Affiliate and influencer marketing offer opportunities to drive the growth of your business. In some cases, brands can leverage one, but sometimes a combination of affiliate and influencer marketing can work best.
Read on and learn the differences between the two strategies and how to use them for your enterprise best.
What is Influencer Marketing?
With influencer marketing, you use brand partnering with a content creator to help you promote your business products or services on social media. The word ‘influencer’ is broadly defined since your brand could partner with influential customers, important opinion leaders, social media creators, and even celebrities.
Depending on your brand’s goals, influencer marketing can take many forms. For example, your influencer marketing campaigns can include product launches, gifting of products, giveaway competitions, seasonal campaigns, live-stream shopping events, etc.
Your brand won’t necessarily need an influencer with millions of followers, but those whose followers trust them also fall in the range of your target audience. Micro-influencers have a remarkable track record of high engagement levels and can help build better trust than bigger names.
Influencer marketing usually entails a set period, and you work with these third-party creators to discreetly promote your products and brand message.
Unlike affiliates, who get paid according to the direct sales they help make, influencers get paid for a complete campaign.
Benefits of Influencer Marketing
Some of the essential benefits of influencer marketing include the following:
Trust Building and Engagement – Influencers help to promote your brand in a non-intrusive way by creating awareness and increasing conversions. People visiting influencers on social media do so because they want to see and share their authentic content. Therefore, as they take a glimpse into the lifestyle of the person they aspire to be, they respect their industry expertise and trust their opinions when they make purchasing decisions.
A Versatile Strategy – You can tailor influencer marketing to your goals thanks to the different types of influencers and the vast range of campaigns. Influencer marketing can effectively help you achieve several objectives like boosting your brand awareness, brand trust, and brand support.
Creating Long-Term Partnerships – Finding an influencer that aligns with your brand requires some effort. One of the main advantages of this is that you will vet them carefully before selecting the most authentic people. One good campaign with a person with the same values means that you will most likely create a long-term partnership with the influencer that will prove profitable to your business.
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What is Affiliate Marketing?
In affiliate marketing, you have a third-party partner using a sale generation model to promote your products. In return, they receive commission-based remuneration on the number of sales produced.
Your affiliate provides an affiliate link (a tracked URL) for customers to use when purchasing your products or services. Each time someone uses the link to buy, the affiliate earns revenue.
With affiliate marketing, you can reach a wider audience through other channels you don’t own. For example, affiliate marketers help your brand through their own social media, blogs, newsletters, etc., by increasing brand awareness, converting new customers, and driving growth.
Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing benefits include:
Small Setup Cost – Setting up an affiliate marketing program has a small up-front cost and is easy because you don’t need to buy space. In addition, you can use an affiliate network, which means you must pay a one-off joining fee. There is also a small cost if you use management software for your affiliate campaigns.
Excellent Returns – The reward system of affiliate marketing means that your affiliates have every incentive to drive sales. It creates the base for a high return on investment without you needing to invest an initial lump sum. Your affiliates get paid on performance, and you don’t need to pay based on a prediction.
Increased Traffic and Revenue – Affiliate marketing generates traffic and sales from the clever distribution of affiliate links like email marketing, blogs, and social media to relevant audiences. The more traffic your website receives from these, the more conversions you can expect.
Similarities and Differences between Affiliate and Influencer Marketing
Affiliate and influencer marketing use external third-party partnerships to reach audiences, making them similar strategies. These influencers and affiliates already have a valuable online audience that you leverage to increase sales, but differently.
Interestingly, the lines between influencer and affiliate marketing are starting to fade since many influencers now opt for commission-based sales using coupon codes and link tracking.
The primary difference between these campaigns is that affiliates generate traffic and conversions. In contrast, influencers can help achieve marketing goals like boosted engagement, brand awareness, creating a vibe around a product, and increasing consumer loyalty.
Therefore, influencer marketing plays a vital role in the consumer’s purchasing journey but can also drive conversions with links and promo codes when the consumer is ready to proceed with a purchase.
Compensation models differ between the two since affiliates receive a commission on sales, and influencers receive free products and a flat rate for the campaign. However, influencer marketing can also include compensation based on performance, helping to minimize spend and risk.
Affiliate or Influencer Marketing: Which Suits Your Business Best?
Keep in mind the following when you need to decide:
- An influencer marketing campaign will run for a shorter period, whereas an affiliate marketing campaign can drive results over a long-term period.
- Influencer marketing helps increase brand recognition, while affiliate marketing focuses on tracking sales and increasing ROI.
- You pay influencers by the campaign instead of affiliates who get paid sales commissions.
- You can combine influencer with affiliate marketing by giving them trackable links to measure the sales they drive.
Bold Solutionz Can Help You Kickstart Your Marketing Strategy
As you can see from the above article, influencer and affiliate marketing have similarities and differences. However, because each serves a different purpose, why not combine the two to achieve the ultimate marketing goal?
At Bold Solutionz, we can help you decide on the best marketing strategy using one, both, or a combination of the two methods to help achieve your business goals. Let us help you kickstart the program and show you how to best monitor the results.
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