OUR THINKING

Clickthrough rate (CTR)

Clicks ÷ impressions = CTR

The number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times that your ad is shown. It’s important because it tells you what messaging is resonating with the target audience.

Conversion rate (CVR)

Sales ÷ total number of ad clicks = CVR

The average number of conversions per ad interaction. It’s helpful in comparing the performance of different advertising channels.
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Cost per acquisition (CPA)

Total advertising cost ÷ number of new customers = CPA

The total cost to acquire a single customer. This is vital to make sure that your cost to acquire new customers is less than the revenue generated from each one,

Marketing efficiency ratio (MER)

Revenue ÷ total spend

Total sales revenue divided by total marketing spend. This will help you make future planning decisions about marketing spend.

Return on marketing investment (ROMI)

[((number of leads x lead-to-customer rate x average sales price) - cost or ad spend) ÷ cost or ad spend] x 100

The return on the total investment in your marketing efforts. Ensures your budget is working as hard as it can to generate revenue for your business.
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Average order value (AOV)

Total revenue ÷ number of orders‍

This metric will guide your marketing and pricing strategies.

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And finally, the most important metric you need to drive campaign profitability…

Return on advertising spend (ROAS)

Revenue from advertising ÷ cost of advertising‍

Measures the revenue that's generated compared to every dollar of an advertising campaign. 

ROAS only considers direct ad spend, and not any of the other costs associated with your online campaign such as creative, agency fees and so on. As a result you’ll often hear people say “this metric isn’t important because it doesn’t give the whole picture” And that’s true, it doesn’t give the whole picture, and you do need to do work in the background to understand what ROAS allows you to make a profit. But let us explain why ROAS is still absolutely critical to use.

Target ROAS or “tROAS” stands for “target return on ad spend” and falls under Google's category of Smart Bidding strategies. Using Target ROAS as your bidding strategy means the algorithm will adjust bids to maximize the total value of the conversions in your Ad campaigns.

Simply speaking, you need to care about ROAS because the advertising algorithm cares about ROAS and that’s what feeds its decision making.

Now go and have a glass of wine!

Are you eager to foster brand loyalty, increase awareness, and meet your marketing goals with ease? You’re in luck because influencer marketing may be the answer you’ve been searching for. In fact, 62% of marketers have seen a boost in sales after collaborating with influencers on campaigns.

Influencers hold significant power in marketing, providing brand awareness and long-term sales opportunities to millions of online users. Nearly half of all consumers depend on at least one influencer for purchasing decisions, while 90% of marketers consider it a high ROI channel.

But where to start?
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How to build an influencer network

Set clear goals

Whether it's attracting new audiences, improving SEO, boosting brand awareness, promoting a new launch, or increasing sales, having a clear vision is essential.
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Define your ideal influencers

The influencers you select should share your brand values, have a following that aligns with your target audience, maintain a good engagement rate, and create quality content regularly.
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Cold outreach

Making a connection with influencers can be a great way to build your brand. If you come across an influencer who shares your values, don't be shy to reach out and say hello. A friendly invitation to collaborate might be just the thing to spark their interest.
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Add an influencer application form to your site

By flipping the scales, you can easily filter and select partners that align with your goals. Not only will it save you time, but it's also a great way to foster meaningful connections with influencers.
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Dip into Shopify collabs

Shopify Collabs has a massive creator marketplace where brands can choose from millions of creators to collaborate with.

E-commerce brands can easily partner with niche creators and get more eyes on their business, while Collabs takes care of all the nitty-gritty details like partnership management and performance tracking.
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Consider micro-influencers

Micro-influencers usually have a smaller following with niched content and can give brands a cost-effective and credible edge.

These influencers tend to be more authentic and representative of the audience they are trying to reach, which can lead to a better ROI in influencer marketing.
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Influencer seeding

The question usually is, how do I turn an influencer—who’s never heard of me and doesn’t have my product—into an actual brand advocate? By letting the product speak for itself through influencer seeding.

Influencer seeding is the practice of sending free products to influencers, allowing them to experience your brand and potentially become advocates. This can help drive growth for your Shopify ecommerce site.
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Tips for building relationships

Outreach: Start with a brief introduction, followed by a concise statement about your brand, explain why you are reaching out to them, use “no strings attached”, and end with a clear call-to-action.

Send Product: Add a personal touch, such as a handwritten note from the founder or owner. We recommend using the Influencer Seeding App, which is available on the Shopify store. This app simplifies the task of creating multiple orders at once, instead of doing them individually.

Track Posts: Use tools like MightyScout or Archive to see who posted, the organic performance of that content, and to download the content.

Follow Up: Follow up for content rights with the influencers who posted.‍

Reformat & Caption: Once you have rights, reformat the content to suit the ad scale and caption it for all ad placements.‍

Implement Content into your Ad Account: Keep influencer content as native to the feed as possible. After assessing performance, you can create repetitions later.‍

Run Ads: Run ads through whatever campaign method suits your budget and evaluate the results.‍

Analyse, & Start Over: Analyse who is posting and what content is working. Then start over!
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Bring influencers and paid ads together with whitelisting

What’s whitelisting?

Whitelisting on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok is when an influencer gives a brand access to their accounts in order to have control over ad placements. Once whitelisted, a brand can use the influencer account to publish new content or boost content the influencer has already posted.

Brands can manage the content their target audience sees, using dark posts.
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What’s dark posting?

A dark post is an unpublished social post promoted as an ad to a specific audience. That audience fits criteria that you have specified for the campaign. It cannot be found organically and does not appear on the influencers page or feed. To the end user these dark posts look like sponsored content from influencer handles that show up as Facebook ads or Instagram ads.
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What types of influencers should you whitelist?

‍✔️ One that closely represent your brand
✔️ Have a business profile, creator account, or a verified account on Instagram
✔️ Create content that’s unique, engaging and natural
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What about measuring ROI?

All paid ads run through Ads Manager so you can measure impressions, clicks and conversions. Add UTM parameters to all call-to-action buttons and IG story swipe-ups in dark posts so that you also have full funnel visibility in Google Analytics along with conversion tracking.

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Additional ways to drive sales through influencer marketing

Get influencers to review your products 

Over 60% of consumers trust influencers’ opinions, making it twice as effective as branded content. Influencers also help consumers vet new brands and products.
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Give exclusive discount codes to influencers 

97% of people look for deals when shopping for new products, making discount codes an effective way to drive traffic and sales to your website.
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‍Run a contest or giveaway with influencers ‍

Contests are a proven strategy that helps influencers build engagement with their followers, and promotes brand awareness by putting products in the hands of interested consumers. 
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Ask influencers to use your branded hashtag ‍

Branded hashtags are a simple way to increase your brand's social media presence and maintain visibility among your target audience. We recommend a campaign-specific hashtag for any social media campaigns.
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Run a social media takeover with an influencer ‍

A takeover is a unique and engaging strategy that provides your audience with a fresh perspective and an opportunity to connect with your brand.
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Have influencers curate gift guides during the holidays

Gift guides are a reliable way to provide quality gift options for those who procrastinate their holiday shopping.
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Make unboxing videos with influencers

Unboxing is an effective way to showcase your products from multiple angles and help undecided consumers make a purchase.

Your team is capable of more.

They’re capable of finding opportunities.

They’re capable to solve problems.

They’re capable of creating meaning.

They’re capable of educating themselves.

They’re capable of being educated.

And before you look at your team and find them lacking, ask yourself this:

“What am I doing as a leader that may be creating a roadblock for my team to achieve all they are capable of?”

“What could I do differently to create an environment that gives people the clarity, focus, and resources they need to achieve all they are capable of?”

And no, I don’t mean just, “Believe in them and give them more responsibility”.

Responsibility without structure and the tools for their success isn’t empowerment.

It’s obstruction.

Responsibility without clear goals and measures isn’t freeing.

It’s confusing.

Don’t get me wrong, none of this means there won’t be bad hires.

Or that you’ll be immune from your best people leaving, even when they are genuinely happy.

But it does mean that while good people are with you, they’ll be capable of their best work.

And both they, and you, can feel deeply proud of what they accomplish.

Lessons from a fellow business owner

When the term "influencer marketing" comes up, you may immediately think of celebrities. But we're not referring to high-profile creators like the Kardashians. Instead, the upcoming trend in impactful content is being driven by smaller content creators, commonly referred to as micro-influencers.

Micro-influencers are social media promoters who have a smaller following of typically thousands to tens of thousands of followers.

They’re often seen as ordinary people (as opposed to inaccessible celebrities), so tend to earn greater trust from their followers when expressing their viewpoints and offering suggestions.

So what are the reasons for partnering with a micro-influencer despite their small size?

It's worth noting that 77% of brand partnerships are actually with micro-influencers. This is because there are numerous advantages to collaborating with them, such as:
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Engagement

48% of brands prioritise a creator's relationship with their target audience as the key factor for successful influencer engagement. Micro-influencers, who have a smaller audience, excel in one-on-one engagement and currently earn the highest engagement rate of any creator type.
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Trust

Micro-influencers may not have a large number of followers, but their audience views them as authentic, sincere, and reliable. This is reflected in the fact that 70% of teenagers trust content created by micro-influencers more than celebrity endorsements.
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Affordability

Micro-influencers are a cost-effective option as they usually charge less than big-name creators, averaging $100-$500. They offer greater return on investment for a lower budget, and some may even work for products instead of payment.

Brands can partner with multiple micro-influencers at this lower rate to expand their target audience.

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It may be tempting to focus solely on an influencer's number of followers to gauge whether they’re right for your brand, but it's important to keep in mind that genuine influence lies in engagement metrics such as clicks, subscriptions, and purchases.

Smart performance campaign

TikTok is the latest ad platform after both Google and Facebook to launch a machine learning driven advertising campaign option. The team are saying it's able to outperform their older advertising options by 40%!

Understanding how to guide the machine for these new campaign types is what will become the next big skillset for brands and marketers to understand.

Why does it matter?

New campaign types like this make it more affordable to test advertising. The advantage of getting on an ad platform that is relatively new (like TikTok's) is ad space is still cheaper. Don't expect to pay the same for a click on TikTok in two years that you'll pay today.

This is very much part of TikTok's bid to get access to the small business market across all established economies, while it continues to ramp its media dollars.
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In-app commerce feature

Now available in Australia, TikTok's new ecommerce feature allows users to make purchases directly through the app.

If haven’t already got a TikTok account, now is a great time to set one up. If you’ve already got a TikTok account, as soon as it launches, put aside time to get your store set up and test out how it converts.

Did you know that 75% of clicks go to the top three results on a search engine results page?

That prized position is a key ingredient for generating sustained website traffic for your online store.

SEO can seem scary, but there are some simple things YOU can do TODAY to maximise your website traffic.
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Write titles that match search intent

The meta title is the blue line of text that search engines show on their results page for particular search queries.

Titles are often the primary factor in a user's decision to click on a search result, making it essential to use them effectively.
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Write compelling meta descriptions

A meta description acts as a summary of a page’s content, with the intent of engaging and captivating users.

It functions as a sales pitch that persuades the user that the page satisfies their search intent.
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Add internal links to and from important pages

Internal links are crucial in boosting the search engine ranking of web pages. This is mostly due to Google's metric, PageRank, which evaluates a page's importance based on the number and quality of pages that link to it.
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Include variations of long-tail keywords on your pages

A long-tail keyword is a detailed search phrase consisting of three or more words. They’re easier to rank for and usually get clicks from search engines at a much higher rate than shorter, more generic terms.

It’s important to include some long-tail keywords in your SEO strategy to help increase potential ranking opportunities and ultimately boost our traffic.
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Stand out with rich snippets

Rich snippets are search listings that include information about a product’s price, availability, and review count, and can increase the number of people that click on your page by up to 30%.

They’re a powerful tool that can usually be implemented relatively painlessly.
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Need expert advice on your store’s SEO? Reach out to us.