Affiliate marketing and influencer marketing are both effective methods used to promote a product or service online. The affiliate marketing industry has grown 83% since 2017, and Influencer Marketing Hub estimates that global affiliate marketing spending will total $15.7 billion by the end of 2024. The influencer marketing industry globally was worth 21.1 billion dollars in 2023 up from 13.8 billion dollars in 2021. Brands are continuously using influencer and affiliate marketing to reach new audiences, build trust, and drive sales.
What is affiliate marketing?
The purpose of affiliate marketing is all about driving conversions by tapping into new audiences. It’s a commissioned-based model, which means you will only pay affiliates for sales produced.
Key benefits of affiliate marketing
- Attract highly targeted traffic. An example of this is the NHS Blue Light Card discount schemes. Only members who hold the card have access to special discounts and the card is only available to public sector workers.
- Significantly increase conversions. By offering exclusive incentives through affiliate sites, customers are more likely to complete a transaction
- Performance based costing model, therefore no wasted cost. You only pay for the sales you generate.
- Reach much larger audiences
- Easy to measure success as you can see how much traffic you have generated from the programmes
- Build a positive perception as businesses can boost their profile via a third party who is recommending your business
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is about leveraging the followers of the influencer to build trust for your business. They can help you to access new audiences and spread brand awareness. Essentially, a business will collaborate with an influencer by asking them to post content that promotes their products or services.
Influencer marketing uses social proof to build brand credibility.
What is social proof?
Social proof is the idea that people copy the actions of others to help perform their own actions, such as online reviews and recommendations. An example of this is where a customer visits a social media page and reads a review from an industry expert that they follow or look up to. It’s effective because we often assume our peers know better and we model our behaviour accordingly. There are six types of social proof:
- Expert – an industry leader who recommends your products
- Celebrity – who endorses your brand
- User – existing customers who post reviews
- Wisdom of the crowd – when a large group of individuals endorse your brand
- Wisdom of your friends – when people see that their friends recommend your product
- Certification – this is when you receive approval or an award from an authoritative figure
This is widely seen in the fitness industry, where fitness influencers will post their workouts whilst wearing ‘gym-fits’ from certain brands. Viewers tend to ask these influencers in the comments section where they bought their gym clothes from, so that they can do the same. Since the influencer has a desirable body-shape to their followers, consumers are led to believe they can achieve a similar physique by copying the actions of the influencer, one being, wearing the same gym clothes.
Nike is a good example of social proof that can encourage consumers to trust the brand. They often use athlete endorsements as social proof by collaborating with athletes who wear Nike products. The partnership encourages consumers to choose Nike for their sportswear needs as the followers of the athletes will admire them worldwide.
Comparing strategies
It’s important to review the disadvantages of both strategies when deciding which is best for your business. Many affiliate partners are ethical, however there are some that may employ spammy and unethical methods which can harm your businesses reputation. In addition, the success of the campaign mostly relies on the influence the affiliate has themselves.
There are also drawbacks to influencer marketing. This is mainly the cost, as influencers who have larger audiences tend to charge more, making it more expensive than affiliate marketing. It can also be challenging to find the right influencer whose values match those of your business to ensure that the relationship is genuine and not just a money-making tactic.
Choosing the right one
When it comes to being cost-effective, there is better control over costs with affiliate marketing. Some influencers also require upfront costs, even if there is no guarantee of output.
When it comes to reach and audience targeting, influencer marketing will often have loyal followers who trust them. Affiliate marketing however has a broader network of affiliates with its own audience, which is much better for niche marketing.
Credibility and trust is often associated with influencers, and their connection to their audience can make them highly influential. Whereas trust can differ depending on the affiliate’s reputation.
With affiliate marketing, you can have more control in terms of how your product will be promoted as you can provide brand guidelines as well as measure the activity. Influencer marketing however means you have to rely on their creativity and allow them to promote your content in a way that works for them.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing and influencer marketing offer unique opportunities to promote your products and services. Taking into account the above, choosing the right strategy depends on the goals of your objectives, your budget, target audience, where your brand sits in the market and how you want to track and measure success. Both strategies have their own strengths and weaknesses, so you should consider them against your own marketing objectives.
It’s also important to remember that you can combine both of these strategies. For example, you can use influencers to drive traffic to an affiliate program to leverage their audience, and you can partner with influencers who also act as affiliates to help amplify your reach. In order to do this, you need to identify influencers whose content aligns with your product or service, for example, a make-up artist influencer is ideal for skin care products.
You also want to ensure that your affiliate program offers competitive commissions and personalised discount codes and that your partnership includes perks like free products and opportunities to run dual campaigns. Ultimately, by aligning influencer marketing with your affiliate program, you expand reach, build trust, and drive sales effectively.
