How to Market Affiliate Offers Using Social Media
November 20, 2020 5 minute read 42914 Views
The world of social media marketing is ever-evolving and may seen daunting or untrustworthy to consumers. With affiliates regularly using review sites, it can make consumers consider whether or not these bloggers and influencers actually like and believe in the products that they’re promoting.
As an affiliate, you have to work hard to close that credibility gap and earn your web visitors’ trust.
If you’re new to the concept of affiliate marketing, it’s a straightforward marketing approach. At SellHealth, we work with affiliates to promote our products and pay commissions for sales they send us through their unique links. These can occur from email, pay-per-click marketing, organic SEO, or in this blog post’s example: social media marketing.
Since influencers tend to have a high number of followers, their message about a product has the potential to reach tens of thousands of people instantaneously. However, even on a small scale with micro-influencers this process works.
Targeting on Social Media Channels
If you’re going to do social media marketing to drive affiliate sales, it’s important for you to choose what platform is right for you. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others all have different audiences. Based on your sales process, target audience, and ad type, you can choose which platform is right for you and your target market. For example, you definitely don’t want to use TikTok if you’re wanting to target an older demographic since the vast majority of TikTok users are younger.
Each platform boasts its own audience and your product might be more successful on certain platforms.
Make sure that your affiliates match up with what social media site you want to use and that your campaign ideas fit the audience that you’re targeting. It’s also important to never remain stagnant. Use a wide variety of posts or ads and always scrutinize what you’re doing. Check your stats. Talk to your affiliate manager and get their input.
You want your brand recognized, but you don’t want it to become boring or predictable.
Information marketing is another way to reach prospective leads. It differs from affiliate marketing in that it’s focused on passing written information on to the next person. This could be in the form of an ebook, video, or audio course. Using information marketing can reach people outside of the world of Facebook and Instagram. It’s also beneficial because it can go in-depth about why a product is important. The algorithms used by social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram can sometimes make it difficult for certain products to be seen, so supplementing with information marketing is a way to combat this.
Gaining Consumer Trust
One of the problems with affiliate marketing can be the skepticism of consumers. The reason consumers can be skeptical of products is due to the amount of photoshop and editing that goes into photos. People are now becoming more aware of how photos are edited to create a more desirable image. That’s why it’s even more important to create trust and social proof with your consumers. So many people have been jaded by companies advertising false claims.
You can combat this with testimonials and personal stories that create social proof. What’s social proof you ask? Wikipedia defines it as “a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation.” As a society, there are always people who we look up to or have a desire to imitate. It could be their clothing and style or their fitness routine or even what books they’re reading. We used to know them as the popular kids. Now, we call them influencers.
So, how do these influencers gain our trust? I mean, most of the time we’ve never met them or even seen them in person!
The key is personal stories and testimonials of their satisfaction and results. When you see positive results of someone’s skin care routine and your own skin is breaking out like crazy, you’ll naturally be inclined to want to try out the products that they’re using. By displaying testimonials on the company website, you’re showing your customers real success and satisfaction. You want to get a testimonial that’s at least a short paragraph. Longer and more detailed testimonials are more trustworthy. Anyone can write “Awesome book!” or “Really loved my results!” but if your testimonial has details and is a little longer, it becomes more trustworthy.
Influencer Marketing on Social Media
One of the hottest trends in affiliate marketing is using micro influencers and brand ambassadors. The original influencers were celebrities, athletes, and others with fame. Now, brands are using people with just a couple thousand followers to be the voice of their product. It’s natural for consumers to trust someone that they actually know so the brand doesn’t have to wait for them to build social proof. The reason we want to build social proof is to reduce the skepticism of your target audience.
If you want to try your hand at becoming an influencer and gaining your own social proof, one of the best ways is to start doing unboxings and reviews. Pick a product that you’re totally in love with and take a video of you opening it, providing open and honest feedback. Talk about the packaging, the feel of the product, the weight, the design, and anything else that catches your eye. Then, follow up once you’ve used the product for a few times and let your followers know how you feel about it.
Affiliate marketing on social media can be one of the most important ways to gain more affiliate sales.
By becoming an influencer to create content that promotes a brand and image, you can drive traffic and sales. It’s a great way to market that benefits both the company and the influencer or affiliate. You get a commission, and we gain a new customer!
The key is to make sure to know your target audience, understand what platforms they’re going to be on, and having a message that resonates with them. When you do this effectively, you’ll have a greater ability to create that trust that leads to repeat traffic and sales.
