$233 000 in 5 Months Using Instagram Influencers

Today we are sharing a case study from Zainab Zaitani, a dropshipper and eCommerce brand owner who was able to generate $233 000 in 5 months using Instagram influencer promotions.

We will walk you through her:

• Product discovery process
• Process of finding the right influencers to work with
• Contacting the influencers
• Profit and loss

Before going further, here are results from the Shopify dashboard:

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Let's dive into this article...

The Product
When it comes to the product research, she didn't go very far in this case. Zainab chose a product that she needed herself.  A dark circle removing cream, which was the "Eye Mask Patch".  

Finding the product supplier
To find the supplier on Ali express, Zainab searched for the eye mask patches and filtered them by the number of orders.

Through doing this, you can see there are a lot of orders for this kind of product and there are also many suppliers that have a decent number of orders.

Checking for Competitors
One way she checked for the competitors on the market is by typing the product name on Pinterest. Pinterest will show you pictures from eCommerce brands that have the same product and also the links to the sites.

For example, here there was a brand called roseland.com providing the same type of product that she was planning to sell. So, she checked the description, review, and more details to get inspiration for the website and images to use.

Building the Brand Website/ Online Store
For the brand’s store, Zainab hired some designers to do it. They used the structure of a mono-product store

The home page had an announcement saying, “We deliver during heart circumstances safely, have a nice shopping.” That sentence was first assuring and also friendly to the customer because when the store just started it was corona period.

The brand name, Zainab tried to combine the words "Dala" and "eyes" which relate to the product. Anyone would tell it’s about eyes and from within the beauty niche.

The website was very professional when it comes from branding the store to the use of color. Anyone interested in buying wouldn't have to know that it's a dropshipping website. Also, for influencers to understand that they are working with a proper brand, not just a regular dropshipping store.

Working with Influencers
When it comes to influencer search, she used a platform known as CloutHQ — a platform that helps businesses to find influencers.  You can search for the influencer you want, or the niche you are interested in. You can also filter with the number of followers, engagement rate, and so forth.

Here she selected the beauty niche, influencers with over 300 000 followers and a 10% engagement rate.

You can view a particular influencer by clicking and going to the Instagram account to view more statistics because some of them here on CloudHQ may not be up to date.

It’s always better to have a second on Instagram to confirm the details of the influencer because sometimes their accounts grow so fast and numbers change.

The key points to note when choosing an influencer should be:

• The followers should be above 300 000
• The engagement rate/ likes should be at least 10% of the number of followers
• The comments should be at least 1% of the number of likes.
• The quality of the comments - they shouldn’t be from bots

Contacting the Influencers
Zainab went on to pick two influencers to work with. She contacted them by email and started to negotiate for the pricing of the promotions.

This is the first email that she sent the influencer:

When sending the emails, she writes the subject as "Paid collaboration" with an emoji. "Paid collaboration" to get the attention of the influencer, and "an emoji" to make it more eye-catching.

This is basically what she mentions in all her emails. Asking for the demographic statistics, pricing, and story views from the influencer is very important. Also mentioning that you would like to get a reply from that influencer either if they are interested or not. That way, you don't bother yourself with sending a second or third email reminder to the influencer.

And here is the reply:

Just the influencer mentioning that she is interested. She provides her price rates and account insights.

Then Zainab replies asking to have a 24-hour story shout-out with three frames at the $2 000 rate. She also mentions that the frames must be published on the same day. Zainab says:

"I personally do not like to work on frames that are following each other consecutively. But actually, I would say two stories, maybe earlier and another in the evening. That way, the influencer would show the element of excitement from using the product and its discount at the beginning. And at the end of the day, she would make thrird frame saying how excited she is because of how her followers are interested in the product. That way other people that were doubting to buy the product, will receive a little push to purchase it.

One of the things that I do is that when I send or collaborate with an influencer there are particular terms that I would like her to follow:

• The first thing is that there should be three frames
• Secondly, I would like to be the only shout-out she's having on that day. Influencers will have five different shoutouts done in only one hour, perhaps making the promotion of similar products on a different website like mine. That wouldn't be beneficial for me because her followers will be kind of confused about which brand is the best. So, I would like to be the only one whose shout-out is done on that day.
• The third is that I go with her best engaging time. I would say the best engagement starts at 4 pm. I make it clear that I would like her to start my shout-out starting from 4 pm. That way I can take the maximum from her audience".

The influencer replied agreeing to $2 000 for the three frames and then Zainab shipped her the product.

Later on, the influencer replied that she had received the payment, and they agreed to make the promotion on Friday the 15th.  

After a few days, she confirmed receiving the shipment of the product and went ahead to create the promotional videos and sent them on email for review. 

The videos were great. Zainab gave the influencer a thumbs up to go ahead and post on the agreed day and time.

The Results

In five months of running this store with influencer promotions, she was able to generate a revenue of $233 600.

Her expenditure was $83 212. It included:

• The cost of goods was $23 360
• The Influencer charges which were $43 500
• Fees including Shopify fees and payment getaway fees that were $16 352

That left her with a total profit of $150 388.

That's it for this case study, if you want to learn more on how to use influencers to make profits from your eCommerce brands, be sure to read our upcoming case studies on our website.