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The Complete Guide to Influencer Affiliate Marketing
Looking for a low-risk influencer campaign to boost sales? You’re in the right place! Influencer affiliate marketing is a pay-by-commission strategy that taps into influencers’ highly engaged communities—without any upfront costs.
While your budget is 100% safe, affiliate campaigns still impact your brand image, and their success isn’t guaranteed. An effective strategy requires careful planning, shrewd influencer selection, ongoing performance analysis, and more!
This article is your complete guide to mastering affiliate influencer marketing. You’ll discover what it’s all about, helpful tips, and common pitfalls that could harm your brand’s reputation. Plus, we’ve included real-world case studies to show you what works (and what doesn’t). By the end, you’ll have the knowledge and confidence to launch a successful, results-driven affiliate campaign. Let's get to it!
two people shaking hands
Key Takeaways
- Affiliate marketing and influencers just go well together. Most of the time, both parties benefit from this pay-by-commission style of collaboration. It allows brands to run influencer marketing campaigns stress-free, and influencers can earn more for putting in extra effort to gain higher conversion rates.
- A top affiliate strategy follows this process: defining goals, selecting the right influencers, contract negotiations, content production, and then measuring performance using relevant key performance indicators.
- Affiliate influencer stands as one of the most cost-effective, results-driven advertising strategies. By tying payments to sales, affiliate campaigns ensure you great results.
Influencer marketing is changing fast. Want to ensure you can keep up? Download the Kolsquare 2024 Trend Report today.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a strategy that allows third parties, known as affiliate partners, to advertise a brand or product and earn commission on conversions. Affiliate partners can be websites, bloggers, or influencers. Partners put unique links or promo codes into their content for shoppers to click or use during checkout. Brands use these codes to track which affiliate partner motivated a shopper's action, such as a click, purchase, or email signup. Partners are paid directly according to the number of conversions they motivate.
Affiliate marketing turns the traditional marketing model on its head. Instead of asking for a promotion upfront, such as a magazine or social media platform charging £500 for an ad feature, an affiliate partner will advertise a product for zero initial costs. It removes the gamble from an advertising campaign because the company only pays the partner if and when they drive a conversion. The amount paid for each sale is typically between 5% and 20% of the checkout spend, but rates may fluctuate seasonally depending on the company's current campaigns.
Here's how it works in practice: an ecommerce shop runs an affiliate campaign with three Instagram influencers, Jon, Sara, and Tammy. It gives each one a unique 10% discount code to share: JONSENTME, SARASENTME, and TAMMYSENTME. When a customer inputs the promo code TAMMYSENTME during checkout, the brand pays affiliate partner Tammy a percentage of the checkout price.
Affiliate vs Influencers: How is affiliate marketing different from influencer marketing?
Although influencer marketing and affiliate marketing overlap when influencer affiliate marketing, they typically serve different roles. Influencer marketing often aims to increase brand awareness, engagement, and sales. Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, uses a pay-by-commission model. The conversion tracked is usually purchases, making affiliate marketing more sales-driven.
That’s why influencer affiliate marketing campaigns tend to focus on direct sales and measurable outcomes over intangible metrics like brand awareness or reach. Influencers are motivated by commissions, and their primary goal is driving specific actions for the brand. However, a good campaign should positively increase brand sentiment and awareness.
Affiliate influencer marketing also offers a more hands-off approach, similar to product gifting. Brands typically allow creators to create the content they want—as long as they stay within their terms and conditions.
How do affiliate marketing and influencer programs fit together today?
Affiliate marketing programs position influencers as mediators between brands and their target audiences. It's deeply effective for brands as influencers typically possess a deep understanding of their communities. Essentially, the influencer becomes the marketer, directing their own strategy with little guidance.
Affiliate marketing also motivates influencers to deliver their best work, as their earnings depend on actual sales or conversions. It can also inspire highly genuine and authentic collaborations because influencers are more likely to choose brands they love and enjoy promoting due to the unpredictability of the model.
Due to the risk, some influencers feel that this “no-win, no-fee model” places the risk on their shoulders and makes their already erratic work schedules even more shaky. Brands need to be mindful of this dynamic and respect influencers for their hard work.
At Kolsquare, we advocate for ethical marketing practices that benefit both brands and influencers. While affiliate campaigns are a great way for companies new to influencer marketing to reach their target audiences, they should consider transitioning to long-term collaboration models that include upfront payment if an influencer performs well. This gives influencers more job security and helps brands build lasting relationships and loyalty. It also makes campaigns feel more authentic to social media users and prevents top performers from jumping to competitors that offer more secure opportunities. After all, brands using social listening tools like Kolsquare's can easily see which influencers competitors activate.
How to start affiliate influencer marketing?
Launching a new marketing campaign can be challenging. But, if you follow a step-by-step approach, you can run your campaign effectively.
Here's how to launch a great affiliate strategy with influencers on social media platforms:
1. Define Your Goals
Clearly defining what you want to achieve from your influencer marketing campaign enables you to shape your strategy and guide your efforts toward specific, measurable outcomes. Whether your aim is boosting brand awareness, driving website traffic, increasing sales, or growing your social media following, having well-defined goals ensures that every decision—from choosing influencers to tracking metrics—is aligned with your overall objectives.
Typically, affiliate marketing with influencers is driven toward acquiring sales. But there are more elements to think about. Consider whether you want to reactivate old customers or bring in new shoppers and where you expect social media users to be in the marketing funnel. It's also useful to think about what you are willing to pay in exchange for a commission—offering higher rates may attract more influencers. In addition, consider the platforms you want to use: would you prefer to target younger demographics through TikTok? Or do you want in-depth descriptions more common to YouTube videos?
2. Identify the Right KOL `
The influencers or key opinion leaders (KOLs) you choose will make or break the campaign. An influencer who is a good fit will inspire social media users with their engaging content. Their fans will become your fans, and you'll gain new customers.
To ensure a successful partnership, there must be a structured selection process. Large, popular brands often have more options when affiliate influencer marketing because their high desirability inspires many influencers to apply to be affiliate partners. However, smaller brands need to work harder to find influencers and ensure they pick creators who will positively impact their brand image.
Consider the following points when researching KOLs:
- What is their niche?
- Does their audience match your target audience? (also consider audience overlap)
- Do their values match your brands?
- Have they ever worked with competing brands or made conflicting statements?
- How credible is their audience, or in other words, how “real” is their audience?
- How accessible and engaged is their audience?
How to find influencers for affiliate marketing?
You can conduct influencer searches manually by looking for influencers who comment on your social media posts or searching for relevant hashtags. Once you find an influencer whose content feels right, you can then analyse their social media materials to assess whether they're a good fit for your company. This includes assessing how many comments and likes they receive in contrast with their follow count to gauge their engagement rate and analysing their audience demographics.
One way to reduce the operational complexity of your influencer affiliate campaign is by using an influencer marketing platform. With a platform like Kolsquare, you can streamline influencer discovery by searching through the extensive database containing any influencer with 5,000+ followers.
The platform’s advanced filters allow you to search and filter by criteria, such as:
- Social media platform
- Number of followers
- Engagement rates
- Credibility scores
- Compliance scores
- Audience location
- Audience demographics
Additionally, Kolsquare offers detailed reporting metrics like ROI, EMV (Earned Media Value), CPM (Cost Per Mille), and CPV (Cost Per View), giving you a comprehensive view of potential influencers' value to your campaigns—all in one place. This makes it easy to identify influencers who align with your brand and assess the potential return on your investment.
Interested in learning more about how the platform works?
3. Set up a contract for your affiliate partners
Once you’ve identified the right affiliates, you should create a contract featuring key terms and conditions, such as commission rates, payment structures, and cookie duration—how long their unique tracking link will remain active and eligible for commissions. A well-structured contract ensures clarity and sets expectations for both parties. For a detailed guide on how to craft these agreements, check out the Kolsquare article: Influencer Contract: Tips and Tricks.
Also, ensure that the influencers are familiar with and comply with the latest regulations and industry standards. For example, the ASA and CAP provide UK guidelines that ensure influencers mark ads clearly.
4. Ready, set, go: promote your products and services
Brands need to be able to reliably link the affiliate marketers to their conversions. Without that data, brands could under or overpay influencers in their affiliate network.
Once that's done, it's your partner's turn. Depending on what you’ve negotiated in your contract, they’ll create blog posts, social media posts, videos, or email newsletters. The goal is to get consumers to follow the KOL’s links and buy your product or use your service.
5. Reporting and Optimisation Best Practices
One of the main advantages of using influencer affiliate marketing is that each partner receives unique tracking links or promo codes, allowing you to closely monitor their performance. With these tools, brands can track every click, view, or sale back to the specific influencer, providing a clear picture of which partnerships drive the most value. This data can also be used to optimise campaigns, adjust commission rates, and ensure compliance with the set terms.
To keep improving strategies and assess which influencers brought the best results, you must track key performance indicators (KPIs).
For affiliate programs, we advise you to track the following KPIs:
- Total revenue generated: How much money did the influencer generate for your brand?
- Number of sales: what is the total number of conversions they achieved?
- Conversion Rate (CR): This can be calculated by looking at the number of interactions with influencer posts/number of conversions during a certain period of time or by checking the affiliate links of the respective KOL.
- Average Order Value (AOV): The average order value of sales generated by the KOL.
Once you have collected all this data, then you can easily calculate the overall ROI (Return on Investment) of your affiliate programs.
Pricing questions: How to reimburse social media influencers
As already mentioned, you pay your partners with a commission agreed upon in advance. This can be either Cost Per Click (CPC), Cost Per Mille (CPM), or Cost Per Thousand (CPT).
In no case will you have to pay a full fee in advance; you only pay for the results you get. This makes affiliate marketing a low-risk investment and can be well worth it for businesses. Some brands, however, do opt to pay low fees at the start of the campaign to encourage affiliate partners to join their scheme.
The rate per action brands pay varies depending on how they define goals. Do they want to increase brand awareness, engagement on your social media channels, or/and conversion by working with Influencers?
Want to learn more specific information about affiliate marketing? There are quite a few resources on affiliate marketing on the Kolsquare blog. Check out these articles:
- How to run an e-commerce affiliate campaign with influencers in 5 easy steps!
- How can affiliation become a key for beauty brands in influencer marketing?
Best influencer marketing platform or agency for an affiliate Strategy
Brands with little or no influencer marketing knowledge may benefit from working with agencies. These companies work closely with your brand and guide you through the entire influencer marketing process. However, it can be costly—significantly raising the low costs of affiliate campaigns. Learn more about the top influencer marketing agencies in the UK here.
Influencer marketing platforms can be a great middle ground. They give you easy access to all the data you need to find the right influencers, manage affiliate relationships, and assess campaigns.
Influencer marketing platform Kolsquare can help you run effective campaigns with the following features:
- Comprehensive Influencer Database: Access a wide network including any influencer with 5,000+ followers. The Kolsquare database contains influencers across every niche, demographic, and platform, making it easy to find a good fit for affiliate marketing partnerships.
- Detailed Influencer Profiles: Evaluate potential influencers based on metrics like follower count, engagement rate, audience demographics, and content style with a single click.
- Advanced Search and Filtering Options: Use filters such as follower interests, location, and engagement to narrow down your search and identify influencers who match your requirements.
- Support for Long-Term Collaborations: Manage your affiliate network on one platform and discover whether their content led to your follower growth. Quickly scale your campaign when you identify successful tactics.
- Earned Media Value (EMV) Analysis: Estimate the value of influencer partnerships in terms of traditional media spend, providing a clear view of the benefits of each collaboration beyond direct sales.
Case Study: Top Influencer Affiliate Marketing Examples
Influencer marketing strategies that use an affiliate model can be highly effective. Let's explore two successful campaigns:
Princess Polly: Nano and Micro influencer affiliate marketing
Princess Polly's affiliate marketing campaign helps boost brand visibility, drive sales, and engage niche audiences across social media platforms. The campaign focuses on partnering with micro, macro, and nano-influencers. Princess Polly gives each influencer with an affiliate relationship a unique promo code, allowing for precise measurement of each affiliate’s performance.
In the Instagram post above, nano-influencer Taylor Tabacco authentically showcases Princess Polly's fashion line. These videos help shoppers decide which items they like, drive sales, and increase brand awareness.
Beauty Pie: Affiliate marketing Instagram influencers
Beauty Pie is a disruptive beauty brand that aims to "disrupt" the beauty industry with its unique membership model. But it also used affiliate networks on social media platforms highly effectively. The affiliates clearly explain the membership model in captions while showing the product benefits.
In the post above, macro-influencer Holly Carr promotes Beauty Pie while accurately explaining the brand's membership model in the caption.
Why are influencers affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing tends to work particularly well when the affiliate partners are influencers with smaller audiences and high levels of engagement like nano-influencers and micro-influencers. These creators are just starting out, operate in specific niches, and may be more open to performance-based compensation. However, for established brands, making your product highly desirable can make affiliate partnerships successful even with larger influencers.
About Kolsquare
Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, offering a data-driven solution that empowers brands to scale their KOL (Key Opinion Leader) marketing strategies through authentic partnerships with top creators.
Kolsquare’s advanced technology helps marketing professionals seamlessly identify the best content creators by filtering their content and audience, while also enabling them to build, manage, and optimize campaigns from start to finish. This includes measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors.
With a thriving global community of influencer marketing experts, Kolsquare serves hundreds of customers—including Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, Lush, and Hermès—by leveraging the latest Big Data, AI, and Machine Learning technologies. Our platform taps into an extensive network of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers across 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat.
As a Certified B Corporation, Kolsquare leads the way in promoting Responsible Influence, championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations that inspire positive change.
Since October 2024, Kolsquare has become part of the Team.Blue group, one of the largest private tech companies in Europe, and a leading digital enabler for businesses and entrepreneurs across Europe. Team.Blue brings together over 60 successful brands in web hosting, domains, e-commerce, online compliance, lead generation, application solutions, and social media.
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