Influencer Marketing as a Trend for Affiliate Marketing

Recently, the Coachella Festival, one of the most well-known international music events, concluded in the USA. By now, this event is about more than just music. It has become a showcase for trendy social media bloggers and influencers. Well-known brands invited social media stars from around the world to California to skillfully showcase their products through bloggers at the event. Trends introduced there last the entire summer and mean for companies, in addition to increased brand awareness, usually a significant financial gain.

We already explored the topic of influencer marketing in our article ITW meets OMR 2017. Due to its relevance, we are taking a closer look at it this time. The goal of influencer marketing is to strengthen brands and products among influencer bloggers' audiences through credibility and trust, and to boost sales. This happens via channels like YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat. Depending on reach, a distinction is made between micro- and macro-influencers.

The concept of influencer marketing is essentially not new. Even before the era of YouTube and others, there were always opinion leaders and brand ambassadors who talked about people, products, and opinions in secondary media. Due to digitalization, the feedback culture through likes, shares, and comments has become more interactive, direct, and especially more creative.

Thus, influencer marketing is one of the trends in affiliate marketing for 2017. According to affiliateblog.de, influencer marketing now ranks third among the most significant publisher models this year, after content sites and price comparison sites.

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Who are these influencers?

Influencers create relevant content for their social media channels, which they use to engage their audience humorously or informatively. As brand lovers, critics, or experts, they can influence the perception and evaluation of products, services, and brands. This process of evaluating has become highly important in recent years. There are influencers for every age group now. From gaming and styling bloggers to parent blogs, from cooking tutorials to car advertising. There are now media idols for nearly every product, regularly updating their audience about the latest trends. For companies, this interactive component is essential.

Influencers can be social media users, that is private individuals, but also celebrities or professionals. For example, at Coachella, alongside YouTube stars, model Stefanie Giesinger (2.7 million followers on Instagram) and singer Lena Meyer-Landrut (1.6 million Instagram followers) were also present.

Many politicians have also recognized the influence of such impactful videos and have already responded to questions from notable YouTube stars. To date, the YouTube video of the Berlin influencer LeFloid with Angela Merkel has garnered over five million views. Through the video, Ms. Merkel reached a primarily young audience and received extremely positive feedback in the comments from viewers.

If you're looking for a suitable brand ambassador, consider their reach, the channels they're found on, as well as their engagement levels, likes, and shares. Additionally, not every blogger suits every company. Therefore, the internet star's personality should partially match the product and company to ensure authenticity. As is well known, great reach doesn't help if there's no interest in a product from an assumed target audience.

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Legal requirements for influencer marketing

The legal component cannot be ignored in influencer marketing. After all, it's advertising, and it must be clearly labeled as such. According to the broadcasting treaty, advertising messages in new media must be clearly separated from editorial content or at least be recognizable. For example, if an affiliate link is added to a YouTube video, it must be marked as advertising.

Otherwise, campaigns can quickly slip into covert advertising. This is prohibited and should be avoided if a company wants to establish itself as a reputable one using influencers as a new channel.

Even though influencer campaigns can only be co-designed by companies to a limited extent—any more would restrict the creativity and credibility of brand ambassadors—companies should be able to note the external framework conditions and legal requirements. Many YouTubers and bloggers appreciate assistance with the legal safeguarding of product placements in their content.

Costs and tracking

Especially large, well-known (macro) influencers still do not work with established affiliate networks. Influencers define their reach in terms of page views, likes, and shares and are well compensated for it. Well-known bloggers now send out well-structured media kits, in which they create campaigns on a CPM basis, alongside flat rates that companies can book as marketing costs.

Thus, performance-based remuneration models from affiliate marketing are rarely effective. The solution is often a direct cooperation. Here, clean tracking along relevant KPIs should be ensured.

However, the majority of bloggers receive giveaways and are allowed to keep the products they promote.

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What can we do for you?

Are you looking for a suitable influencer campaign for your product? We are happy to assist you in campaign design and recommend effective strategies aligned with your KPIs. Contact us.