Influencer marketing, or influence marketing, is a part of online marketing focused on using the influence of particular individuals for the purpose of online promotion.
Influencers are individuals who enjoy great respect and trust from their followers, and they are in the position to affect their opinion and their buying habits. This influence of theirs becomes their main asset enabling them to achieve their goals.
In terms of affiliate marketing, influencers have a better conversion rate than a link shared on a regular website or blog, mainly because:
• Influencers usually have a large number of followers and thus extensive reach
• Their opinion is considered more relevant and more credible
• They set up trends and standards
A large percentage of traffic driven by influencers are new customers (84%). It is estimated that acquisition costs from an influencer are 77% lower than those from other publishers.
Merchants
When it comes to merchants, their goal would be to explore opportunities for working with influencers. They might recruit influencers directly, or they might identify the influencers among affiliate program participants.
As individuals with great following and respect in the online community, influencers are a huge benefit for an affiliate program because they are most likely to show outstanding performance. For merchants, this means huge exposure to the brand and a lot of conversions. I
identifying this opportunity of collaborating with an influencer enables merchants to improve this relationship and potentially use different methods to encourage them to continue advertising your affiliate program.
Additionally, a successful collaboration with one influencer might be more profitable for the merchant than having a lot of affiliates that generate modest revenue through affiliate links.
Affiliates
Influencers use various methods to cash in on their influence, and one of those methods is using affiliate marketing. This type of online marketing provides a lot of freedom and flexibility for them.
They can choose the affiliate programs they like, and they can choose when and how they are promoting those affiliate links. Unlike working with brands and companies on campaigns, where they can be paid in advance, but the brand might be in charge of designing a campaign, influencer marketing enables influencers to organize the promotion of affiliate links in any way they see fit.
They can choose the promotion channels they feel comfortable with. For example, influencer bloggers can advertise affiliate links in their blog posts, without using other strategies for online promotion.
If this is something they see as the most effective, then it is the approach they should go for.
Conclusion
Evidently, affiliate marketing has many connections with online marketing. On its own, affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing model, aimed at generating income through passive income.
However, different online marketing methods and strategies can really boost the performance of affiliate marketing and help you expand your reach.
There is nothing passive about that because you will actively be promoting your affiliate links using all of the methods that are available to you. You will be using many different tools and strategies that help you get better results with affiliate marketing.
It is crucial to keep monitoring everything and explore how each type of online marketing can help with boosting the performance of the affiliate links.
Some merchants (or affiliates) might prefer using one or two methods for online marketing collaboration, such as a combination of affiliate marketing and email marketing, or using affiliate marketing with influencer marketing and social media marketing.
Customisation is a crucial aspect when creating a strategy because each business is different. Therefore, it is essential to adapt the approach to the business you are promoting and use only the strategies and promotion channels that are productive and effective in achieving your business goals.
Action Point
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