If you are considering launching an affiliate program, you may be wondering which social media platform is right for you and your brand. It may, however, be worth taking a look at the popular image-sharing app, Instagram, which has attracted over a billion users since its inception just over a decade ago in 2010 and is the unofficial home of influencers and content creators. If you are curious as to how to run an affiliate program on Instagram and promote your goods and services to a highly profitable audience in the process, continue reading to find out everything you need to know.
Choose an affiliate network
If you are unfamiliar with the world of affiliate marketing, do not worry as it is relatively simple and straightforward to get started. It may, for example, benefit you to kickstart your foray into affiliate marketing by choosing an affiliate network so you can recruit affiliate marketers, in the form of influencers and content creators, to form long-lasting partnerships that will benefit all parties involved. It can also expose you to a number of benefits including monitoring and tracking technology, payment processing tools, and, perhaps most importantly, valuable exposure to an impressive catalogue of affiliate marketers with combined knowledge, experience, and expertise in the process of affiliate marketing with affiliate links on Instagram. If you are struggling to choose an affiliate network, you must consider your niche, research your competitors, and determine your intended target audience before making an informed decision.
Set your commission rates
In the affiliate marketing world, your commission rates are, in the simplest of terms, the base amount of money you will pay an influencer for successfully driving a single sale. It may sound like a relatively simple process, but it requires a great deal of planning, preparation, and foresight ahead of time to ensure you have made the right decision. It may, for example, be worth assessing your current profit margins and determining how much of your profits you are willing to exchange for a greater volume of sales with commissions more than likely stemming from your profits. In addition, it may also be worth researching the commission rates of your competitors within your chosen industry, sector, or niche if and when you can and reaching out to your affiliate network for their input when it comes to how much your affiliates should be paid with decades worth of knowledge, experience, and expertise likely to help you make a final decision.
Launch your affiliate program
If you have chosen an affiliate network and set your commission rates, the time has come to launch your affiliate program into the world. In order to do so, however, you must be confident that influencers and content creators will actually want to participate in your affiliate program with a number of incentivisations often required to reassure them that they are making the right decision by opting for your affiliate program as opposed to another on Instagram. It has, for example, proven particularly successful in the past for affiliate managers to introduce a tiered system with various opportunities to unlock additional rewards along the way or when affiliates reach major milestones in their journey. It can maintain a sense of productivity and motivation amongst your affiliates and, as a result, encourage them to continue working hard to promote your goods and services to your intended target audience on the image-sharing platform by rewarding them for their hard work, time, and effort. It can also be fully customisable and range from a slightly higher commission rate for a set period of time or a one-off bonus payment or gift of their choice that correlates to the same monetary value.
Hire influencers and content creators
It may be the final step in the process of running an affiliate program on Instagram, but it is also the most important. It is, after all, the role of your affiliates to market your goods and services to the masses and, in turn, drive sales for you and your brand by targeting your intended target audience with relatable posts and advertisements. It can be done in a number of ways but is most commonly done by hand-picking affiliates that you are already familiar with on Instagram or asking around within your affiliate network for expert advice and guidance from fellow affiliate managers that are in the know. It may also benefit you to know that when it comes to hiring influencers and content creators, quality should always outweigh quantity.
If you have chosen to run an affiliate program on Instagram, there are a number of steps you must follow to do so including choosing an affiliate network, setting your commission rates, launching your affiliate program, and, last but certainly not least, hiring influencers and content creators.
