From ideas to impact: How to make your influencer spend go the extra mile

According to a 2024 study by Partipost, 67% of marketers said they would be increasing their investment in influencer marketing this year. Out of the marketers who are increasing their investment in influencer marketing, 23% have dedicated nearly half of their total budget to it, said Partipost. This comes as more brands turn to influencer marketing to stand out from the clutter of products and platforms out there.

Partipost has attributed the surge in spend to the evolving consumer landscape, where today's consumers crave authenticity, a personalised touch, and narratives that resonate with their personal experiences and aspirations.

Yet, while influencer marketing certainly drives discoverability, when it comes to purchasing, many consumers still turn back to their tried and tested routes of buying through established eCommerce platforms.

In fact, a recent study conducted by Shopee and Kantar found that despite exploring alternative channels for product research and discovery, a majority (73%) of Gen Z respondents completed their purchases on eCommerce platforms.

Notably, 56% of those who initially engage with social commerce platforms for research prefer returning to eCommerce platforms to complete their transactions. The preference for eCommerce stems from several key factors, including the wide selection of products (79%), good product quality (77%), and convenient payment methods (59%).

Bridging the gap between influencers and eCommerce

Looking to reduce the friction of moving consumers from social media channels to eCommerce platforms, Shopee has introduced a seamless way for sellers to adopt influencer marketing through its affiliate marketing solution (AMS).

Currently, Shopee’s extensive affiliate network has over 12 millions affiliate partners across Southeast Asia. Coming from different backgrounds and expertise, these key opinion leaders (KOLs) can support sellers and brand partners in their influencer marketing efforts.

Variety, however, is only part of the solution. Peggy Zhu, head of brand growth and marketing at Shopee, said: “Many brands and sellers on Shopee recognise the benefits of engaging influencers and are eager to invest in it. Yet, influencer marketing can be challenging for some, especially when selecting the most appropriate KOLs for their category in their local markets while generating strong returns on their investment.”

Shopee makes it easy for sellers to choose the right KOLs, allowing them to browse through its affiliate network by filtering through details such as performance (via sales volume and value, growth rate of KOL, and viewership and engagement stats), social media channels, and the number of followers on these channels.

Brands can also work with multiple affiliates in one go to run co-ordinated and more relatable campaigns in the markets they are in across the region.

L’Oréal Paris

One brand that has found success by working with multiple KOLs on Shopee’s AMS is L’Oréal Paris, which it used to promote its hero beauty products in Vietnam. L’Oréal Paris tapped on a large pool of KOLs from Shopee’s AMS network to extend its reach via creative and high-quality content, including vivid product demonstrations and try-ons. This generated interest among potential buyers within L’Oréal Paris’ target consumers and navigated them towards the product detail pages on Shopee.

New buyers contributed to more than half of all AMS orders, with AMS contributing to a higher proportion (1.6X) of shop orders compared to the market average.

OnePlus

Over in Malaysia, OnePlus utilised Shopee’s AMS as part of its influencer marketing activation to build hype around the launch of its Nord CE 2 Lite 5G in Malaysia. The brand engaged six different KOLs across nano, micro, and macro tiers from the Shopee affiliates network, who were known to be knowledgeable in the electronics category and perceived as authentic.

Working with multiple KOLs of various followings also allowed the brand to optimise cost without compromising on performance. Each then produced separate pieces of high-quality content on how they integrated the device into their lifestyles based on its USPs of camera quality and battery life.

Uniquely, the CTA of these posts were to encourage viewers to join the KOLs at an in-person product launch, showing how AMS can be used to engage consumers throughout the online-to-offline spectrum. The campaign saw over 423,000 impressions, and 54,000 engagements.

INBEX

Meanwhile, INBEX, an Indonesian seller that specialises in professional studio equipment such as tripods, LED lights, and live-streaming kits, tapped on Shopee’s AMS to promote one of its hero products through a pay-per-post campaign.

Through the affiliate marketplace, INBEX gleaned KOL insights, including the product categories where they were most successful in achieving sales, and their popularity by gender-split, and found the best fitting ones on the network to work with.

INBEX provided the KOLs with detailed descriptions of their USPs, enabling them to create engaging content that best demonstrated a product’s features. These were also complemented with a direct call-to-action for viewers to visit INBEX’s Shopee page. The campaign saw over 66,300 video views and 1,200 likes.

Another brand that has found success with Shopee’s AMS is Zenyum. As a brand with a strong foundation in eCommerce, it explored leveraging an open campaign in Singapore where affiliates on our network were invited to partner with it on a pay-per-post basis.

Through these engagements, Zenyum not only saw an increase in sales contributed by AMS, but was also able to track the take-up rates of KOLs and the number of items sold to determine the best performing and most popular items among shoppers.

“These demonstrate how sellers of all sizes can adopt influencer marketing strategies to engage with different audiences in their markets, and tailor efforts by their product categories,” Zhu said.

“We will also be further enhancing our affiliate marketing solutions to introduce new advanced tools and more data insights to help sellers and brands collaborate with KOLs more seamlessly and achieve greater eCommerce success on Shopee.”

While influencer marketing plays a key role in driving discoverability, sellers can achieve greater success by employing our affiliate tools in tandem to reach shoppers on coupon and cashback platforms as well as content publishers.

“There are multiple touch-points along the customer journey through which brands and sellers can engage with potential consumers and spur conversion. Shopee’s affiliate marketing solutions covers all the bases, helping our partners capture these opportunities seamlessly,” Zhu added.

At the end of the day, as consumers get more discerning about their choices, it is important that sellers sell on reputable and trusted platforms so they can give their consumers the ease and security they are seeking.

It is also critical that sellers are working to drive their consumers from external channels such as social media to eCommerce platforms through reliable and relatable KOLs in order to drive sales and build trust.

This means that brands and merchants, no matter the size, need to form lasting bonds through positive experiences with their consumers to ensure long-lasting success.

This article was written in collaboration with Shopee.