Building an Influencer Affiliate Program

Earlier this year, Amazon quietly launched an influencer program, leveraging social media stars to push new customers to the e-commerce giant for all their shopping needs. In Amazon’s words, the program is designed for influencers who have “large followings and a high frequency of posts with shoppable content”.

It’s an affiliate program, very similar to the one Amazon has used for years to build a massive network of publishers and podcasts, who funnel users to the site to buy everything from books to batteries. But with the influencer program, Amazon is trying to break through in an arena where many others have failed: the elusive influencer-affiliate marketing campaign.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

One of the earliest forms of digital marketing, affiliate marketing is a commission-based model where the referrer (or the “affiliate”) is paid a small percentage of the sales they drive to a company’s website.

In recent years, podcasts have been big beneficiaries of affiliate dollars, notably from Amazon. Anybody who has listened to a podcast in the last year has heard the host say something like “click through to Amazon from our site.” That’s because Amazon has been very effective at convincing them that they can earn significant revenue via the affiliate program.

Why Hasn’t it Worked with Influencers?

Historically, influencers have been extremely resistant to affiliate deals for a few reasons:

1. Influencers feel there is substantial value when they simply mention or showcase a product/brand within their content. They should be compensated for that alone, regardless of whether it leads to an immediate sale.
2. Influencers are regularly offered large amounts of money for product placements and shout-outs. With this market demand, affiliate offers are always second place.
3. The amount of repetition required for a purchase to take place means that an influencer would need to repeatedly promote the same product/brand on a continuous basis, in order to make any real money.

Can Amazon Make it Work?

The short answer is yes — but not with their current approach.

Amazon is falling into the same traps that many marketers do when approaching the influencer world, with a unique partnership model. They target the biggest influencers, with an offer that equates to a radically low earnings potential.

Think about it this way: If an influencer with 500K subscribers, typically earns $10,000 for a product placement, why would she agree to an affiliate deal that allows her to earn the same amount, but only if she reaches the most optimistic sales forecast? She wouldn’t.

I do believe Amazon will make it work, because they’ve built billion-dollar affiliate systems for over a decade. But it will take time.

Best Practices for an Influencer Affiliate Program

Influicity does have clients who run influencer affiliate programs via our platform. Over time, we’ve noticed a few best practices that lead to success.

Make the math work in their favour

In order to convince an influencer that your program is worth their time, make sure they can earn even more money than they would if they just got paid a one-time fee.

Using my prior example, if an influencer typically earns $10K for a product placement, suggest they can make that same $10K simply by referring X number of customers to your site and they can make $20K if they refer Y number of customers. Make sure X and Y are relatively easy to achieve.

Consider a hybrid of base + commission + bonuses

Similar to how many salespeople are paid, offer the influencer $2,500 to take part, plus a percentage based on sales, and then additional bonuses when they reach certain targets. Perhaps they get an extra $1,500 if they make 10 sales in their first week.

Engage influencers who are not getting lots of brand deals

Don’t try to get the most highly paid influencers into your affiliate program. These people are busy negotiating book deals and speaking engagements. They’re less interested in incremental revenue for a channel that’s already earning 6 or 7 figures.

But there are many up and coming, mid-tier influencers who will be motivated.

Build a system that scales

This is something Amazon has definitely done right in the past. Ensure you have a platform, data management system, and reporting structure to scale the affiliate program. This is not a back-of-the-napkin exercise.

Affiliate marketing drives billions of dollars in online sales. If done right, influencers can make up a big part of that.

Jon Davids is the Founder + CEO of Influicity. Follow him on Instagram @jon_davids.