Why Your Influencer Strategy Should Include Affiliate Marketing
If you own, or work, for a brand or business selling consumer products, chances are you’ve considered getting your products into the hands of influencers — aka, influencer marketing.
We’re living in an age where social media dominates almost everything we do. How we communicate, what we buy, where we travel, and even how we interact with our food in restaurants (gotta get it on the ‘gram first).
In its simplest terms, influencer marketing involves a brand sending a product to an influencer with a dedicated, engaged following on a social media platform — this could be Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, or something more niche. In exchange for payment (depending on the size of the account) or free product, that influencer will then post about your brand and product, immediately amplifying awareness of what it is you’re wanting to sell.
Having worked on both sides of influencer marketing (both as an influencer and in marketing teams), I know how effective this approach can be. I’ve written an article here about how to work with influencers in an effective way but in this article, I’m going to talk about one tactic in particular that will encourage influencers to post about your product: affiliate marketing.
What is affiliate marketing?
With affiliate marketing, publishers earn a commission by promoting a retailer’s product. Using a specially created URL, publishers (or in the case of this article, influencers) recieve a percentage of every purchase made.
Let’s say an influencer is creating an Instagram story featuring his or her favourite jumpers currently on sale. Including an affiliate link to each product could give them as much as 15% of each sale.
How you can leverage affiliate marketing with influencers
Having an affiliate program — or signing up to existing programs such as LTK or Klarna creator platform — is beneficial in a couple of ways when it comes to working with influencers.
- Influencers are more likely to feature your product on their platforms naturally, if there’s a likelihood that they’ll make a bit of money through linking to it. As in the jumper example above, influencers often link to products even if they’re not in partnership with a brand. That means your brand and product gets exposure, and you get traffic driven to your website without even trying.
- If you’re trying to negotiate a partnership with an influencer, being part of an affiliate program with a competitive commission rate is an element you can bring to the deal. Let’s say there’s an influencer you really want to work with but their fees are over your allocated budget. Offering them a commission rate of, say, 20% for any purchases made could be a way of enticing them to bring down their fee, without you or them losing out too much.
Parts of this article are taken from my book, ‘Making Content Work: Tips, tools and templates for your brand or business’. Available now on Amazon, in paperback or Kindle.
