In influencer marketing, proving the true value of your campaigns can be a challenge. While metrics such as likes, comments, and engagement rates provide some insight, they don't tell the full story.
Social commerce is an ever-growing industry, projected to reach USD 6.4 trillion by 2030. People are spending more on social and creators play a key role in facilitating sales.
You need to prove that your sales-focused campaigns are leading to results that impact your bottom line.
Brands need more direct ways to track performance, and that’s where affiliate links come into play.
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Why Proving Influencer ROI Can Be Tricky
Influencer marketing has become a major focus for many brands, with influencers playing a key role in driving brand awareness and engagement.
After all, 69% of people trust influencers, friends, and family over messages from brands highlighting the importance of influencers in consumer decision-making.
While influencers can increase brand visibility, proving that this visibility translates to actual sales or revenue can be difficult.
Often, brands have to resort to measuring influencer campaign success with likes, shares, or comments. These metrics don’t show the full impact on your bottom line and certainly don’t prove to key stakeholders that you should increase or maintain your budget.
This creates a challenge for influencer marketing managers. It’s simpler to prove the success of a brand awareness campaign, but how do you prove that a sales-focused influencer campaign directly leads to sales?
How Affiliate Links Solve the ROI Challenge
The solution to the challenge? Creating affiliate links to track the direct impact of influencer campaigns.
Affiliates are individuals or companies who promote your products or services, and they typically get compensated through commissions based on the sales they drive.
By working with influencers and creators as affiliates, you add a layer of performance-based marketing to your strategy, proving your campaigns are leading to both high engagement and ROI.
Affiliate marketing links allow you to track key metrics like clicks, conversions, and revenue generated by each affiliate or influencer. This allows you to tie influencer performance directly to measurable outcomes, helping you understand how many sales are driven by each affiliate.
These affiliate links turn influencer marketing into a measurable marketing channel, giving you the data you need to optimize your campaigns based on real results.
Whether you’re working with influencers who have large followings or those with smaller, niche audiences, affiliate links give you the visibility you need across your entire marketing funnel.
Adding Affiliate Marketing to Your Influencer Toolbox
Integrating affiliate marketing into your influencer campaigns doesn’t have to be complicated.
With Later’s integration with Mavely, brands can track performance and manage campaigns with ease.
If you’re an influencer marketing manager, here are a few perks you’ll love about this affiliate marketing integration:
Track performance with custom affiliate links: Later and Mavely allow you to generate custom links for influencers that track sales and engagement.
Access real-time insights: Track and report on essential campaign data such as clicks, conversions, and commissions. These insights help you see exactly how your influencers are performing and make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns.
Automated payouts: Mavely automates influencer commission payouts, so you no longer have to worry about manually processing payments. This ensures timely payouts and reduces the admin burden.
Work with existing affiliate networks: Already working with an affiliate network? Mavely supports multiple networks, so there’s no need to overhaul your current system.
Currently, we support the following networks: Rakuten, Impact, Commission Junction (CJ), Partnerize, Ascend, AWIN, ShareASale, AvantLink, PepperJam, and BrandVerity.
Sell products at major retailers: Later and Mavely support 1,200+ brands, including nationwide retailers like Walmart and Target, so you can send consumers where they’re already shopping. This is just another way this collab boosts conversion rates!
By simplifying these processes, Later and Mavely make it easier to prove the value of your influencer marketing campaigns and scale your efforts.
How Affiliate Links Change the Game for Influencer Marketing Managers
By using affiliate links, you can demonstrate how influencer and affiliate engagement leads directly to sales, showing the impact of your efforts on the company’s revenue.
This is especially important if you’re an influencer marketing manager, as you play a pivotal role in driving your company’s success.
With affiliate link tracking, you can prove that your strategies are bringing tangible results.
When you show this kind of ROI, you show your dedication to performance-driven partnerships and position yourself as the champion of your company’s influencer and affiliate marketing efforts.
You’re no longer simply managing campaigns; you’re leading the charge in driving measurable growth, making your department a key contributor to the bottom line.
Using affiliate links for your influencer marketing campaigns is helpful to:
Track sales: See exactly how many sales each influencer is driving and connect those sales to specific campaigns.
Attribute profits: Affiliate links allow you to tie profits to individual creators and campaigns, helping you understand the value of your influencer marketing efforts.
Optimize future campaigns: Use the insights gained from affiliate tracking to fine-tune your future influencer campaigns, knowing which influencers bring the best results.
Predict future results: When you can see affiliate influencers’ performance, you’ll be able to partner with creators who drive sales from the onset. Evaluating affiliate data makes ROI estimations more predictable for future campaigns.
Start Using Affiliate Links with Later Influence
Ready to prove the value of your influencer marketing program?
With Later Influence and Mavely, integrating affiliate links into your campaigns is simple.
You can find influencers, set up campaigns, and track performance all in one place. Plus, Mavely handles custom links and payouts, so you can focus on scaling your influencer efforts.
Book a call with Later Influence to start using affiliate links powered by Mavely, and unlock more ROI from your influencer program today.
