Affiliate marketing is a very profitable and popular method of boosting revenue and increasing brand awareness. In this day and age, this kind of marketing is undergoing a meteoric rise, but also a huge shift. More and more marketers are eyeing social media platforms as their primary source of traffic and sales, and there’s no doubt that their impact has gone from strength to strength in the past few years.
Whether you’re about to launch a new program or just overhauling an old one, social media can be a great resource for generating traffic and loyal customers. Your marketing strategy can become a staggering success if you choose your platforms right.
Down below, we are going to discuss Instagram and why it’s one of the most popular places to get your brand started. It might seem a little intimidating, but we’re going to show you why you should consider using this platform. This might not be your first thought, but social media could be an incredibly powerful tool for your company.
What Exactly is Instagram Affiliate Marketing?
Well, it’s exactly what it says on the tin, it’s affiliate marketing done through Instagram. You strike a deal with an Instagrammer with relevant following (some IG users call themselves influencers) and give them a small percentage of every sale they generate. It’s as easy as can be.
The money that they get depends on the revenue they generate, so it’s a performance-based contract. The key to this is you do your research, find users with relevant followers, and then offer them a good package. Have them interact with your product or service and say a few good things about it and you got yourself at least a few thousand sales. It can be a very lucrative proposition because research shows that Instagram has incredibly high engagement rates. People LOVE their influencers and they trust them like they would their own family.
This brand of affiliate marketing enables you to capture the attention of an audience that is probably already interested in what you have to sell. They are highly engaged, they browse IG every day, and they trust the person that promotes your product fully. Celebrity endorsements have become a thing of the past, so the demand for professional-quality content on social media is huge, and companies are spending an enormous amount on the marketing of their product. People no longer trust celebrities, they trust the “regular” people that populate Instagram and drive conversion like crazy.
One more recent study showed that most people who browse Instagram consider influencers to be their friends who have their best interests in mind. They also would trust an influencer’s endorsement over that of their favorite celebrity.
Easy Tips to Help You Find Good Affiliate on IG
Alright, now that we already established that it can be helpful to generate traffic through Instagram, how do you actually get started? You have to work hard to do enough research to figure out which influencers to target and how much you should offer them in the first place. There are a few things you can try to help you along the way.
1. Pick a small niche to pick the right influencer
One of the worst things you can do is to cast your net too wide and recruit influencers who have massive audiences. There’s a reason why many professional Instagrammers operate with niche followings. You need to choose a small niche and discover which influencers in this niche are generating a high level of engagement. For example, if you’re a lifestyle and style brand, you need to narrow it down even further and take your time to research all the possible options through sites that help with influencer discovery/research.
2. Pay attention to engagement
It’s obvious when an influencer really has their audience hanging on their every word. There are some shady social media sensations that have great numbers but a very low level of engagement. Even if they have lots of followers, most are inactive. Even if they have many comments, most of them are one-word generic replies or (worse of all) fire emojis. Once again, you need to do your research and harness the power of analytics. There are many websites that can help you look up someone’s engagement rate.
3. Look for influencers that have a presence outside of IG
Another social media platform. A blog. A website. Doesn’t matter what it is, but this should be on your list of questions before you offer them anything. If they have enough ambition to branch out, they have enough experience with promoting products and are HIGHLY motivated to generate as many sales as humanly possible.
Conclusion
Instagram continues to be one of the most promising marketing channels for businesses. The numbers speak for themselves, so you really should consider giving this platform a chance. What’s more, is that you can create an account with RollerAds and start making money via Instagram affiliate marketing. We know all the ins and outs of it and we are more than happy to transfer some of that knowledge onto you – if you succeed, we succeed.
