Art of Affiliate Marketing
Art of Affiliate Marketing
The marketing landscape has witnessed an exponential growth in the number of consumers that resort to social media networks and other online channels, and has observed a strong pattern with which such channels influence consumer purchasing behavior. Due to this shift in focus from traditional channels of marketing to this newer digital realm, business have started to communicate with their potential customers online. For this purpose however, it is much more effective, both in terms of profitability and reachability, to select influencers to voice their message.
Every astute marketer of today knows the significance of choosing the right influencers to communicate on behalf of their brand. This is because such influencers have a strong appeal and a large following in the business’s particular niche. Unlike traditional celebrities, these influencers have acquired a massive following and engage with it on a regular basis. Brands worldwide can leverage from such high levels of engagement, given that they choose the right influencers. While incorporating influencers in your marketing strategy has become the new hot favorite of marketers, it poses a certain set of challenges which must be tackled strategically, if the fruits of an influencing campaign have to be reaped maximally. Among the top in this list of challenges is to identify, approach and team up with the right influencers. This is not just limited to recognizing which influencers can help you approach your audience in appropriate, credible and appealing ways, but also taking into account the goals that you have set for your brand, your marketing budget, the brand image that you want to project and the like.
This whole process can be made a whole lot easier and simplified if a business opts to collaborate with an affiliate marketing agency rather than collaborating one on one with different influencers. An affiliate marketing agency can help you connect with the right influencers in just a matter of clicks. To explore into greater depth how an affiliate marketing agency can help you connect with the right affiliates, let us first have a closer look at the mechanism by which affiliate marketing operates as a mode of marketing.
Affiliate marketing can be best understood by a tripartite division; the merchant, the publisher and the consumer. The brand or the company which creates the product is called the ‘merchant’. The ‘affiliate’ or the ‘publisher’ will promote their company’s products in an attempt to convert and sell to as many ‘consumers’ as they can. The affiliate can be anyone who has a strong sphere of influence in the particular niche from which the business is aiming to target customers. Think of Instagram affiliate marketing, where various influencers use affiliate marketing as a tool which goes hand in hand with their Instagram content. They use lifestyle guides and fashion tips to sell commercial products. Each of these influencers is given a unique URL which they share on their Instagram profiles. The traffic on their profiles which is directed to this URL is measured by the click-through rates. So, it is easy to monitor the conversion of leads generated by the affiliates, and the affiliates receive a share of profit according to the contribution they make towards the company’s revenue.
Hence affiliate marketing is not just a marketing strategy, it is a form of a business model, based on profit sharing with the affiliates. After the affiliates have been identified, they can be teamed up with to produce content that can appropriately and effectively target the intended audience. This means you have the freedom to tailor your content and the channels over which is to be marketed. However, as emphasized before, the first and the most crucial step is to collaborate with the right influencers.
Coming back to choosing the right influencers, a great deal of time and resources need to be invested in keying out and approaching reliable influencers. One of the ways to go about it is through influencer mapping, which involves measuring the influence of an influencer’s voice in the digital realm. At this point, it is important to differentiate between popularity and influence. An influencer’s popularity merely shows how many people recognize the influencer, but an influencer’s influence is rather about the degree of power that that the influencer wields over its audience’s purchasing decisions. So while an influencer’s popularity may get you noticed, it is ultimately an influencer’s influence which will drive up your sales. Hence the real art of affiliate marketing is not about joining hands with popular influencers, but influential influencers.
Now we come to the question of building a network of influencers in the least time with minimal resources. The answer to this key issue manifests in the form of an affiliate marketing agency. Affiliate marketing in USA has seen a rise in the market of influencer marketing agencies. Given the changing dynamics of the marketing world, many companies want to try to launch their own affiliate programs, but fail to, due to lack of time or resources on their hands. However, this is not an issue if you join hands with the right affiliate marketing agency. In addition to saving time and money, turning to specialist affiliate marketing agencies also helps you connect with the right influencers and devise creative influencer marketing strategies.
Choosing the right affiliate marketing agency may seem daunting, but we here at Influencer Hub know what success looks like and would be more than happy to help you achieve it. Influencer Hub is an Influencer marketing agency in Tampa which aims to aid brands in engaging with their target audiences worldwide through creative influencer marketing campaigns which create authentic connections between the brands and influencers. Through our expertise, we aim to make the best possible match for brands by finding the influencers that would pave the way to the brands’ objectives and goals. By tracking and evaluating progress consistently, we ensure real impact to deliver guaranteed results.
Get in touch with us right here.