After beginning our recap of our ELEVATE summit a couple of weeks back, we are continuing the throwbacks as we look back at one of our other amazing panel discussions; The Rise of Micro-Affiliates. This panel, once again, was full of experienced and knowledge-driven professionals who graced us with their answers about the rise of micro-affiliates and how this has changed the industry.
What is a Micro-Affiliate?
Micro-affiliates or micro-influencers as they are probably best known, is a subcategory of people that have a digital following; however, it does not exceed a certain amount. Micro-influencers have anywhere from 1,000 to 100,000 followers, compared with macro-influencers whose audiences tend to scale up into the millions: However, even a relatively small following can be leveraged to promote your brand.
This is what one of the panel members had to say about micro-affiliates;
‘’ They’re brand ambassadors essentially, and we tend to use brand ambassadors exclusively to define and label micro affiliates because again, they are your best customers. They’re your most loyal customers. If you have a loyalty program, you should be really using them to also promote.’’
How have influencers evolved the market?
It’s no secret that the affiliate or influencer world has rapidly grown over the past few years with the rise of Instagram and TikTok enabling larger audiences of people being able to see the content that these affiliates are posting. But how have influencers evolved the market? See the response below from one of the panel members;
‘’ When Instagram started, for example, it was a platform to share – Pictures with your friends and family. The influencer element was a by-product of the platform. They created the platform for people to share, bring people onto the platform, and sell advertising space. That’s what it was created for. So, the way I see it is that influencers and micro-influencers, They’re doing nothing different than they should have been doing at the beginning, which was sharing their opinions, being authentic, sharing where they’ve gone to eat for dinner, sharing a product that they’ve bought and that they love.’’
The Rise of TikTok
As I’m sure you are all aware, TikTok has taken over social media by storm since its rise in popularity during the lockdown procedures for COVID-19. It is estimated that a total of over 1 billion users are active on the platform each month. Thus, the platform has huge marketing potential for businesses. So, how do you find micro-affiliates on this platform to use for your program and is it even worth it? Our panel member discussed;
‘’We do use TikTok to look for micro influencers. There are a lot of them. Okay. We use the tip to Creator marketplace that is available. We kind of do it manually that way, and it does the job – but it’s very time consuming. It’s a lot of back and forth like we just spoke about. You know, you need to be prepared and communicate well and be transparent from the beginning and pay correctly, all of that good stuff.’’
AMPLIFY
If you missed our ELEVATE event, then there is no need to worry as our AMPLIFY event is set to be one of the biggest virtual affiliate marketing events in 2023! Check out more on the event here.
