Performance-based influence: affiliate marketing with content creators
Content creators, influence relays for brands
Content creators play a key role in the affiliation ecosystem. Thanks to their ability to engage a targeted and loyal audience, they become true relays of influence for brands. By integrating affiliate links into their articles, videos, podcasts or social publications, they recommend products or services they know and appreciate. When a member of their community makes a purchase via these links, they receive a commission.
In this way, important KPIs are the number of sales, clicks, application downloads, and so on. In this model, content creators are therefore commissioned on the basis of their content’s performance against advertisers’ business objectives.
This performance-based monetization model has many advantages: it’s flexible, transparent and accessible, even for small creators. It enables them to generate revenue while retaining their editorial independence. For brands, it’s an effective acquisition lever, based on trust and authenticity. Affiliation creates a win-win synergy, where creators and advertisers collaborate on content with high added value for the end user.
How can I track the performance of designers with affiliation?
With affiliate marketing, performance indicators are linked to concrete actions, mainly sales of products or services generated by the content of creators and influencers. To ensure that sales generated by influencers are accounted for, our agency provides them with two means, taken from the affiliation toolkit.
The tracked affiliate link
It’s a must in affiliate marketing. The tracked link, incorporates a code that tracks the click through to the sale and identifies its source. It can be placed, depending on the media used, in a bio, in Stories, posts on social networks or, more commonly, in blog articles or in the description of a video.
Not all networks allow affiliate links to be integrated into bios, like Instagram. But creators can subscribe to the Linktree service, which gives access to several links (tracked or not) from a single one inserted in their bio.
The dedicated promo code
Promo codes are particularly recommended when it’s not possible to integrate a tracked link. In addition to offering consumers an advantageous offer, and thus encouraging them to buy, a promo code dedicated to an influencer enables the advertiser to precisely track the sales it generates.
Compensation models for content creators with affiliate marketing
The “last click” model and its limits
When it comes to performance-based influencer marketing, the preferred method of remuneration is based on the affiliation model. This means that the influencer is paid a commission, set in advance, when a sale is made.
Performance-based influence can be difficult to apply to the last-click model (except in the case of promo code sharing). Because, in practice, after being “influenced”, web users will check prices, then look for a promo code or cashback before making their purchase. So, in this case, on a purely last-click model, the influencer gets nothing. In the end, they’ll lose interest in the program.
Enhancing the value of prescriptions
To motivate content creators to relay an affiliate program, our agency recommends offering compensation for influencers (and not just for converters). In this way, it’s possible to offer appropriate compensation to influencers. For example, if he’s the converter, he receives a percentage of sales; if he’s not the converter, he receives a fixed remuneration when he’s one of the prescribers before the purchase. In this case, they are paid a large proportion of the sales they generate.
Hybrid compensation
In some cases, remuneration can be hybrid, with a performance-based part (last click), and another, fixed, part at the start of the collaboration, which guarantees a minimum income to the influencer in compensation for the time and resources he or she devotes to content production.
How to affiliate with creators?
Blog, newsletter
Integration of links, buttons and banners
YouTube
Integration of links in video descriptions
Integration of links in stories + integration of Linktree in the bio
Publish links via your own profile or in groups
Twitch
Integration of links or banners in channel descriptions
Embedding links in pins
X
Sharing links in posts
The benefits of performance-based influence for advertisers and creators
By combining the appeal of influence with the proven business model of affiliation, performance-based influence offers many advantages in the relationship between content creators and brands.
Advantages for creators
- distribute tracked affiliate links offering remuneration proportional to the impact of their content on sales,
- regular income over time,
- track performance to quickly see which products are appealing to their community, and adapt their selections of products or services to relay based on results and conversion rates.
Benefits for brands
- reach audiences with an affinity for their products, through receptive and engaged communities,
- achieve a better measurement of return on investment (ROI), as results are directly linked to business objectives,
- reduce financial risk by only paying for results,
- adapt to audiences who prefer authentic, personalized content.
Why choose Effinity for your performance-based influencer campaigns?
And as new networks and modes of expression have emerged, we’ve always looked for ways to integrate new content creators into our platform, enabling them to work with advertisers on a performance basis, within sustainable and equitable partnerships.
Experience in affiliate marketing
Effinity has been a major player in affiliation in France for 25 years. And we’ve been working with content creators right from the start. In fact, our affiliation platform has been welcoming bloggers since the early 2000s, youtubers since 2005, and instagrammers since 2015! Of course, back then, we called them influencers rather than prescribers…
Influential experience
Effinity incorporated influencer marketing into its portfolio of activities back in 2015. Since then, we’ve had a team dedicated to tailor-made influencer marketing, supporting numerous customers in their awareness and consideration campaigns on social networks.
