Why Brands Should Blend Their Influencer and Affiliate Marketing Campaigns

Awin is a Business Reporter client.

Ellie Davies, Awin Influencer Partnerships Manager, shares her top reasons why retailers should centralize their influencer and affiliate marketing activity.

What are influencers and creators doing for your brand sales and profits? These trusted partners are known for driving top-of-funnel outcomes and are highly effective at increasing brand consideration, but unless an exclusive code is given, it’s hard to measure direct impact. This makes it challenging to assess the value of your investment in influencer partnerships. 

According to research, 72.5% of brands operated influencer programs in 2022, with total global influencer spend surpassing $16.4 billion. The costs of working with creators are also growing as demand rises and these partners increasingly share details about what they earn from brands with each other. 

Your business needs to see significant ROI from influencer marketing to justify the investment. And affiliate marketing is the perfect medium to produce results. Here’s why:

It builds internal collaboration

Metrics and accountability are key to any partnership, and affiliate marketing offers your teams access to the insights needed. By integrating creator efforts with partner marketing, you can measure direct sales and increase influencer-driven purchases. Furthermore, you can optimize partner diversification, get quantitative insights on individual performance and marry sales metrics with valuable top- and middle-of-funnel data for a holistic approach. 

This cross-functional teamwork helps your organization remove departmental silos and creates joint accountability when working toward goals. Plus, many of the best campaign ideas come from collaborations across historically disconnected teams such as social marketing, PR and affiliates.

It aligns with goals

Influencers often feel that they are in the dark on a brand’s objectives and campaign goals. That’s never a good situation, as, in the absence of clear goals, creators make assumptions about what you want. While more upfront work on your end may be required, taking the time to communicate your objectives thoroughly is crucial so creators can tailor their efforts to produce the results you want. 

But this is only half the battle. It’s vital to specify the results you’re after, but equally critical to agree on how results will be measured and, therefore, compensated. The default compensation model for influencers is a flat-fee upfront payment in exchange for vanity metrics that may only scratch the surface of what you’re after. By merging affiliate and influencer marketing activity, brands can accurately measure a creator’s impact on sales and pay for tangible results. And with the individual-level sales tracking offered by affiliate marketing, you can accurately assess ROI and focus on the most productive influencers. 

Performance-based compensation models benefit influencers, too, providing an immediate feedback loop. The brand partnerships and products that resonate with their audiences will be evident from the sales they are helping to drive, offering a clear sign that they’re providing real value to their followers.

It creates frictionless partnerships

Most affiliate platforms work with influencers. But, beyond compensation models, their user interfaces and wider metrics are often alien to these partners; when influencers are forced to join an affiliate program with unfamiliar tools, it can create unnecessary friction. Finding the right creators and staying in close contact can make or break results.

To make it easier for influencers to work with brands, and for brands to measure direct sales, affiliate platforms such as Awin offer brands seamless access to influencer marketing subnetworks and partnership solutions that eliminate friction and allow creators to focus on engaging their audiences. 

It supports the long term

Influencer marketing used to focus on short-term tactics. We have since learned that you get better results from cultivating long-term relationships with performers—finding the voices that understand your brand and taking the time to build enduring partnerships. 

Creating these long-term relationships gives your creators greater income stability and makes them ongoing revenue sources for your business. Your brand’s continued presence will also impress their followers and build ongoing social proof. 

It expands your customer base

While the most prominent creators, with more than a million followers, may seem the most appealing because they can cast a wider net, this reach doesn’t always equate to sales impact. As a result, these large influencers are sometimes reluctant to work on a performance model. This is where niche, nano- and micro-influencers—those with a smaller but highly engaged audience of up to 50,000 followers—are your secret weapon. These creators know that they can increase their income via an affiliate brand partnership because they attract more engaged audiences with a higher propensity to transact.

The time is now

Due to the rising cost of influencer engagements and the need for direct sales accountability, companies must find ways to not only drive more revenue, but also prove the value of their investments. Affiliate marketing offers the solution. 

By blending your influencer and affiliate efforts, you get top-of-funnel impacts that drive awareness alongside proven tactics that drive transactions. Merging these two outcomes is a win-win for both brands and influencers. Collaborating via affiliate partnerships is a new way of working together that benefits everyone.

Leading affiliate and partner marketing platform Awin has spent more than 20 years helping brands big and small leverage the creator economy to drive measurable sales and revenue at an ROI of £16 to £1. Learn more about Awin here.

This article originally appeared in Business Reporter.

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