Influencers can be a force of nature when it comes to connecting with potential customers for your company. Why? Because of their significant online presence and following. Having them as part of your strategy and team can open many doors by helping you bring your brand awareness with unique ad content that can generate high-quality leads. It can turn into clicks or sales for your brand. This guide will show you the ropes of influencer marketing. Plus, you’ll learn why you should consider partnering with influencers, and why your affiliate marketing plan and strategies need to get the top influencers to promote your brand. So, let’s upgrade affiliate marketing to another level.
What Is Influencer Affiliate Marketing?
Influencer affiliate marketing is when you use an influencer from any social media network to promote your brand to their followers in exchange for a commission. This will not only bring sales but also leads and exposure to your brand. If any other promotion methods are not working as you expected, this one, if executed correctly and with the right influencers, can make a difference and get you on track.
Reasons to Include Influencers in Your Affiliate Marketing Program
Social media have been blooming in the past few years, so it’s no wonder why joining forces with influencers using affiliate marketing is used so much today. Having brand advocates promote your products and services can easily improve your affiliate marketing program game. There are also other reasons like:
You’re creating engaging content for your brand.
Customers are growing more skeptical about advertising, so having a familiar and trusting face authentically promoting your products will bring more value to your brand. Product reviews, tutorials, and influencer commentary about it can help you connect with their audience and your business.
You can put your name out there for everyone to see.
Since influencers have a big social media presence, having them talk about your brand to their loyal followers can put you on the main stage in front of your targeted audience. It’s even better knowing that most of them have many outlets to show products like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and more, with a better reach than any other advertising method.
This influence will bring you new and better customers.
Influencers bring a lot of trust to their followers. So, you better believe people will listen when they recommend an item. Eight out of ten consumers will buy something recommended to them by an influencer, meaning that if you work with an influencer, you better believe it’ll be all worth it.
Other Things to Consider When You Partner with an Influencer Affiliate
Payment
In most cases, affiliate marketing uses the pay-for-performance model, but influencer affiliates sometimes can be slightly different, depending on the person. Sometimes you’ll have to make a small payment and give them your usual commission rate or a higher fee with a lower commission rate. You can also offer no upfront fee, pay for the results, and even offer a hybrid version. It all depends on what works best for you and the influencer.
Social Media Platforms
Not all Social Media platforms are the same. Just like affiliates and influencers, even if they are similar, they have different niches and trends that are better in one than others. Affiliates tend to have blogs and websites where they promote their work. They have their social media, but not their primary source. On the other hand, influencers tend to stay on social media and use platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, etc., to keep in touch and be more interactive with their followers.
Types of Ads
Depending on your brand, it is important to see what types of promotions work better for you. For example, if it’s an E-commerce business, it’s better to promote using pictures of your products. So, having influencers take pictures of themselves with your products might be the best way to go. But when it comes to SaaS, it is better to choose video content instead, so having an influencer that makes video tutorials and reviews of products on platforms like YouTube might be the way to go.
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Find The Right Influencers
There are many influencers out there for all types of topics and niches, and some are bigger than others when it comes to their audience, but no matter if they are big or micro-influencers, they all have a great purpose. But the important thing is to use ones that go with your brand unless you are looking for celebrity-level influencers just for exposure.
The best place to start looking for the right influencers is on social media platforms. You can begin by looking through hashtags that go with your brand or anything that might be related to it. You can try checking on industry-centric or product hashtags related to you. Also, search for competitor hashtags like a branded name or any other word they might promote. Even something as simple as #ad or #affiliate is a good place to check, although you should tread lightly because you might find some low-quality affiliates or spam accounts that won’t do any good.
Things to Look for While Searching for Influencers
This process might be overwhelming, but sometimes the algorithm might help find the most popular ones first, but this also doesn’t mean that they are the best for the job either. So, there are things you need to keep an eye on when checking on influencers.
-Follower count
-The quality content they produce
-How engaged are their followers
-The social media platforms that they usually use
-Do they fit your brand?
Get Top Influencers to Promote Your Brand
Many social media personalities can fit your brand and have the same type of target audience that you are looking for, so get them on your team. Giving them a good pitch is vital to get them excited about your brand. It is also great to get influencers that have ever submitted user-generated content and at least some experience in affiliate marketing. The chances of them saying “yes” are more likely.
Micro-Influencers
Do not ignore their incredible power to move the masses. Micro-influencers are more flexible and more open to working on a compensation deal that is best for you. They tend to have around 1,000 to 20,000 followers, and their expertise is more niche-focused, which is not bad. Their impact in generating engagement tends to be as high as 85% more than influencers with a bigger following.
Your Brand Pitch
Making a good first impression is vital for anything, including recruiting influencers. Therefore, starting with a good brand pitch can make a big difference in the outcome. When sending your pitch to them via email, it should be personalized with some important key elements like:
-An interesting subject line
-Compliment their social media posts and content and why you like it enough for you to be interested in their help
-Introduce your company, even if you are working with a big brand, make them familiar with it.
-Explain why you want to work with them and how affiliate marketing works
-What steps do they need to take, if they choose to work with you
-Include a link to your affiliate marketing
Be Clear of your Marketing Program
It is imperative to clearly let the influencer know your expectations of them. Why? So everyone is on the same page and knows your guidelines. Things like the Brand’s do’s and don’ts are important. Also, having visual references, setting deadlines, production information, campaign overviews, deliverables, and key messages are vital. The more information you can provide them, the better. You want them to understand everything so that it doesn’t cause any confusion and decrease the chances of having to waste both parties’ time and resources.
Create Unique Content
This is teamwork between you and the influencer to create an experience for their audience that makes them especially connect with your brand and be authentic. So working together in the creative process can help create material that can help promote your brand.
Some of the most popular influencer content include:
-Tutorials
-Giveaways
-Unboxing videos
-Product reviews
-Product placements
-How-to guides
-Podcasts Interviews
-Educational content about your product or services
Get marketing materials.
Providing influencers the material they need to promote your brand better will give them the tools to create something unique that will work better with your brand. Things like the color scheme, pricing lists, press mentions or awards, ad copy, product descriptions, and branding kit are a good start. You can also provide them with branded hashtags. That way, you have consistently throughout all their channels. Why is this essential? So that the message is clear no matter who is promoting it.
Use coupon codes for affiliate influencer promotions.
Most of the time, affiliates use unique links to take customers to your site. But one thing that works better with influencers, especially when they want to share to their followers, is a coupon code and a link. They can either post or link in their bio, depending on the platform. Using a coupon code is great for tracking their promotion. Thus, creating a code that is easy to remember, short and simple is better than just a link.
Share samples and product reviews with influencers.
Another way to get people excited is by giving your influencer or affiliate a preview of upcoming products or launches. In doing so, they can create “hype” about it by sharing a sneak peek with their followers, so they know what’s happening next with your brand. Plus, it’s a great way to help your influencer familiarize themselves with your brand. Just remember to plan ahead so that influencers have enough time to prepare the content, especially if they have more than one campaign they are working with.
Final Thoughts
Getting that helping hand from influencers to help grow your brand by having more exposure, new leads, and better conversion rates and sales is a great alternative to doing better business. It’s always good to make new strategies and bring creative people that will open doors to more people to let you know your brand and get those numbers to the top.
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