What Is Influencer Marketing?

Understanding every one of the several marketing jargons is essential to your company's marketing success. One of the more popular terms that you may have heard recently is influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing: what is it? Does it really need to be done? What are some ways to improve your influencer marketing abilities?

Here’s everything you need to know about influencer marketing.

Understanding Influencer Marketing

A marketing strategy known as "influencer marketing" centers on collaborations with reliable social media influencers. By using influencer marketing, you can take advantage of the fact that your target audience already has a high level of trust in the person you're partnering with. This audience is more likely to try out your product or service because they know they can trust the influencer.

Reaching the Right Audience

One of the most critical decisions to make when choosing influencers for your brand is making sure you’re reaching the audience that will be most likely to use and enjoy your product. If you’re selling products for an audience which is 30-45 years old, then you don’t want to partner with an influencer whose audience is predominantly 17-24.

The specific audience you target will depend in part on the platform you choose. For example, Tik Tok and Instagram tend to attract a younger user base, but Tik Tok is becoming more and more popular among users of all ages, so you may target a wide range of demographics with your marketing. Influencers on other social media networks, such as Facebook, YouTube, and others, are also available for collaboration.

Influencers vs. Affiliates

If you already have a general understanding of affiliate marketing, then you may be asking, “What’s the difference between affiliate marketing and influencer marketing?

The truth is that influencer marketing and affiliate marketing are similar but not identical. With affiliate marketing, you’re partnering with affiliates who produce content and entice customers to visit your website and make a purchase. When a potential customer makes a purchase, you pay the affiliate marketer a commission. You do not pay the affiliate until someone makes a purchase.

However, in affiliate marketing, you partner with an influencer to endorse or promote your product. Payment may be exchanged in a variety of ways, including free products, traditional marketing payments, and funding for projects an influencer is interested in creating. It’s closer to traditional paid advertising but uses a trusted source as your spokesperson.

Regardless of whether you choose affiliate marketing or influencer marketing, you should still be looking for a robust affiliate marketing platform that allows you to track sales being made through these referrals.

Using Influencers to Boost SEO and Brand Identity

Influencers can be a huge benefit to your company outside of just the sales they bring in. One of the biggest reasons that you should engage in these different types of marketing is its ability to boost brand loyalty. When people really love your company, they’re more likely to keep buying from you.

Additionally, choosing the right influencers is paramount. Connecting with influencers who match the face of your brand helps you build a brand identity. It’s important to remember, however, that using the wrong ones can actually harm your brand identity as well. This is why careful selection of both influencers and affiliates is critical, as you can either improve or negatively impact your identity.

Affiliate and influencer marketing can also benefit your company’s SEO. The more high-quality content about your brand that is out there on the internet, the more that internet search engines like Google and Bing are going to pay attention to your website. Whether it’s linking back to specific pages or just generally discussing your brand, this type of marketing makes internet search engines recognize that people are talking about you.

Influencer Marketing for Different Platforms

Every platform is going to need a slightly different approach to influencer marketing. Refersion partners with a number of platforms, Shopify, Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Stripe, allowing you to quickly integrate your influencer or affiliate marketing program within your platform. This way, you can add influencer marketing quickly and easily to your list of marketing strategies.

Additionally, Refersion has a number of partners that make it easier to manage your affiliate or influencer marketing program. From Chargebee to Mailchimp and beyond, your influencer marketing program can really blossom using these added partners, turning a strong influencer marketing program into one of the main things pushing your business forward.

Combining Influencer Marketing With Other Marketing Strategies

Finally, while influencer and affiliate marketing are important, there are other marketing strategies you can use that may boost your business as well. Deciding on the exact marketing strategies you use will be an ongoing discussion within your brand, but it’s good to know your options.

Affiliate marketing is one of the numerous alternatives available for performance marketing; however, there are other kinds of performance marketing as well. Additionally, loyalty programs may be a fantastic method to effectively market to your current clientele and keep them coming back for more. Additionally, email marketing frequently reaches out to current clients, or at the very least, clients who have already shown interest in your business. And last, some companies continue to employ traditional paid advertising, which could work well for your company if you pair it with influencer marketing.

By demonstrating to potential buyers that a reliable influencer is a fan of your product, influencer marketing can increase sales.

Whether you are new to influencer marketing or have been doing it for decades, Refersion is a great option for anyone trying to create a better affiliate or influencer program.