Use Influencers to Power Up Your Affiliate Marketing

Using affiliate marketing for your business is a great way to attract new customers, create connections, and increase sales. One way to run a successful affiliate marketing campaign is by collaborating with influencers. This will combine the benefits of both influencer marketing and affiliate marketing to power up the marketing success.

In this blog post, we will provide tips on launching and organizing affiliate marketing with influencers. Before that, let's take a look at what affiliate marketing is!

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What is Affiliate Marketing?

According to Investopedia, Affiliate marketing is an advertising model in which a company compensates third-party publishers to generate traffic or leads to the company's products and services. In other words, an affiliate introduces its readers/viewers to a trusted company's products and in return, he/she receives commissions from any purchase readers/viewers make.

Affiliate Marketing with Influencers

For influencers, affiliate marketing is one of the most popular influencer campaign strategies. Because influencers can earn additional payment through commission on the clicks or sales you drive on behalf of brands. On the other hand, through affiliate marketing, brands can increase sales and traffic and also can boost your brand awareness and reputation. 

@ericaligenza’s post is one great example of affiliate marketing done by influencers. With more than 90,000 followers, Erica automatically forms a link when she posts content on her Instagram which increases the likelihood that her followers will believe her recommendation.

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Erica also tagged the company so that followers could check its Instagram page if they were interested in the product.

The urgency of the caption was another great touch. Erica urges her followers to act quickly by telling them that "today" is the last day of getting the promotion. This is an example of FOMO, “Fear Of Missing Out” - a classic strategy in persuasive marketing. Followers are more likely to take action if the content makes it clear that they can only take action within a limited time frame.

Tips on How to Start Affiliate Marketing with Influencers

To get the full benefit of affiliate marketing with influencers, here are some tips that you can implement in your affiliate marketing!

1. Explain the Goal of the Campaign and the Product

Before you start affiliate marketing, you need to define the clear goal of affiliate marketing that the brand wants to achieve. Determining the number of affiliates you need, sales revenue you want to achieve, content style, etc. makes it easier to measure the success of an affiliate program, but it also makes it easier to find influencers and explain the campaign to the influencers.

2. Narrow Down Your Budget

When establishing an affiliate program, it is important not to overspend in any area by calculating the budget and reducing revenue. 

There's a lot of difference, especially when you start with a budget in advance, when you don't, and when you negotiate with influencers. 

When creating a budget, remember the following criteria to set a reasonable budget:

• Cost and implementation of product presentation to affiliates (if product presentation plan)
• How much can you pay for affiliate fees and are you willing to pay (still offering incentives)
• How many affiliates can you handle?
• Are you planning to pay per lead, click, or sell to affiliates? 
• Are you up to the alliance technology platform you need to succeed? Or do you want to manage it in-house? And how much is the cost?

Want to know the average cost that other companies offer influencers? Check out our previous blog post on influencer marketing campaign rates!

3. Find and Reach Out to Correct Influencers

As I mentioned before, reaching out to the right influencers makes a lot of difference. Remember the following criteria when you look for influencers: 

• Are target users the followers of influencers?
• Whether Influencer have few suspicious followers
• Does the influencer have a high engagement rate with followers?
• Does the influencer collaborate with your competitors?

Find out more about finding the right influencer in our blog post on how to choose the right influencer for your campaign.

After you decide whom to reach out for your affiliate marketing, determine how casual or detailed you want your pitch to be and how you want to reach out to them (e.g. via email, Instagram DM etc).

It doesn't matter which method you use to contact them, but before contacting influencers, double-check whether the message contains all the information you need!

4. Track the Performance with Correct Metrics

It is important to track the performance of your influencer marketing campaigns! The metrics to track the performance may include total reach and impression, audience demographics, engagement breakdown, and so on.

You can track the performance by yourself but you can also get help from influencer marketing platforms! 

Through the platform features, you can track the sales that influencers drive for your store, or measure sales generated by each discount code that influencer used. 

Conclusion

Brand affiliate marketing can increase brand awareness, increase sales, and help more people post about brands and products. In particular, affiliate marketing with influencers can have a better effect than general affiliate marketing. However, with that in mind, it is important to consider that the possibility of not being able to find a high-quality influencer may not help you achieve your goals. Thus, finding the right influencers for your brand is another key factor to consider.

Are you looking for influencers to collaborate with your brand to do affiliate marketing? Feel free to contact us if you have any questions about our features or request a free demo today!