Who is an influencer and is it useful for affiliate marketing?

Welcome, community! Recently, there has been increasing speculation that influencers will significantly impact the affiliate marketing market. They may become a driving force in the iGaming niche we recently wrote about. So let’s discuss who influencers are and how they can aid us in affiliate marketing.

Who is an influencer?

In terms of terminology, an influencer is a person who holds authority within a specific audience, can influence their decisions, and motivate them to take certain actions.

While today’s influencers are predominantly thought of as bloggers like Yulia Verba, the term is much broader. Influencers can be politicians, celebrities, athletes, and even teachers.

Essentially, almost anyone who interacts with a certain number of people and has the ability to influence them can be considered an influencer.

About Social Media Influencers

In the English-speaking internet segment, there is a concept of “Social Media Influencer.” This is a person who manages a social media page and has a certain number of followers/readers, even a small audience. We have decided to localize this term, so we will refer to this category of influencers as “network influencers” because they operate within social networks.

A network influencer is mostly content creators who produce content on Instagram, TikTok, and even Facebook. Traditionally, they start with publishing non-branded content, might share about their lives, provide life hacks, and so on.

Eventually, their pages start to feature sponsored videos, banners, or branded products that subtly appear within the frame. At this stage, their activities can be classified as influence marketing.

Influence Marketing

When a blogger reaches a certain milestone in terms of followers or viewers, they catch the attention of advertisers. It’s important to note that reaching a million followers or even hundreds of thousands isn’t necessary. Sometimes a few thousand is enough, especially if you’re inherently targeting a niche market.

Advertisers may be interested in having an influencer promote their products to his or her audience. But besides the number of followers, other factors also play a role, such as:

1. The influencer’s reputation. If it’s about a trash-streamer, it’s unlikely that a major brand would order advertising from them because it would risk damaging their own product’s reputation. Such influencers are mostly worked with by online casinos, less often by bookmakers;
2. The influence on the audience. To assess this, one should look not only at the number of followers but also at their engagement. If it’s about a TikTok channel with hundreds of thousands of followers but no views, comments, or likes, then an advertiser is unlikely to be interested in purchasing advertising on such a page.

Influence marketing is one of the methods of product promotion, involving bloggers and content creators. They can be experts in the field being advertised or not. The main thing for a successful campaign is that the influencer’s audience matches the company’s product.

Overall, large brands have long built separate marketing strategies based on interaction with influencers. You have probably seen such content with native advertising if you watch various channels on YouTube or TikTok.

But if influencers are willing to work with advertisers, they will also be willing to cooperate with affiliate marketers. After all, the latter is also a potential source of income for the blogger, who, most likely, won’t even care whether they’re dealing with a direct representative of the advertised product or an intermediary. And for the traffic you buy from influencers, there’s even a specific term. If your IQ is above 20, you probably understand that it’s called influencer traffic.

What is Influencer Traffic?

Influencer traffic, essentially, is traffic purchased from an influencer. It allows you to tap into part of that blogger’s loyal audience, which you can direct almost to any offer.

Because influencer traffic is essentially organic, it can be directed to both white and outright black offers. The main thing is to create a creative that will not arouse suspicion in the social network. However, even in this case, you are partially insured, because your own pages or advertising accounts won’t be at risk. But if your influencer gets banned at the start of the campaign due to the promotion of dubious content, the money spent will most likely not be recoverable.

Influencer traffic has many advantages compared to many other sources. For example:

• An influencer’s native ad can be skipped but cannot be blocked by browser applications;
• You work with an audience that is loyal to the blogger, and thereby potentially loyal to the product you promote. Thus, there is a likelihood of high conversion;
• Any advertiser would approve the traffic, as it is “white.” The main thing is that it should be honest advertising, because otherwise, there may be accusations of fraud. If you are promoting a hemorrhoid cream, and the blogger claims that it also increased their penis size—well, that’s quite dubious. But it’s pretty obvious that such tactics should be avoided;
• There are numerous ways to reach out to an influencer and order advertising: you can approach directly, as almost every influencer leaves their contact information for collaboration, or through advertising agencies.

Social networks are extremely popular in Tier-2 and Tier-3 countries where people not only have time to watch blogger content but are more inclined to trust the guy on the phone. Based on this, it’s not hard to pick optimal offers that are best promoted through influencers.

Conclusion

Influencer traffic is a relatively new trend in affiliate marketing. But such traffic has already proven itself well. Considering the forecasts of many analytical publications, the influence of influencers on product promotion will only increase, making now the best time to hop on the hype train and profit.

In the meantime, we warmly invite you to join our Telegram community, where you can learn all the latest news from the world of affiliate marketing and discuss it with other industry representatives. An unprecedented and, most importantly, free opportunity that should not be ignored.

Respectfully, your Geek!

Who is an influencer, and how can they be useful for an affiliate marketer F.A.Q.