These days, companies are always looking for the best way to achieve better sales through it and reach their audience. In this space of digital marketing, both affiliate and influencer marketing enter the stage, two big guns that are taking over the online marketing world. But which business will be for your business? Which one is better for you, should it be influencers or affiliate network or it is wise to take a combination of both things?

Think again in case you have to select only a single! Though these alternative strategies take quite different approaches, there is an unexpected amount of overlap. They will know how to leverage their strengths in order to be a game changer for your marketing strategy.

In this article we will explain the key differences between the two and explain when to use influencer media and when affiliate media is more suited to your brand’s growth. Let’s dive in!

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. It’s important to note that the affiliate gets rewarded with a commission for every sale or lead which is generated through their unique affiliate link. This link is tracking the source of the traffic and making sure the affiliate gets credited for their work. You may be dealing with a simple link sharing, or a more elaborate cooperation in form of the content creation, dedicated promotions, etc.

There are several levels of connection between affiliate and the product or service it is going to promote.

• Unattached: The affiliate has no direct connection with the product/service being promoted.
• Related: The affiliate follows their niche and does not use (or does not need to use) and does not need to endorse the product/service personally.
• Involved: The affiliate already knows the product, uses it and speaks to their audience about it with their honest recommendation.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is based on the idea that the people which interact with social media regularly can provide exposure to a brand, product, or service through an influencer’s influence. Influencers have credibility and relationship with their audience that influences purchasing decision. In a way, they generally create and share content with the brand that is more authentic and relatable than that of traditional advertising.

Influencers are usually divided by the number of followers you have:

• Nano-influencers: (Less than 10,000 followers)
• Micro-influencers: (10,000 – 100,000 followers)
• Macro-influencers: (100,000 – 1 million followers)
• Mega-influencers: (1 million+ followers)

It largely depends on whom are you paying for, budget, target audience and your campaign goals. This process can be very useful for a skilled influencer marketing coordinator.

Pros & Cons of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has become a favorite of businesses seeking to promote their products and drive sales with a little or no downside. But there are also some disadvantages to influencer marketing and challenges with it. Despite its benefits, and options to consider including B2B comparisons and other promotional strategies.

Pros:

• Cost Effective: Unlike the traditional form of advertising, you will only pay affiliates when there is a conversion.
  
• Measurable ROI: What makes an affiliate campaign special for businesses is that it has measurable ROI. Such as that of influencer marketing outreach.
  
• Scalability: The affiliate program is scalable, meaning whether you’re a small business or an enterprise. It is expanding and reducing based on goals and objectives.
  
• Easy to Set Up: Setting up an affiliate program is also pretty straightforward. Especially because there are affiliate networks and marketing platforms. An influencer marketing coordinator can combine the affiliate efforts with the efforts in influencer partnerships to create a sound strategy overall.

Cons:

• No Brand Control: Since affiliates regulate how your product would be promoted, you will have limited control over your brand. This can eventually lead to poor brand representation.
  
• Potential for Fraud: Cookie stuffing or link hijacking can be occurring, which influences results. So it would be wise to monitor influencer marketing KPI’s in combination with affiliate metrics.
  
• Quicker Engagement: Unlike influencer campaigns the affiliate program doesn’t show results very fast. That, however, is how it builds good engagement one affiliate at a time.
  
• Loyalty on Affiliates: Much as done in an influencer marketing blog campaign that will depend largely on the performance of the affiliate itself.

Affiliate marketing is relatively cost efficient and scalable whereas working with affiliate marketing in tandem with influencer marketing gives rise to a potent hybrid that can be used for business development.

Pros & Cons of Influencer Marketing

Pros:

• Better Brand Exposure: Influencers allow you us to shed light on your brand to a receptive and bigger group than you could have done yourself.
  
• Enhanced credibility and Trust: The opinions of people whom they are following appeals more potent than that of ordinary ads. If a positive mention is mentioned about your brand, it can definitely boost your brand’s reputation.
   
• Targeted Audience: There is a probability that some influencers are niche marketers who target a specific audience, and they will give your brand the exact customers you want to target.
   
• Through Eye Catching Content: They are capable content creators who create content which is relatable to their followers and subtly promote your brand while engaging your audience through good quality content.
   
• Influencer generated SEO traffic: Influencer adds value to your brand by generating extra traffic to your website, by providing more exposure of your name (brand mentions), linking back to your website (backlinks), and sharing with their followers (social shares) all of which help improve SEO.

Cons:

• Top Influencer Partnership: It’s very expensive to partner with influencers. Campaigns must be well budgeted by brands.
  
• ROI Measurement Is Difficult: Direct sales channels make it easy to measure the tangible return on investment. But this is not so easy while getting ROI from influencer marketing. You need to utilize advanced analytics and tracking tools for this purpose.
  
• Potential for Negative Publicity: If the influencer involved in controversy is associated with your brand. It will be damaging to your brand reputation and therefore influencer selection becomes imperative.
  
• Difficult: It can be hard to discover the proper influencers, benefit them to work with you, and manage collaborations on an ongoing basis.

However, influencer marketing is not all positive as there are also some cons that you should consider before estimating into this popular marketing channel. The wise approach is to plan strategy so that benefits are maximized and risks are minimized.

How Do They Compare with Each Other?

Two core deciding factors of affiliate vs influencer marketing are marketing effectiveness, audience reach, and cost and investment, including money and non-monetary aspects. Let’s dissect these elements:  

Marketing Effectiveness & Audience Reach:

As such, influencer marketing is based on the idea of working with social media personalities that can promote your brand and, as a result, share it with their usually quite extensive followers. It gives a wider campaign visibility and better user penetrations. Throw a wide net, you will hit many people – not all will be your catch of dream. While they can count as high as impressions and views. The audience you may reach may be dispersed (broader) than your target demographic since metrics tend to be exaggerated without a proportional ROI. Influencer marketing coordinator must be skilled enough to help refine targeting within influencer campaigns.  

Conversely, programs for affiliation provide a better laser focus. Whereas it is spear fishing, you are seeking particular sites and channels to appeal to qualified leads. A good example for any recruitment consultancy is to partner with the best headhunters on LinkedIn, on commission for successful placements. It is efficient, streamlined and delivers what you need exactly. This targeted approach in the B2B world is especially valuable across the board (sometimes through b2b influencer marketing).  

In a nutshell, influence marketing provides broad visibility while working on affiliation programs allow focusing on a more targeted approach to get more from lead generation and ROI.

Costs & Investments:

For a substantial investment and very high exposure, influencer marketing is definitely a no brainer. Be prepared, however, for potential very high costs. A strategic approach is key. One way to increase visibility to a particular product is through micro influencers as it can be an economical approach. The outreach to influencers is equally important to find right partners.  

Those who want to take the safer route go for affiliate marketing. It is pay per conversion, so less resource intensive and more flexible. If required, you can pause campaigns as well.  It also requires less hands-on management furthermore. Your partners create and promote the content thanks to which your team doesn’t spend much time on that area. To determine the success of your influencer marketing campaigns. Be sure to track the influencer marketing KPIs, seek advice from an influencer marketing blog for the latest trend.

On the whole, influencer marketing has a wide reach, but it is costly. And that is how affiliate marketing offers a less expensive, more targeted method which offers the possibility of strong ROI.

FAQs

Does influencer marketing actually work?

Well, influencer marketing is effective when done with a strategy. Through leveraging trust and authenticity, it is used to reach target audience, drive brand awareness, engagement, as well as sales. However, success is not necessarily assured as it requires proper planning, choosing of influencers and the actual campaign execution.  

What is the premise behind influencer marketing?

The basic amount is that if people admire someone or someone relates to them they trust recommendations put forth by them. Influencer marketing leverages on this by working with those people either to promote a brand or product into their audience while drawing on their credibility and the connection that they have with their following.

How to track influencer marketing?

In short, influencer marketing tracking means tracking the key performance indicators (KPIs) such as reach, engagement (likes, shares and comments), website traffic, brand mentions or conversions.  Campaign effectiveness and value of money or ROI can be measured by using analytics tool and dedicated influencer marketing platform.