With Instagram affiliate marketing, you can take your business to the next level. Brand affiliates can help drive traffic to your site and generate more sales.
81% of brands are already using affiliate marketing as a part of their overall marketing mix.
Affiliate marketing is also known as performance based marketing. It is useful because it:
- Has the potential to boost sales
- Helps to build a loyal customer segment
- Is cost-effective
- Helps to build meaningful relationships with influencers
Here are four ways to use Instagram for affiliate marketing:
1. Convert Your Loyal Followers into Affiliates
The best prospects to become your brand affiliates are your loyal followers.
People who have followed your brand from the very beginning are the ones who know your brand really well. They are the ones who trust your brand the most.
People who regularly engage with your posts are also good choices to become possible brand affiliates.
You can use tools like Follower Analyzer to identify your most loyal followers on Instagram. This app will tell you which of your followers have always liked and commented on your posts.
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You can also run contests on Instagram to identify your followers who actively participate in them. The biggest advantage of running contests and giveaways regularly is that it will help you build brand awareness.
In fact, brands that run contests grow their followers 70% faster than those who don’t. Besides building brand awareness, contests will also help you to quickly find users who can be good prospects for affiliate marketing.
2. Partner with Influencers to Promote Your Brand
You can collaborate with influencers and ask them to become your brand affiliates.
Influencers are social media users who have a high degree of trust and credibility as well as a large following. They can persuade other users to buy your products or services. You can even use them to grow your list of affiliate marketers.
Finding the perfect influencer is a tough task because you need to find someone whose posts align with your core brand values.
Here are some tips for finding the best influencer for your brand:
- Audit your existing followers and identify influencers who regularly engage with your brand on a positive note.
- Check the profiles of the influencers to see if they promote any services of your competitors.
- Measure the level of engagement they receive on their posts. Note that Instagram influencers with smaller followings have higher engagement rates You can use the Influence.co Influencer Engagement Map to understand the average Instagram engagement rate that’s normal for influencers based on following size.
- Create meaningful relationships with influencers before you collaborate with them.
If you fail to choose a relevant influencer, your affiliate marketing campaign might backfire resulting in loss of followers. Influencers are probably your best bet to expand your business reach.
3. Get a Great Instagram Shoutout
Instagram shoutouts are a great way to reach more people and spread your brand message.
Shoutouts involve posting photos or videos of other businesses or people in your account. You can reach out to a number of users (often influencers) on Instagram and offer them a shoutout in return for a shoutout.
Instagram users will spread your affiliate marketing message with others. When more users read your message to become brand affiliates, the chances of gathering followers will increase.
Here are some effective ways to find good shoutout partners on Instagram:
- Find other users who share content similar to yours. If you run a restaurant and regularly share photos related to food, then find other users who share a similar passion as you.
Users who share photos related to cars might not be a good fit for a shoutout whereas users who regularly share recipe photos can be a good fit. - Collaborate with users who have a similar amount of followers as you. Like and comment on their posts before you approach them.
- Do not choose accounts that have a lot of ads related to different genres. It’s likely that they’re only in it for the money and don’t care too much about quality. People don’t like to engage with users who do not care about content quality.
- Notice the level of engagement they get on their posts. Higher engagement will lead to better brand publicity and help to improve the ROI of your affiliate marketing campaign.
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4. Use the Power of Hashtags
People search for content on Instagram using hashtags. Associate your brand with popular hashtags in order to attract relevant users toward your business profile.
You can leverage the power of newsjacking to quickly grab the attention of several users. Storytelling + newsjacking + hashtags is the winning formula to reach your target demographic.
You can identify hashtags associated with products that you sell and provide deals that shoppers can’t resist. You can add a small link in the message to allow users actively looking for deals to become your brand affiliates and get a huge discount in return.
Instagram Stories are also a great way to promote your hashtags. More than 500 million users use Stories every day. This means there’s a huge opportunity for your brand to build a loyal following.
Since Instagram Stories last for only 24 hours, they are perfect for sharing limited-time offers.
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You can also create polls in your Instagram Stories to increase user engagement. People love to choose between options. When you post a poll, people quickly engage with it and vote for their preferred option. More engagement leads to greater brand visibility.
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Here are some additional tips to identify and promote your hashtags:
- Be specific. Do not choose hashtags just because they are popular. Prioritize relevance over popularity.
- Use location-specific hashtags to attract local affiliates for your brand.
- Promote your hashtags in the images your share.
- Prioritize your customers’ interests when choosing your hashtags.
- Find ideas on which hashtags to use by looking through your competitors’ content.
- Check out my blog shanebarker.com for tips on how to add spaces in captions to use hashtags effectively.
Final Thoughts
Instagram is the perfect platform to market your product or services via affiliates. Everything revolves around influencers and your brand followers when it comes to Instagram marketing.
The first step towards building authentic relationships with your followers is by identifying who your followers are and what they value in their lives.
By collaborating with influencers and followers, you will not only increase your sales but also build credibility for your business.
Got any more affiliate marketing ideas for Instagram? Let us know in the comments.
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