What are influencers and creatives doing for your brand's sales and profits? These trusted partners are known for high-quality results and high performance, increasing brand awareness, but without a unique code, direct impact is difficult to measure. This makes it difficult to understand the value of your investment in influencer partnerships.
According to the study, 73% of brands will be running influencer programs by 2022, with total influencer spending worldwide set to exceed £14.5 billion. As demand grows, so do the costs of working with manufacturers, and these partners share more and more details about brands' revenues.
Your business must generate a significant ROI from influencer marketing to clearly justify the investment. And affiliate marketing is the perfect way. Here because...
Build internal collaboration
Metrics and accountability are essential to any partnership, and affiliate marketing gives your teams access to the data they need. By combining manufacturers' efforts with affiliate marketing, you can directly measure sales to increase influencer-based purchases. Plus, you can optimize partner diversity, gain quantitative insights into individual performance, and combine sales metrics with valuable low- and mid-funnel data for a holistic approach.
This cross-functional teamwork helps your organization break down departmental silos and share ownership while working toward goals. Additionally, many of the best campaign ideas have historically come from the collaboration of separate teams such as social, PR and affiliate.
It depends on the purpose
Influencers are often in the dark about brand goals and campaign goals. This is never a good situation because in the absence of targets, manufacturers are making assumptions about what you want. While there may be more progress on your side, it's critical that you take the time to communicate your goals in depth so that builders can align their efforts to achieve the desired results.
But that's only half the battle. It's important to share the results you want, but it's also important to align how the results are measured and then rewarded. The standard compensation model for influencers, as mentioned, is a one-time upfront payment in exchange for a loose measure that can only scratch the surface of what you're looking for. By combining your affiliate and influencer marketing efforts, you can accurately measure the builder's impact on sales and pay for tangible results. With the individual level sales tracking offered by affiliate marketing, you can accurately estimate the ROI for each influencer and focus on the most effective.
Influencers also benefit from performance-based compensation models because they provide instant feedback. Brand partnerships and products that resonate with their audience are evident through the sales they generate and are a clear sign that they are providing real value to their audience.
Create a comfortable collaboration
Most affiliate platforms work with influencers. But beyond the compensation model, their user interface and broader dimensions are often alien to these partners. Using these tools to get influencers to join an affiliate program can create unnecessary friction.
Finding the right manufacturers and staying in close contact can make or break your results. To make it easier for influencers to work with brands and measure sales directly, partner platforms like Awin give brands direct access to influencer marketing subnets and partner solutions, removing friction and freeing developers to focus on engaging your audience.
Supports long term
Influencer Marketing is used to focus on short-term strategies. We've since learned that you get better results when you have long-term relationships with artists. Find voices who take the time to understand your brand and build lasting partnerships.
Building these long-term relationships gives your producers more income stability and can turn them into a constant source of income for your business. Your brand's continued presence will influence its audience and provide lasting social proof.
Expand your customer base
Although YouTubers with more than a million followers seem the most attractive, they can build a large network, but this wide reach does not always translate into sales influence. As a result, these great influencers sometimes shy away from working on performance models. This is where niche, nano and micro influencers (those with small, highly engaged audiences of 50,000 followers) are your secret weapons. These manufacturers know that they can make more money by partnering with a brand because they attract a more attractive audience that is ready to transact.
it's time
With the increasing cost of influencer engagement and the need for direct sales accountability, businesses must find ways to not only generate more sales, but demonstrate the value of the investment. As you can see, affiliate marketing offers solutions.
By combining your influencer and affiliate efforts, you get the most leverage to increase awareness and proven strategies that lead to deals. Bringing these two results together is a win-win situation. Brands and influencers collaborating through affiliate partnerships are demonstrating a new way of working together that benefits everyone.
Awin, the leading affiliate and affiliate marketing platform, has spent over 20 years helping brands big and small generate sales and measurable revenue for their businesses with 16% per win and 1% ROI. Learn more about Awin here.
