (or any well-packaged premium product).

I still remember unboxing my first Mac…

Peeling the outer plastic wrapping triggers a growing sense of anticipation.

You slowly lift the top layer of the box off--which takes like 7 full seconds--and then, gently remove each meticulously placed item from its packaging.

It’s an experience (there’s even ASMR channels dedicated to unpacking tech products).

And that experience is exactly what I’ve been working on reverse-engineering for our first flagship product.

How I’m reverse-engineering Apple’s product packaging for my nefarious gains ‍

We’re positioning our flagship product as a special type of all-in-one “kit.”

We’ve sourced our initial items for the kit…

Selected our color combinations for the product…

And decided how we want the box to open (magnetic strip with a ribbon). Last piece of le puzzle?

Figuring out the optimal way to package multiple items in way that balances three important goals:

1): Gives a premium, polished, and high-end feel

2): Is cost-effective and actually keeps the items secure

3): Encourages consumers to keep and re-use the product & packaging. In fact, we’re betting on this for our early influencer marketing strategy

This has me exploring how different types of foam inserts impact a product’s image and “feel.”

Specifically, I’ve been rabidly researching and speaking to manufacturers about: Ethylene-Vinyl Acetate (EVA) foam vs. Expanded Polyethylene (EPE) vs. Sponge foam. Ya know, the fun stuff…

TLDR: Acoustic foam is the current choice. It’s cost-effective, does a great job of “holding” the product, and gives a strong visual appeal.

While researching I stumbled on a paper sharing how product packaging drives consumer buying decisions. And it came in clutch!

It confirmed my hunches around this topic. Mainly that:

• Your product is your packaging
• When catering to a female audience (our brand does), packaging plays an even bigger role
• Many consumers plan to re-use packaging. Which is good brand awareness for us!
• When it came to forming swaying consumer buying decisions, “color” was the biggest factor, followed by visuals, photographs, and icons
• It also helped me justify all the packaging I’m hoarding to my wife, who was NOT happy with my new obsession with packaging lol.

Influencer’s R us!


Influencer marketing is HOT right now. And you don’t need the IQ of a Rick and Morty fan to know why…

In such a crowded world, why go through the pain of building an audience from scratch when you can leverage someone else's?

If you my previous ecommerce journey update, you’d know that we’re betting heavily on influencer marketing for initial GTM traction and sales.

Mainly because the brand is:

• Literally starting from scratch and has no audience
• We’re in the world of ecom/fashion, and influencers reign supreme. They drive consumer trends and taste

(Note: I just finished reading the story of how Nike’s founder, Phil Knight, built the billion dollar behemoth brand from scratch and it’s a riveting story—that involved a lot of “influencer marketing.”)

Influencer marketing: my template and favorite resources

Here are some resources that I’m finding extremely helpful as I flesh out the influencer marketing strategy:

Modash: An influencer marketing search engine and campaign management platform. The tool came in clutch for finding niche and nano influencers. I’m narrowing influencers by gender, interests, engagement rate, and more.

You’re limited to viewing the specific details of 20 influencers. But I just created multiple accounts to work around it. #thinkoutsidethebox #startup #brokeytechstack.

ChatGPT: To take all those usernames I copied and list their account URLs into a spreadsheet.

I spent HOURS trying to be create a crafty workaround with APIs in Google Sheets to scrape Instagram follower counts. I failed miserably…

And lost a few precious hours because I lack the technical prowess do that. I guess I’m not as smart as a Rick and Morty fan *cries in single-digit-IQ* .

In the end, I rolled my sleeves up got my hands dirty with some manual data entry—and the support of good o’le drill music.

Next steps:
1. Separate influencers into tiers based on follower count:

• Micro: 1k-10k
• Mid: 10k-100,000
• Large: 100k-500,000k

2. Create offers for each of these tiers. We’ll pay mid-large tiers. And offer free products to Micro influencers in exchange for promoting our products.

3. Start reaching out and picking the top 50 influencers across Instagram and TikTok.

I think it’s wise to focus on a few cities and influencers in similar networks to create a “viral effect.” But that’s all theory right now. Let's see how this goes. My target budget is between 1k-2k (including product retail value + payments to influencers).

Interested in using the same custom sheet I’ve built for tracking influencer marketing? I'm sharing the Google Sheet I've been using here which may save you time (although I'm not a "guru" or "expert" in this domain. Just a guy doing stuff lol).

Side note: While I work on this, my wife is also slowly making connections with the local community and is planning to host a local free workshop for women who just want to have fun and learn stuff related to our product. We'll see how this goes and iterate from there.

Curious: What would you guys experienced in influencer marketing/ecomm do different?

 

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