Why EVERY Influencer Should Join an Affiliate Program
- Influencer marketing is a powerful way to drive energetic interest in your brand
- Companies should partner with trustworthy influencers that can make a big impact
- Influencers should join affiliate networks to create revenue-boosting incentives
Influencer marketing is one of the hottest and yet least-understood sectors of the marketing world. It overlaps with so many facets of business and life that it can be difficult to pin down exactly how it works. It’s actually pretty simple, though. Influencers are people with a large online following, usually via social media. Instagram is probably the most famous platform for this, and it happens also to a large degree on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Influencers gain their popularity through the hard work of personal engagement with others. By building relationships while generating interesting content, they become especially powerful marketers. They market both experiences and products, and their content revolves around it. It’s similar to old-school celebrity endorsements, but with a more general appeal. And that is where the opportunity appears for affiliate programs.
How Companies Can Use Influencer Marketing
By seeking out influencers who may be in a relevant position to promote their products or services, companies can rapidly expand their brand recognition. The way to do this is by building a working relationship with each influencer. Companies and influencers alike can approach each other in either direction. The company offers the influencer a free sample of the product or service. The influencer then creates content surrounding their experience using it. The influencer’s followers interact with the shared content and often share it themselves.
Twitter’s own internal research reveals the raw marketing power of influencers:
“When looking for product recommendations, 49% of respondents to our survey said they relied on influencers. That’s second only to Tweets from friends, who 56% of consumers sought for guidance. Furthermore, recommendations from influencers were amplified on Twitter, with 20% of subjects saying a Tweet from an influencer inspired them to share a product recommendation.”
As long as the influencer has a positive experience, all of this translates to a huge amount of good press for the business that made the experience possible. Companies can instantly gain the trust and a share of the business of the influencer’s entire fanbase. It’s often far more effective than simply promoting a post yourself on search results pages or social media feeds. The influencer’s opinion matters to the people who follow them.
A Word of Caution
There are some potential pitfalls to influencer marketing. Naturally, companies will want to be careful to avoid inspiring a negative review, because that ill will can also spread like wildfire. Brand damage control is a lot harder to deal with.
Companies should also be rightly skeptical of individuals who claim to be influencers looking for free giveaways, but who don’t really have the sort of following to justify the expense for marketing purposes. Smaller followings must correlate with a highly specialized niche to be successful at influencing.
Why Influencers Should Join Affiliate Networks
For many influencers, the main benefit of influencer marketing is all the free stuff they end up getting. Powerful influencers get free clothes, jewelry, vacations, food, and other services in the name of showing it off to the provider’s benefit.
There’s a huge opportunity, though, for the influencers to directly generate income from the sales of the items they promote. By joining affiliate networks, influencers can receive a portion of the revenue from every conversion their content helps to generate.
It’s as simple as sharing an affiliate purchasing link in the very content itself! For maximum success, this link should incentivize a purchase beyond just the endorsement from the influencer. By offering a discount for purchasing as a result of that post, you can drive more sales.
This strategy also creates strong incentives for the influencer to endorse your brand positively and actively, to boost their own income. The larger they build their following, and the more sincerely and enthusiastically they drive your sales, the better it is for everyone involved.
Influencer Marketing With the Smart Funnel Affiliate Network
Smart Funnel provides a smart way to drive engagement with your brand through affiliate marketing in partnership with relevant influencers. Our team will successfully introduce your product into a vast array of channels to maximize your footprint. Contact us today to get started!
