As someone who often checks YouTube review videos first before buying something, I’ve come across several creators who share affiliate links alongside highly informative content. And every time, I think of the missed opportunity for an influencer partnership.
Those influencers are signing on as affiliates and organically promoting the products. But imagine how much more impactful their content could be if they were officially partnering with the brand even outside of its affiliate marketing program. The brand could work closely with them to align their content with bigger business goals and targeted campaigns.
For example, a tech brand could work with a YouTube reviewer on a back-to-school campaign to create a review video that focuses on how a specific laptop model helps students with schoolwork.
This gives them timely and relevant content that reaches high-intent buyers. Combine that with a discount or promo, and you’re incentivizing those buyers to convert. And that equals more sales.
Notice how CleanMyMac partners with GregsGadgets on a MacBook Neo review video and provides him with a unique link and discount code for his viewers.
That’s why many brands are now backing up their affiliate marketing programs with reliable influencers. In this post, I break down the differences between affiliate marketing and influencer partnerships and weigh the pros and cons of each approach. I also share actionable tips to build a hybrid compensation model that gives you the best of both worlds. Let’s get started.
So what’s wrong with affiliate marketing? Why can’t you just have influencers as affiliates and leave it at that? Or alternatively, why do you need influencers in your affiliate program? Can’t you just pay them a flat fee and be done with it?
Both approaches have their pros and cons when you use them on their own. Let’s take a closer look at what each option brings to the table and what drawbacks you need to consider.
With affiliate marketing, payouts are clearly tied to actual performance. You’re paying affiliates based on the sales they help to generate instead of the sales you hope they generate. So there’s a lower risk of “wasted” spend.
Moreover, it allows you to easily attribute sales to individual affiliates. With each affiliate having a unique link or code, you can track conversions at the individual level.
The biggest issue with affiliate marketing is that it’s a prime target for coupon spam sites. These sites position themselves at the final stage of purchase, hijacking credit for sales that you would’ve made anyway. You’re essentially paying them for sales they didn’t even help to generate.
Affiliate marketing gives influencers or affiliates full creative freedom over what content they create and how to position your product. While this is great for authenticity, it comes at the risk of brand safety.
Creators might use words, content angles, and topics you don’t want to associate with your brand. This could drag you into a controversy you didn’t even ask for.
For example, the influencer might use your affiliate link in an AI-generated video that gets tons of backlash from viewers. While your brand wasn’t responsible for the content, you might inadvertently become labeled as a brand that promotes generative AI.
Owing to the above drawbacks of affiliate marketing, influencer partnerships may serve you better when you want more control over the creative output.
You’re providing influencers with briefs and instructions, which gives you the opportunity to guide them, so their content aligns with your brand’s expectations and rules. This is a great way to maintain consistency in your branding and messaging.
For example, you could instruct them to use a specific adjective to describe a product’s feature and avoid certain phrases (e.g., oil-free vs. dry-touch when promoting a noncomedogenic sunscreen). That way, you get to maintain brand safety and strategically balance creative freedom with control.
Additionally, you can work closely with them to brainstorm content ideas and angles that simultaneously meet campaign goals and resonate with their audiences. They’re the ones who know their audience best, so they know what works. And you get to tap into that knowledge as you figure out how to craft messaging that lands.
One of the biggest challenges of working with influencers is influencer attribution. An influencer’s Reel may get plenty of visibility and engagement. But there’s no way to know whether it ultimately influenced people to buy the product unless you’re actively using tracking links and promo codes.
While those vanity metrics alone may be enough to measure performance for brand awareness campaigns, they don’t tell you the whole story when it comes to conversions.
There’s also the fact that influencers aren’t as motivated to continue promoting your products once they’re done with the deliverables. Whether you’re contracting them to post 2 Reels or 4 TikTok videos, they’ll simply move on after they’ve created the content they were paid to create. They have no reason to keep creating content for your brand because there’s nothing in it for them.
So the partnership has a deadline…and a short one at that.
Based on the drawbacks I highlighted above, it’s now clear that influencer partnerships don’t always work in your favor while affiliate marketing also poses a risk. The answer’s obvious: you need to incorporate influencers into your affiliate marketing program.
At the same time, you need to steer clear of the “commission only” model when you’re working with top creators. UGC creators and nano-influencers might benefit from the opportunity to be a brand ambassador and earn commissions without any additional fees. But when you’re working with bigger influencers, especially top-tier creators, this isn’t always enough.
Sure, there’s a chance they can earn virtually a limitless amount from affiliate commissions. On the flip side, they might not earn anything at all if they don’t end up driving any sales. This uncertainty doesn’t compensate for the time and energy that goes into creating the content.
After all, it’s not free to produce content. Who will cover the production costs?
This is why you need to strategically combine the two into a performance marketing model that rewards creators for their time and performance.
In other words, you need to strike a hybrid deal that includes:
The opportunity to earn additional commissions could give you leverage to negotiate a lower base fee with influencers. At the same time, they still get rewarded for the work they do, with the opportunity to earn more if their content performs well. This also encourages them to keep promoting the content or even create additional content to maximize their commission earnings.
Both influencers and brands get good value out of a hybrid performance marketing payment structure.
Whether you’re paying them a tiered performance-based bonus or a percentage of sales, payments are more straightforward to figure out when they can be directly tied to performance. For example, if you’re paying 5% commissions from the sales generated, an influencer will earn $50 for selling $1,000 worth of products.
A major challenge lies in determining the base fee. What’s a fair rate to cover the cost of producing content?
You’ll want to look at the influencer’s typical fees and audience size and compare them against industry benchmarks. How much are other influencers of the same size charging? According to the latest influencer rate card, micro-influencers charge around $250-$750 for a TikTok video while macro-influencers are charging upwards of $3k.
Additionally, the type of content they create will also play a role. Formats like Reels may cost more to produce than single-image posts.
Based on these combined factors, you can negotiate a reasonable rate that considers the opportunity for additional commissions.
Platforms like Influencity automatically estimate a fair rate for influencers based on various profile and performance metrics. This speeds up the process of calculating a base fee to guide your negotiations.
Besides determining a fair base fee, here are a few more best practices that will help you implement a hybrid payment model.
Motivate influencers to perform better with tiered commission structures. This involves increasing the commission amount based on performance milestones. For instance, in addition to a $500 flat fee to cover production costs, you could structure your commission payments as follows:
The opportunity to earn more could encourage influencers to drive even more sales. Some might even create more content as they try to hit those milestones. After all, 5% of a $10,000 sale sounds great, but 10% is even more enticing. And influencers would be willing to work much harder to earn higher commissions.
Manual tracking and calculations leave room for errors. An influencer who repeatedly has to reach out for the correct payment is bound to get frustrated at some point. So make sure to automate the process and use a reliable tracking tool to ensure better accuracy.
Additionally, influencers should have a clear understanding of how you calculate their commissions. How much are they entitled to earn? What tools will you use to track the sales? What timeline are you using to account for monthly sales (e.g., 30 days from the date of activation vs. 1st to 30th of each month)?
Provide visibility into their performance data with creator dashboards or reports that let them see the same data you’re seeing. Maintaining transparency is essential to build trust with influencers and strengthen your relationship with them. When influencers have a clear idea of how they’re doing and how much they’re set to earn, it gives them reassurance and even encourages them to increase their income.
This is where using a reliable platform like Influencity comes in handy. You get to create promo codes and links and track their performance within your campaign workflow.
The platform shows you the number of times an influencer’s code was used and the total sales generated from it. So you can accurately calculate an influencer’s performance-based earnings. You can even show them the same data to maintain transparency.
You’ll also want to consider whether a specific attribution model works better for your campaign.
Coupons are easier for influencers to share, especially on platforms like Instagram that don’t allow links in the caption. But UTM links are easier to track for many brands. So consider experimenting with different attribution models to see what works best.
Influencity makes it easy to create discount promo codes and trackable links for individual creators. And you can easily track usage and performance within your campaign reports. You can then weigh each model by performance, accuracy, and ease of use before you settle on the right one.
Influencer partnerships offer brands the opportunity to deliver impact through controlled authenticity. Meanwhile, affiliate marketing allows easy influencer attribution. Combining the two into a hybrid model is the most effective way to maximize sales in the age of authenticity.
Affiliate marketing is not the same as influencer marketing, as it uses affiliates to generate sales for the brand in exchange for commissions. Influencer marketing involves partnering with influencers to promote a brand for visibility, engagement, and sometimes sales. Some brands also combine the two, turning influencers into affiliates.
Performance marketing is a promotion strategy where brands only pay publishers (or influencers) when a specific action is taken—whether that’s clicks, form submissions, or conversions.
Attribution in influencer marketing is the process of assigning credit to an influencer for a conversion.
Some popular influencer commission structures are: