It’s not often that you get a digital marketing strategy that benefits more than just the brand behind the message. Marketing doesn’t always have to serve only the brand’s bottom line.
Affiliate and influencer marketing have shown the opportunities available for creating mutually beneficial collaborations between businesses and creators. Brands can reach a bigger audience while creators can monetize their content.
While influencer and affiliate marketing might seem similar on the surface, each has its unique advantages and applications. Here’s a quick overview of the differences between these two popular marketing strategies.
What’s Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a low-risk, performance-based strategy where businesses reward affiliate marketers for sales that have resulted from their marketing efforts. To track their marketing efforts, unique tracking links are used.
Marketing efforts typically include sharing this unique link to a specific product or service in a blog post or email newsletter. The reward is typically a commission per sale.
Aside from the unique tracking link, affiliates might be given access to a few branding elements like banner templates and guidelines. Other than that, they’re left alone to create their own content which often leads to less brand control.
What’s Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing involves partnering with creators who have a significant following on social media platforms. These influencers create content to promote a brand’s products or services to their audience. It can be highly effective as influencers have built trust with their followers, making their recommendations more impactful.
Influencers are also typically professional content creators. They know how to produce engaging and authentic content that really resonates with audiences. That said, the arrangement typically involves brands working closely with selected influencers to ensure that content aligns with their messaging.
The payment structure typically involves upfront fees or free products, with no guarantee of sales. Herein lies the main difference between influencer and affiliate marketing.
Influencer marketing is also typically project-based, unlike affiliate marketing that grows into long-term, transactional partnerships. Influencer Marketing Hub’s The State of Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report 2024 found that almost half of all influencer campaigns are run monthly. Only about 15% of companies take an always-on approach to influencer marketing and run yearly campaigns.
Which Strategy Should You Use?
With influencer marketing, it’s harder to determine the real return on investment (ROI). It’s typically measured by engagement metrics such as shares, likes, and comments.
Essentially you’re paying for brand visibility and credibility and not sales generated. That said, the speed at which you can build your brand awareness with influencer marketing can be noteworthy.
While it’s a riskier strategy than affiliate marketing in the sense that you still pay even if the marketing activities didn’t generate revenue, investing in your brand’s presence isn’t risky.
If your current goal is to grow brand awareness and trust over sales, consider running an influencer marketing campaign. As mentioned, influencer marketing is typically implemented on a project-by-project basis which means that you don’t have to make a long-term commitment. Run a campaign, assess at the end of the month, and take it from there.
If you don’t have the budget to cover upfront costs but still want to reach an audience outside of your immediate follower pool, affiliate marketing offers you an easier point of entry.
Whichever route you take, ensure that you screen your affiliates and influencers. If they’re not properly vetted, there’s the potential of attracting low-quality traffic.
