Like, Click, Shop: LTK’s Role in Influencer Marketing
Today’s consumers are looking for a more seamless experience when they shop online–and more and more often, they’re starting their buying journey on social media. 23% of consumers say that they begin the majority of their shopping on social.
Influencers can help brands tap into that social media power. You’re probably already partnering with influencers on major social platforms like Instagram and TikTok, but you might be missing out on a different opportunity to work with online creators: LTK.
LTK is a shopping-focused tech platform where 40 million monthly consumers make purchases, create curated wishlists, and get reminders when their favorite brands are on sale. Partnering with influencers on LTK can pack a major punch for brands because users on the app are already in a place where they’re ready to buy.
If you’re ready to tap into a new shopping-motivated audience, our experts have insights on how to decide if LTK is right for your brand, harness influencer power on the app, and build successful relationships with LTK creators.
Choosing your path: making sure LTK is right for your brand
Before investing in campaigns on LTK, you need to make sure the platform is a good fit for your brand and your promotional needs.
Users on LTK are looking for inspiration on new styles and products to buy and to get deals from brands they already know they love. These products can be anything from a trending item like Vuori’s performance joggers or Drunk Elephant’s D-Bronzi Sunshine Drops to the ingredients for a DIY pizza from Walmart.
Source: LTK
The top categories for LTK shoppers include beauty, clothes, and electronics. That makes it a great place for fashion, home, beauty, and lifestyle brands to advertise since creators can easily craft shoppable content that uses their products around different occasions, aesthetics, and home ideas.
Source: LTK
The app is especially useful for brands looking to boost special promotions since LTK users are often on the app specifically to find great offers. Your brand can partner with creators around brand moments like flash sales, seasonal savings, and more to get more shoppers looking at those deals. A good example of this is when Abercrombie and Tarte Cosmetics connected with influencer Tia Booth to share her top picks from the brands for LTK’s spring sale.
Source: LTK
On the other hand, because of its emphasis on shopping, LTK might not be as good of an option for brands that provide services rather than physical products. You should also keep your audience demographics and preferences in mind; according to LTK, app users tend to be high-income shoppers with higher education who splurge on home and family products. If that doesn’t sound like your audience, you may be better off investing your dollars elsewhere.
Leveraging LTK: how brands can harness influencer power
If you’re ready to get started with LTK, you need to partner with the real powerhouses of the platform: its influencers. LTK creators can recommend products to their audiences through shoppable links to share across social media, blog posts, or directly in the LTK app.
First, you’ll need an affiliate program. This is required to set up LTK partnerships since it’s how brands pay influencers and track their metrics. You can integrate a variety of different affiliate platforms, like Impact, Commission Junction, ShareASale, or Rakuten, with LTK, so you can choose the one that’s best for you or one you already have. Once connected, LTK will use the program to provide cost-per-action (CPA) and a comprehensive framework for KPIs.
Then you’re ready to start connecting with creators. With the platform’s self-service option, LTK Connect, you can partner directly with influencers to create paid end-to-end campaigns. The platform also provides brands with campaign performance reporting via LTK 360, giving you information about clicks, sales, and orders and insights into creators and their followings.
For brands looking for a more hands-off approach, the platform’s white glove-managed service, LTK Optimize, might be a good option. It includes everything from strategy to implementation and 24/7 full-funnel reporting, so your team doesn’t have to invest too much time into the new platform.
Source: LTK
LTK provides the information you need to meticulously analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each potential influencer and the various categories they can be found in (like health and wellness, beauty, food, home improvement, fashion, etc.). But as on any platform, it may take a while for you to find the ideal content creators for your brand and products.
Navigating partnerships: building successful relationships with LTK creators
When you’re working with an influencer, you want them to build a genuine affinity for your brand so you can get the most authentic content from them. It’s even better if they continue using (and talking about) your products in the future–even when it’s not a paid partnership.
That’s an especially big bonus for brands on LTK since it’s a shopping platform and creators are incentivized to post frequently about products to earn commission. You can also use their LTK content on other channels, which creates a more cohesive brand story and lets customers know they can trust what the influencer is saying about your brand.
To get that advantage, you need to build a great relationship with your creators. That starts with choosing the right people who will truly enjoy your products. You can do that by vetting influencers based on quantitative data like the creator’s audience size, age, and location and qualitative data like content niches (e.g. beauty or lifestyle) that fit your brand. Influencers who have shown interest in similar products to your brand’s in the past will also be more likely to connect with your company.
You’ll need to align with your creators on goals for their campaigns ahead of time. If you define the type of content you’re looking for and what success looks like for your brand from the beginning, you and your influencer partners can stay on the same page.
You should also give your partners a creative voice in the content they produce for you. After all, while you’ll always have the final say, you’re coming to these creators specifically for their unique voices.
Source: LTK
Of course, another crucial aspect of the influencer relationship is payment. Creators on LTK earn commission on every sale they make. To ensure you can work with the creators you’ve chosen, you need to offer a competitive commission rate. The average commission rate is currently between 10-25%, but it can reach as high as 30%.
In addition to commission, brands can choose between payment types on the platform, which can be monetary, gifting only, or a combination of both. This allows brands to tailor their approach to influencer collaborations based on their specific marketing objectives and budget considerations. There’s also an opportunity to lower the “hard” costs of influencer deliverables on LTK, since creators are earning a commission on top of what you’re paying them.
If it’s the right fit for your brand, LTK can be a great way to reach new customers and give shoppers a seamless purchasing experience–but only if you know how to get the most out of partnerships on the app.
Responses