Content affiliates and Influencers are a core part of most affiliate marketing strategies. Affiliate network Awin won Publisher Development Team at this year’s Performance Marketing Awards, and Influencer Marketing Consultant Carina Toledo provides tips for brands looking to work more with influencers for a diversified publisher strategy.
Remember your publisher mix
Cashback and voucher publishers have a clear mechanism to incentivise customers to directly purchase by offering a time-limited discount or cashback – bloggers and influencers, on the other hand, primarily seek to inspire and generate consideration, rather than only focusing on the transaction – both approaches have their place in an online strategy, but the latter is considerably harder to assign value to on last-click basis. Bloggers and influencers produce content that provides inspiration, reviews or examples of practical use to help customers make their decisions and because of this only 1-2% of clicks on bloggers’ links will be allocated a sale on a last-click basis, this changes drastically when you factor in all clicks that contributed to a sale via Awin’s influencer reporting.
We advise that brands team up affiliate and PR teams and invest budget in setting up campaigns with influencers that also tracks via the affiliate channel and see the metrics of conversions sitting side by side with additional engagement and awareness KPIs for a full understanding of value. The content itself created by influencers can have long-term benefits for the brand, from SEO to social media uplift, there are many ways to use influencer marketing in an integrated digital strategy. The benefit to the influencer is that they can additionally earn payments for sales made when they use Awin’s commission on assist tool.
Look for an engaged audience
Bigger audiences don’t necessarily mean more engaged users. Look to partner with an influencer who resonates with your brand and embodies your brand’s values, with audience engagement at the forefront, as niche audiences can be highly engaged too. One influencer working with Awin with a following of 16k on Instagram and 500k monthly pageviews on their website sold £750k worth of products for the retailers they featured over the course of a year. Any concerns around recommendations being made based on financial reward are minimised if that influencer is perceived to always have been authentic in their content.
Familiarise yourself with disclosure
Brands should ensure that the influencers they work with are disclosing monetised content to their followers in order to safeguard their reputation. The Advertising Standards’ Agency (ASA) in the UK issued guidance in conjunction with the Code of Advertising Practice (CAP) about affiliate marketing. This includes an infographic detailing how on-site disclaimers can be displayed. Awin has a website – Paid for Advertising – which explains how free content can have a commercial relationship attached to it. This can be linked to by any affiliate.
