Is Affiliate Marketing the Same as Influencer Marketing?
Is affiliate marketing the same as influencer marketing?
After doing affiliate marketing for over 15+ years, I’ve found it a very rewarding side business opportunity that has earned me thousands of dollars. However, many have asked me if affiliate marketing is the same as influencer marketing.
Affiliate marketing is not the same as influencer marketing. Affiliate marketing is selling online products and services through a unique link you promote on your blog, while influencer marketing is persuading people to buy from you based on the creditability of your brand name.
Once you figure out what type of marketing you can use for your business, you can focus on all the different ways to make that marketing work for you!
Here are some of the best ways to use both marketing techniques to ensure your marketing expands.
Is Affiliate Marketing the Same as Influencer Marketing?
Affiliate marketing can sell a product on blogs and other pieces of content, selling the product with a hyperlink that comes from the company you are selling from.
Affiliate marketing can sell a product via online retailers that will give you a unique link, and it doesn’t take long to become an affiliate for big retailers like Amazon.
However, influencer marketers are focused more on building a brand and less on selling a product.
Your brand can focus on a specific niche, a way of showcasing your items, and something everyone can recognize. If an audience member looks at your brand, they should instantly recognize that that is your brand.
Influencers are people with large audiences and have a solid online presence to influence their audience, and a business likes getting into the orbit of influencers.
After all, if an influencer has an audience of thousands of people, businesses want to get their hands on that audience.
Combining Affiliate Marketing and Influencer Marketing
Along with using affiliate and influencer marketing alone, you can easily combine both marketing types and level their advantages.
For example, if you are not an influencer, you might find that you don’t have enough of an audience to get people to click on those links.
If people don’t know who you are, you can’t promote your products, and your conversion rates are much lower.
People will focus on the brands and influencers that are much more well-known.
Why Become An Influencer?
Everyone wants to become an influencer because your opinion matters to people, and you want an epic audience of thousands of people who hang onto your every word.
Your opinion matters, and whenever you say, ‘Check out XYZ product,’ your influencers will go and do that!
Plus, being an influencer on social media allows you to start on social media and drive people to your website rather than using SEO and other services.
It’s a great way to bring people to your site through active means and not passively.
How Can You Become More of An Influencer?
If you want to become an influencer, here are some things you can do.
1. Pick Your Platform
First, pick your platform and figure out what you will post to. Focus on one social media platform, to begin with, as you don’t want to get overwhelmed with doing a Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram account all at once.
Instead, pick one platform that will give you the most benefit for your platform and become an influencer on that platform.
Related Article: How to Start a Successful Blog – 5-Step Guide
You can move towards another platform after a while but focus on growing things on one platform first.
You should also have strong brand affinity and have your niche narrowed down.
When people see your account and logo, they should instantly know what they are getting into. Here are a few other things you can do to build your brand!
2. Get in Front Of People
While blogs and social media are great once you have an audience to read and appreciate them, you need to do something more daring to get out in front of people for your first outing as an influencer.
For example, focus on a Youtube Channel or Podcast. Both of these mediums allow you to be seen and heard by your audience and also let you connect with them.
After all, if the people you want to influence can see and hear you, then you don’t need to focus too hard on getting them to empathize with you. Your tone of voice and body language will do that for you!
Plus, if you are self-conscious about your writing skills, then with a YouTube video or Podcast. You can start by talking to your audience, which is often more straightforward.
The best part is you can either use these videos to supplement your blog and write posts around them or take the transcripts of the podcast or video and make those your blog posts.
Finally, people might follow you for any number of reasons. They might enjoy that you are a snappy dresser on your videos, that you always play a particular genre of music on your podcast intro, or that you sound relatable and people can connect to that.
3. Create Content Regularly
One of the biggest downfalls of blogs and small businesses is that they fail to create content consistently.
It could be because the habit is not ingrained yet, they get discouraged by the fact that no one is seeing their posts or engaging with them, or they can’t find the time once their busy schedule gets into things.
Don’t overwork yourself by aiming to publish something new daily because you will burn out. However, focusing on creating the main content (blog post, Youtube/Podcast) every week will keep you fresh in people’s minds.
You can do smaller-scale content, such as social media posts and emails, these days or every couple of days.
However, make sure to do it at around the same time. Instead of forcing your audience to refresh their feeds and check every hour for your newest post, you should associate a time with your postings.
If your fans know you will post daily to your Twitter with business-related content, guess where they will be daily?
They will be reading and engaging with your new article! This massively drives up your reader engagement and keeps everyone engaged.
4. Provide Insane Value
One of the things that keep people coming back is value, which is where the good or service outweighs the cost of getting it.
It’s why sales are so effective, for one. For example, let’s say you go to a restaurant with a 3 for 10 dollar special on your favorite meal.
You get an appetizer, dessert, and main course for just ten bucks. Isn’t that a lot of value? Won’t you return to that same restaurant for that special?
Most influencers dribble out their value as time goes on. They might release a free ebook that functions mainly as a marketing tool or maybe share a five-minute video with a clickbait title that tries to sell you a course. These guys do not last long.
If you look at some of the most successful influencers in the world today, you notice that they give you all their best stuff for free.
Instead of a five-minute marketing video, they give you a 25-minute value video filled with actionable tips and explanations. Instead of a marketing gimmick ebook, they give you an entire book’s worth of value for free.
They do this so you keep coming back, and when they do try to sell you a product, you look at all the value you get from the free stuff and wonder how much more they give you when you pay them! You need to do the same.
Don’t become an influencer for the money, or fame, or for the audience. Instead, put your passion into it and do it to help people. Everything else will come soon enough if you stay on the right path,
Which Is Better For You?
Is affiliate marketing different from influencer marketing? Yes!
But they both go hand in hand, with your status as an influencer increasing the number of people who can benefit from your affiliate marketing.
Instead of nitpicking on the differences, try to find a way to bring them together. That way, you build your audience and can start making some passive income simultaneously!
