Now at this time of the century, it is a very smart move to run an affiliate program and a partnership with different influencers which could help you to reach out to a huge and highly profitable audience. Getting a thought of starting an affiliate marketing program for your business on Instagram? If yes, then it is a brilliant idea to use Instagram to spread your business.
Affiliate marketing and Instagram marketing are two different things but each one is a multi-billion dollar industry, if you merge them together and then you have got the potential for a remunerative side hustle. Affiliate marketers on Instagram get paid always when their followers purchase a product that they have recommended. Instagram marketing is a very common thing nowadays.
Instagram makes an ideal platform for affiliates, not just because half of all Instagram users shop on the platform every week, but also because the platform’s content formats- images, videos, and Livestreams- showcase the 360-degree view most people need prior to purchasing.
In this article, we are going to discuss affiliate marketing, how we can get our brand or our business on a top level, and also how you can use an affiliate program to fast-track your growth and success. If you are thinking about running affiliate programs on Instagram then I guess it’s the best idea because Instagram is the app that is the commonest among youngsters nowadays and it is the best one for collaboration with different influencers. But for doing this first you should be aware of the term affiliate marketing. Do you know about the idea of affiliate marketing? Let’s first discuss what is affiliate marketing
Affiliate Marketing – What Is It?
It’s basically a whole system that allows influencers to promote a brand’s products or services and earn a commission from the clicks or sales they generate. Basically, affiliates perform online marketing on behalf of a merchant, with the ultimate goal of driving traffic and conversation for the merchant’s website.
Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement in which affiliates receive a commission for each signup or sale they generate. It is a form of performance-based marketing where the commission acts as an incentive for the affiliate, this commission is usually a percentage of the price of the product being sold, but can also be a flat rate per referral.
How, Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Have you got the idea of affiliate marketing? Now let’s discuss how this affiliate marketing works. Generally speaking, the persons who are doing affiliate marketing mostly known as affiliate marketers host the websites where they advertise the offers of their brands or on the behalf of the brands whom they are presenting in various ways like blogs, videos, reviews, ads, products Link, and many more.
They receive the payment on a pre-defined basis, usually when a customer clicks on the link which is a service of online marketing known as Pay- Per- Click but sometimes only when the customer actually buys the product (CPA or Cost Per acquisition).
This Is How Affiliate Marketing Works:
- Choose a niche
- Join an affiliate program
- Promote products and offers
- Track and optimize conversions
- Receive commission
How To Set Up An Affiliate Marketing Program On Instagram:
you don’t have to worry about anything even if you are new in the world of affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a very simple process and you can learn it quickly and very easily. Let’s get started with the steps we have to follow to set up an affiliate marketing program on Instagram:
1- Pick An Affiliate Network:
If you are in search of a person or a network with the help of whom you can do affiliate marketing just like influencers the best way to find these types of persons is to use an affiliate network, it will help you in finding your desired network. The affiliate network will give you different services or benefits like tracking technology, reporting tools, and payment processing along with exposure to a base of influencers who already use affiliate links on their platforms. These are some of the main affiliate networks from which you can choose easily:
- CJ Affiliate
- Pepperjam
- Rakuten
- ShareASale
The tracking technology bit is especially important, as affiliate networks provide trackable links that influencers can use to track clicks and sales.
If we talk about sales, affiliate networks can also help you figure out the amount of commission an influencer is due, and what type of commission structure is best.
For commission, there are two models
- Pay Per Click
- Cost Per Acquisition
Pay Per Click means that you will earn a small amount for every click that you drive to a website. While Cost Per Acquisition only pays when an actual sale is made.
If you are new in this business then I guess Cost Per Click model may not be the safest route for your journey. Another model which is Cost Per Acquisition is at much lower risk as compared to Cost per Click as it is based on actual sales performance and can motivate influencers to focus on sales rather than traffic.
When you are all set on an affiliate network, you can further boost your exposure by joining a monetization platform like reward style or ShopStyle. But don’t forget that you must first one of the above affiliate networks first.
2- Set Your Commission Rates:
after choosing your affiliate network it’s time to set up your commission rates which basically means how much you will pay an influencer for each sale they drive.
There are many ways or ideas with the help of which you can set up your commission rates. Let’s discuss some of them:
- ANALYZE YOUR PROFIT MARGINS: commission payments ultimately come out of your profit margin, so understanding how much profit you are willing to trade for a higher volume of sales is essential
- CONDUCT COMPETITOR ANALYSIS: how much commission does your competitor payout? What is the status or standard of that industry?
- ASK YOUR AFFILIATE NETWORK: affiliate networks have tons of experience and are likely to provide you with a wealth of information.
After deciding your commission rates, now it’s time to set up your payment terms. This is actually 60-90 days to allow for returns or exchanges but also depends on your individual sales cycle.
3- Create A Compelling Affiliate Program:
whenever you are creating your affiliate program don’t forget your target, make sure it’s one that the influencers actually want to participate in.
One way to incentivize influencers is to build a tiered program, with the option to unlock extra rewards. This can really motivate influencers to promote your brand and services and fairly rewards them for the effort they put in.
This can be as simple as a higher commission rate for a higher volume of sales, or a one-off bonus payment.
4- Find Influencers To Partner With One Instagram:
Here are so many ways you can go about finding influencers and affiliates to partner with on Instagram. Depending on Instagram marketing goals, you may want to strategically hand-pick influencers to get the most from your affiliate campaigns. We recommend downloading our free Instagram influencers marketing strategy guide for tips on:
- Strategies for driving sales with influencer marketing
- why micro-influencers marketing is a growing trend
- what are the FTCs rules for disclosing sponsored Instagram posts
- tips on finding the right influencers for your business or campaigns
- how Instagram influencer marketing works
Remember that the quality of influencer affiliates far outweighs the quantity. Don’t ever stress about having a ton of influencers affiliates posting about your brand, just make sure the ones you do pick are serving as strong voices for your products and are effectively driving sales.
5- Analyze And Adjust:
once your affiliate program is set up and running. It is important to keep track of what is working for your brand. If you are using an affiliate network, they should have detailed reporting available that will show you how many affiliate links have been generated for your brand. And also how many clicks they have driven, also the total sales value.
It is also important to track how many of your affiliate marketing sales make it through the closure. If you are noticing an unusually high return rate, this could be a sign that your influencer’s affiliates are misrepresenting your products.
This could be harming your brand reputation and causing unnecessary admin costs, so it is definitely worth keeping a close eye on.
Along with all these steps make sure that the Instagram account is a creator account. To run an affiliate marketing program on Instagram, you will need to turn your Instagram account into a creator account.
Follow These Steps:
- Open up your Instagram account
- Go to the settings option
- Go the Accounts
- Tap Switch to a professional account and choose Creator
- Choose the category that best describes your affiliate niche
- Also, enter your contact information
Instagram creator profiles are designed for bloggers, influencers, and content creators. This creator account gives you access to the different tools which are very useful in order to grow your affiliate business on this platform.
You can also see your followers’ growth, and audience demographics and manage questions from people interested in your affiliated products by dividing your Instagram DMs.
Tips For Making More Affiliate Sales On Instagram:
once your affiliate Instagram account is set up, the hard work doesn’t stop there. Here we will discuss some tips which are helpful in maximizing your income potential through Instagram
1- Label Affiliate Products As A Paid Partnership:
Given the surge in the number of Instagram users incentivized to share products with their followers, the FTC laid out strict guidelines on how marketers must disclose their relationship with an affiliate brand. Instagram recently launched a feature design to help affiliate marketers meet these FTC requirements.
The paid partnership labels, like from Chantel Mila, clearly indicate that affiliate marketers are incentivized to share the brand’s content. but it is not just FTC’s good books you will land yourself in by being honest with affiliate recommendations. Lattice Hudson, founder of Lattice & Co. Says, ” I don’t suggest you obscure the fact that its affiliate marketing, since then you come off as spam, deceptive advertising, and promotions”
“Be truthful and fair with your audience, establishing true relationships through authentic content. They won’t return if all they perceive is a commercial motive- that you don’t have their best interest in mind.”
2- Create An Instagram Affiliate Storefront:
Back in June 2021, Instagram released news of its new affiliate features – one of which is an in-app storefront, similar to the e-commerce brands Instagram shops, specifically for content creators using the platform
Creators can showcase the products they are affiliated with from their profiles. The views shop tab shows recommended products, with affiliates able to tag these products from their Instagram content to encourage sales.
The Instagram affiliate shop feature is still in beta testing, though is expected to roll out to US creators soon. In the meantime, work on testing the popularity of different affiliate products. When the feature launches for all creators, you will know which items should take pride of place in your affiliate storefront.
3- Add Affiliate Links To Your Instagram Bio:
Instagram users regularly complain about the fact that they are only allowed to include one link from their bio. While the platform listened and took this into consideration for stories, affiliate marketers have had to find workarounds to divert Instagram traffic toward their affiliate links.
One popular workaround is a landing page link aggregator. Tolls like Linkpop or Tap Bio allow affiliate marketers to build landing pages that contain multiple other affiliate links.
4- Create A Discount Codes Story Highlight:
work that into your affiliate marketing strategy by sharing discount codes with Instagram followers.
Instagram stories work perfectly here. Not only is the story format one of Instagram’s most popular, with over 500 million daily users, but affiliates can use the link sticker to divert people toward products – no diversion through your bio link required. You can take the advantage of this direct linking opportunity by sharing discount codes through Instagram stories. Add an affiliate link using the link sticker.
Take this money-making strategy a step further by Saving your discount codes to story highlights. That way, coupon codes don’t disappear after 24 hours. You will also monetize first-time visitors to your profile by showcasing the discount codes they can redeem on affiliate products.
5- Record Products Demonstration:
Affiliate marketing works when Instagram followers know like and trust you enough to purchase the products you recommend. Help potential customers do that- without making them exit their Instagram feed in search of answers.
This includes:
- Instagram stories for vlog-style videos
- Instagram reels for short, TikTok-style videos
- Instagram live for Live streaming product tutorials in real-time.
6- Use Hashtag To Expand Your Reach:
to build an affiliate marketing business that generates passive income, you need to build a sustainable stream of new Instagram followers. More eyeballs on your content decrease the risk of audience fatigue when people grow bored of seeing the same content repetitively.
Hashtags help you expand your audience without much extra effort. Instagram users can follow hashtags inside the app, meaning your content could appear in their news feed, even if they don’t follow your account.
To find Instagram hashtags, start with competitors’ research. Brands, bloggers, and publishers often. Use hashtags to expand their own reach. Look at the captions and the first comments of Instagram posts shared by them for ideas.
CONCLUSION:
In this article, we have shared the affiliate marketing techniques on Instagram about how we can do affiliate marketing on Instagram. It’s basically a whole system that allows influencers to promote a brand’s products or services and earn a commission from the clicks or sales they generate.
Basically, affiliates perform online marketing on behalf of a merchant, with the ultimate goal of driving traffic and conversation for the merchant’s website. In this article, we discussed affiliate marketing, how we can get our business to a top level, and also how you can use an affiliate program to fast-track your growth and success. If you are thinking about running affiliate programs on Instagram then I guess it’s the best idea because Instagram is the app that is the commonest among youngsters nowadays and it’s the best one for collaboration with different influencers.
