What separates successful e-commerce businesses from those that are not successful is marketing. The competition is fierce, and no matter how great your products are, there will always be someone out there selling similar things, and you need to make sure you stand out.

But if you’re worried you need to invest enormous sums of money in your marketing strategy to make it work, you’re mistaken. All you need is some time, thought, and persistence, and you’ll notice the results in no time.

Here are some low-budget marketing ideas to help your e-commerce business soar.

Optimize Your Site for SEO

Your website is the most important part of your e-commerce business, and if it’s not perfect, you can invest in the most genius marketing plan ever, and it won’t work. Your site needs to function properly and be optimized for the search engine.

Before you start focusing on keyword research, link building, and other SEO-boosting techniques, you need to invest in a technical SEO audit for the website. This type of technical review will expose any not immediately visible problems that may be hindering your performance in the search results.

Once you have this base work done, you can build on it from there. If you skip this part, any subsequent efforts will feel like building a house on a rotting foundation.

Build Your Brand Through Social Media

Building a strong social media presence doesn’t have to cost a thing, and it can be a great marketing tactic to increase your sales. In fact, 89% of consumerswho follow a brand on social media will at some point buy a product from it.

There are many ways to build your brand image through social media channels. It’s best to focus on one or two so that you can dedicate enough time to each of your accounts. You should post relevant content regularly, and this can be a combo of promotional, entertaining, and informative content.

You can also encourage user-generated content by asking questions, using hashtags, running contests, etc. This way, you connect with the audience, create a buzz around your brand, and get customers to promote your products for free.

Stay Relevant With Quality Content

As an e-commerce business, you have limitless potential for creating quality content. Great content can put you on the map, make you an authority figure in your niche, attract a large following, and encourage people to purchase your products.

You can use your products as inspiration for your content. Apart from blog posts, you can also do short and fun videos on creative ways to use your products, for example. You can then post this on your social media accounts as well.

Each product you have on offer has a story, so think about how you can make it more interesting and appealing to prospects. For example, if you sell scarves, you may write a blog or create a video tutorial on the ways you can use a scarf to style various kinds of outfits.

Use Good Old Email Marketing

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to stay in touch with your existing customer base and reach new prospective buyers. It’s also one of the cheapest. You just have to capture their attention and get them to subscribe. You can do so by offering useful newsletters and using large CTA buttons they can’t miss.

Once you have their contact, you can automate many great marketing campaigns, such as leveraging buyer intent to remind them of the products they’re interested in, sending custom birthday offers, and similar.

Just make sure that whatever you send will genuinely spark interest because if you start spamming, they won’t hesitate to unsubscribe.

Put Your Best Testimonials Forward

Buying something online is quite a different experience from making a purchase in person. That’s because you don’t really know what you’ll get until it arrives. That’s why happy customer reviews are your best bet at attracting new buyers.

A staggering 95% of people read online reviews before they decide to buy a product. You need to show them that your items are top-notch by displaying customer testimonials on the website. Otherwise, they may not trust you enough to make a purchase, especially if you sell expensive products.

You can also encourage customers to post photos of the products they bought so that those who are interested can see these items look just like in the product photos.

Make Help Available Round the Clock

Hiring support agents and making them available 24/7 can be expensive, but being available round the clock could boost your sales significantly. However, you don’t need live agents if you get a conversational AI-based chatbot. These bots are a one-time investment, but they’re at your customers’ disposal at all times and can cater to them all instantly.

An AI bot can assist people while shopping, answer questions across different channels (website and social media), and even recommend products that repeat customers would like based on their previous purchases.

It’s a cost-efficient solution to providing the best possible customer support. What’s more, as you scale your business, you don’t need to invest in more agents because a chatbot can assist as many people as necessary.

Advertise the Right Products

If you want to use paid ads on a budget, you need to make sure you advertise the right products. Take a look at what’s trending right now and which of your products are the most sought after among your existing customers. You want to focus on them because they are the most likely to attract potential buyers.

You should also go for affordable, inexpensive items over expensive things because people are more likely to buy them immediately. If you have heavily discounted products, put them forward as well and make sure you emphasize how much money they can save by buying the discounted item.

This way, you’ll get the most out of your paid ads and won’t have to spend more money on advertising.

As you can see, you don’t need to waste money on expensive marketing techniques if you follow these tips.

This guest post was written by Michael who has been working in marketing for almost a decade and has worked with a huge range of clients, which has made him knowledgeable on many different subjects. He has recently rediscovered a passion for writing and hopes to make it a daily habit. You can read more of Michael’s work at Qeedle.

As TikTok rose to be the ultimate marketing powerhouse, finding the right TikTok influencer agency has become an essential component of your marketing strategy. With influencer marketing success at an all-time high, TikTok legitimately became the go-to platform to generate online engagement and leverage viewership that increase overall marketing reach. From startups to large-scale companies and brands, people use TikTok to create interest and grasp consumer attention. This article will give you everything you need to know about TikTok influencer agencies and why you should have one today.

What Is A TikTok Influencer Agency?

In case you didn’t know, the global influencer market more than doubled between 2019 and 2021 and grew from 6.5 billion to 13.8 billion dollars in just three years. This only means that the need for TikTok influencers will continue to grow even amidst this global pandemic. Because brands and companies want to maximize the potential of TikTok, many would choose to find a reputable influencer agency that can be vital in the success of an influencer marketing campaign.

An influencer marketing agency is an organization that facilitates and creates influencer marketing campaigns with brands and social media influencers. This type of agency excels at conceptualizing, tailoring, and optimizing campaigns for marketers and brands. They have the expertise in guiding brands towards the best practices and strategies to attain their marketing goals. Among the services offered are campaign construction, campaign optimization, contracts, content review, and more.

Influencer marketing agencies work with both influencers and brands that makes activating an influencer marketing campaign more efficient. Since these campaigns come in different shapes and sizes, influencer marketing agencies can employ various ways to leverage influencers’ online and offline engagement.

An influencer marketing agency maintains strong relationships with influencers and brands to create and then execute campaigns for optimal results for both parties. This enhances goodwill and strengthens the working relationship.

Why Should I Work With Influencers On TikTok

If you aren’t yet, you should be working with TikTok influencers because there’s no denying the power they have in how they can market commercial messages and share their value propositions with their followers. This is such an effective influence you can tap for your brand.

Did you know that TikTok’s average influencer engagement rate in the U.S. alone is 18%? If you collaborate with an influencer, you’ll have the opportunity to raise your brand awareness and build your credibility effectively. Influencers know how to deliver your message to a dedicated audience because they understand their followers deeply. They know what to post and when to post to get the full attention of their followers.

Collaborating with influencers is also a cost-effective marketing method while helping your brand get the traffic you need. Influencers can help get you the organic website to your social media pages and your website, improving your SEO ranking. Also, influencers help you generate potential high-quality leads and help you establish business connections.

Finally, since TikTok users trust influencers, hiring the right influencer for your campaign will help accomplish your goals.

Top Things To Look For When Choosing A TikTok Influencer Agency

When looking for a TikTok influencer agency, it’s essential to consider a few things before hiring one.

Cost Of Working With Influencers

Many Tiktok influencer agencies have lists of trusted influencers with whom they partner for their clients’ campaigns. But it’s important to know the pricing they’ve set for influencers in their roster.

Once you know of the agency’s rates, you can verify these numbers through a TikTok money calculator. This helpful tool calculates how much revenue a particular influencer might be able to pull in. This way, you’ll know if the pricing set by the agency is reasonable.

If you’re on a budget, it’s best to look for agencies that usually work with clients of your budget and size and one that specializes in your type of industry. You must choose an agency that’s aligned with your influencer marketing campaign needs and budget.

Is It TikTok Specific?

Before hiring an influencer agency, find out about their work processes and check if they’re TikTok specific. You can ask yourself some questions like:

• Does the agency work with influencers who gained fame on TikTok or from other platforms?
• Do they base their influencer matching process on TikTok analytics?
• Does the agency specialize in crafting marketing campaigns specifically for TikTok?

The agency you choose should have enterprise agility that’s willing to communicate how their processes are rooted in TikTok principles and best practices.

Who They Market Their Service Towards

Finally, before deciding which TikTok influencer agency to hire, do your research on what types of campaigns they’re experienced with. Have they achieved success in implementing popular influencer marketing strategies for their clients’ brands? Who do they market their services to? Which target audience did these campaigns have the most engagement with? Which niche have they done successful campaigns for?

An influencer agency will have a dominant client base: luxury brands, fashion brands, sustainable brands, lifestyle brands, sports brands, music brands, wellness brands, and more. Just be sure you’re choosing the agency that understands your specific niche and needs.

Top TikTok Influencer Agencies In 2021

More and more marketers are joining the bandwagon in finding a TikTok influencer agency that will meet their marketing goals. That’s because in-house execution is complex. Either you work with the wrong influencers, struggle to engage with them, or end up overspending for an influencer marketing campaign that doesn’t suit your goals. We put together a list of the top TikTok influencer agencies to make running your campaigns easier for you.

1. Socially Powerful

Socially Powerful is a global influencer marketing agency that offers a complete end-to-end agency service, one-off activations, or long-term influencer programs. They’ve partnered with big names across the USA, UK, Europe, China, UAE, and others through their global campaigns. Huawei, Hyundai, Toyota, The Body Shop, Doritos, Sensodyne, Timberland, and Evian are among their list of clients.

From influencer marketing, social strategy, social video, content distribution, community management, SEO, and web design, Socially Powerful promises to achieve outstanding ROI. Since they recognize that every brand and audience is unique, each social platform requires particular kinds of conversations to stand out. This is why they deliver social marketing campaigns across all platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, Podcasts, and more. Where there’s attention, they go.

2. Influencer Marketing Factory

Influencer Marketing Factory helps brands get in front of Gen Z and Millenials through out-of-the-box tactics that the founder, Alessandro Bogliari, learned as a growth hacker. Instead of pushing PPC campaigns, the Influencer Marketing Factory worked more on SEO, data scraping, partnerships, and other tactics used by SaaS businesses but rarely by Marketing agencies.

Their services include setting KPIs, defining the target audience, influencer identification, influencer contracting, content creation, and tracking results. Influencer Marketing Factory built its credibility through affiliate marketing, digital marketing, conversion optimization, content marketing, SEO, email marketing, social media marketing services, mobile and app marketing, and more. To date, Influencer Marketing Factory has worked with brands like Google, Facebook, Universal Music Group, Unilever, Amazon, Warner Music Group, Sony Music, UnitedHealth Group, Bud Light, Dunkin, BenQ, Chips Ahoy, Hilton, Hasbro, Pentel, Mountain Dew, Envato, Post-it, and more.

3. ClicksTalent

ClicksTalent is a TikTok influencer marketing agency that specializes in music and brand sponsorships. They are a “new age” talent agency that does things differently, capitalizing on building close and personal relationships with their clients and influencers.

ClicksTalent has been working with TikTok and TikTok influencers longer than other agencies and has gained leverage by partnering with apps – something that other agencies who work on TikTok alone don’t have.

With over 1,000 influencers from more than 40 countries, they offer companies the perfect combination of influencers and deliver high-quality, professional viral content. Clicks Talent has worked with social media platforms, record labels, brands, and apps. Among the most prominent names include TikTok, Hollywood Records, Columbia Records, Manscaped, Filmora, Atlantic Records, Dial, Sony Pictures, Match, Armada, and more.

4. Obviously

Obviously guides marketers through the process and tailor each campaign for business requirements. The unique campaigns and innovative marketing plans they design are personalized for your brand or company needs through a dedicated team, updated technology updates, and an extensive network of top influencers who are more than ready for the next project.

The platform Obviously uses evolves as influencer marketing advances. You can use this single platform to view all influencers in the network and monitor the content they produce for your brand or company. Brands they’ve partnered with include T-fal, Honest Beauty, Banana Phone, Free Fire, Ulta Beauty, and Lyft.

They transform your TikTok through end-to-end services that include creative strategy and ideation, influencer management, music composition and licensing, content creation, product seeding and sampling, viral hits, paid amplification, licensing and usage rights, and reporting and analytics.

5. The Influence Agency

The Influence Agency offers influencer marketing services, content strategy, video marketing, social media marketing, intelligent SEO, paid media strategies, web development, and web design. They’ve done projects with Sony, Ford, GMC, Chevrolet, Infinity, and more.

The Influence Agency prides itself as one of the top influencer marketing agencies in North America with a database of influencers from Canada and the US across 15 categories: athlete, beauty, cannabis, dads, fitness, gaming, interior design, mom, social activist, tech, automotive, business, celebrity, fashion, foodies, wellness, lifestyle, outdoor adventure, sustainability, and travel.

An exciting event that The Influence Agency has is The Influence Awards, an exclusive digital award that celebrates the creativity and work of content creators across the U.S. and Canada within multiple categories.

Ready To Make Your Decision?

The right TiTok influencer agency can provide complete services from campaign conception and execution to influencer recruitment and campaign tracking. These agencies can help you build good relationships with influencers through special events, which can work miracles if your brand is looking to partner with TikTok influencers for the long term.