What to Look for When Choosing an Influencer Affiliate Marketing Partner
Influencer marketing is generating significant amounts of revenue for both the influencers themselves and their partners. The market grew to $13.8 billion in 2021 and is expected to surpass $16 billion in 2022. This demonstrates just how important these social media celebrities can be for brands. But influencers are not without their controversies. Some influencer affiliate programs have suffered from irresponsible and dishonest practices. Also, some influencers overstate the value they offer to partners. However, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pursue this marketing route. It just means you need to be careful when selecting a partner. Here’s what to look out for when choosing an influencer affiliate marketing partner.
Tip #1 for the Right Influencer Affiliate Marketing Partner: Check Follower Engagement
It’s common to hear influencers talk about the number of their followers. They emphasise impressive subscriber figures of tens to hundreds of thousands. While having a huge amount of followers is useful, engagement is more important. In other words, these followers need to be actively liking, sharing, and commenting on posts. Even a “nano influencer” with only 1,000 followers can be useful to your brand if 95% of these followers are engaging with content. On the other hand, someone with 85,000 followers made up of bots or other influencer accounts may not provide much traffic or traction.
Tip #2 for the Right Influencer Affiliate Marketing Partner: Look into Activities Outside of Social Media
Social media is the main forum for engagement and influencer activity. However, offline activities can help you learn more about influencer candidates. Followers of these influencers will recognise them in the offline sphere too. It is because they speak at events and take part in other activities. This might not be a deal-breaker as you make your decision. Googling the name of an influencer and seeing what they’ve been up to can help you differentiate between key candidates.
Primary Demographic
It’s critical that the influencer marketing program is relevant to what you are providing. For example, if you are providing sports betting services, the influencer will need to reach customers of legal betting age who are engaged with sporting competitions and are located in supported countries and territories. So take the time to assess the demographic of your influencer candidates before you make a selection.
Posting Regularity
Make sure that influencers are posting regularly. Ideally, they should be posting to Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok every day or at least several times a week. This helps to build your brand and increase your profile with influencer marketing. You will be able to outline a minimum posting frequency in your influencer affiliate marketing contract, but it still pays to do further research. Understanding how often the influencer is posting all by themselves is a good way to assess their credibility in the field.
Willingness to Collaborate and Discuss
Finally, the best influencer candidate will be willing to collaborate and discuss ideas. They should be communicative and ready to meet regularly — even if these meetings are carried out digitally via Zoom or another channel. Your influencer marketing program needs to be personalised and tailored specifically to your market and the specifics of your brand — this can only be guaranteed through communication and discussion.
A Careful and Considered Decision
Partnering with an influencer can be very fruitful, provided you make the right choice. So take your time, consider your options, apply the criteria discussed above, and score major success with an influencer affiliate program.
