Instagram Affiliate Marketing Guide
Instagram is a very popular social media platform with 2.35 billion active users on the app. This app is projected to continue to grow in users with no sign of slowing down. Combining the popularity of Instagram and the opportunity to monetize online can be extremely successful.
This way of affiliate marketing is very successful due to the amount of active and engaged users that are on the app. Monetizing on Instagram has increased immensely and many people are hopping on this opportunity for a reason. And that reason is simply because it works!
What is Affiliate Marketing on Instagram?
Just like many other social media platforms that use affiliate marketing, Instagram is no different. Brands hire “affiliates” which can be, influencers, experts in the field, or even small creators or fans to speak about their product or service and share revenue this way. These affiliates can measure their success by sharing things like codes, discounts, etc that are trackable.
For a bit of time, you could actually be a part of an affiliate program directly through Instagram. This program ended back in August 2022, but this does not mean that affiliate marketing has slowed down on the app. Affiliate marketing is still booming and offers great opportunities for brands to increase their brand awareness and drive sales.
Affiliate marketing on Instagram is simply when an affiliate of a brand recommends a product or service to their followers. These affiliates will in turn receive commission based on the success of their posts, meaning how many times their post was interacted with. They are measured by clicks and or purchases. These are easy to track because the affiliates use links special to them.
Why Use Affiliate Marketing on Instagram?
The reasoning for this is simple. There is no shortage of an audience on social media, especially Instagram. Marketing in general on social media is not to be taken lightly, it can take your brand or business to new heights. Odds are a large number of your niche audience is on Instagram. Especially when you are using the right affiliates for your brand. What we mean by this, is choosing an affiliate to recommend your products and services comes off a lot better when the person actually likes your product and closely relates to who they are as people.
Some other key benefits of affiliate marketing on Instagram are:
- Increased Brand Awareness – as we discussed earlier, using affiliate marketing can get your brand in front of a whole bunch of new eyes.
- Herd Mentality – think of yourself as a consumer, you are probably going to see what other people have said about the product or service prior to purchasing. Having affiliates recommend your products will help you grow because hearing a review from a third party is much more effective. (Because of course you’re going to say great things about your brand or business because it’s yours!)
- Cost-effective – the only way the affiliates make money is based on their performance, therefore unless they succeed for your brand and gain clicks and sales, then they will be paid accordingly. That deal is hard to argue with!
How To Do Affiliate Marketing on Instagram
Okay now that we have established what affiliate marketing is on Instagram and how successful it can be, how do you do it? Let’s dive right in!
Establish your goals
This is ultimately where you will decide what you want out of affiliate marketing. For example, how will you determine how many clicks or sales convert to a certain price? This is a vital step to do first so that you can always make sure your efforts are in line with your starting goals. Some common goals many brands share are; brand awareness, drive traffic, increase sales, start new conversions, etc.
Establish your competition
Looking at your competition is never a bad idea! Establish who they are and look at what they are doing for either inspiration or learning.
Metricool offers a competitor analysis that will make this step easy. With Metricool’s feature, you can benchmark and analyze your competitors on the three main social platforms: Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. After you get this info, All the information displayed in the competitor’s chart can be downloaded in a CSV file when you click Download Table, next to the option to add new competitors at the beginning of the table. Click the button below to learn more:
Switch your account to a business account
Though this step is not 100% required, we believe that this increases the credibility and legitimacy of your business, especially if you will be selling something to your audience. To learn how to switch your account step by step, click here:
Discover Affiliates you want to work with that coincide with your brand
Establishing the niche that your brand or business falls into is a great place to start. This way you can determine who would match best with you and market your product or service effectively.
The next step is to decide which affiliate marketing programs you want to join by choosing the affiliate marketing programs and companies you want to join to generate your income. Here are some affiliate marketing programs to choose from:
- Amazon Associates – one of the largest affiliate marketing programs in the world. The Amazon Associates Program helps content creators, publishers and bloggers monetize their traffic.
- Rakuten Performance – advertising network that provides global customer acquisition solutions
- ShareASale – helps affiliates to find products to promote, and earn commission for referrals on those products
Share your unique links
These links are the only way affiliate marketing will work. By sharing a unique link it will track all of the traffic from your affiliate to one place. For best outcomes, share this link in posts on your feed, your bio, stories, and reels. Be sure to make it clear that these are paid partnerships in honor of transparency with your audience.
You can create UTM’s Directly with Metricool! Click below to learn more:
Tips on Instagram Affiliate Marketing
- Label which posts are paid advertisements – As per the Federal Trade Commission guidelines, they state that you must label these types of posts. When posting content, Instagram has the option to add the paid partnership label before posting.
- Put links in bio – It’s important to note that links do not embed inside Instagram captions, so adding a CTA to your posts to drive your audience to your bio is essential.
- Utilize story highlights – utilizing Instagram story highlights makes it easy for your audience to find your codes.
- Record a demo on products – showcase how the product works, looks, etc so it gives your audience a clear vision of what the product does so they will be more inclined to purchase.
- Analyze your analytics – exploring which posts perform well or not helps you decide how to move forward with future posts. When using Metricool, you can view analytics for both organic and paid content.
Examples of Affiliate Marketing on Instagram
Instagram Story example:
Utilizing the story highlights as we discussed above makes it easily accessible to your followers like the example below:
Instagram Reel example:
In this example, you can see the paid partnership label on the top of the post and she added a code in the caption.
Carousel example:
Below is an example of affiliate marketing in a carousel post for Metricool:
Metricool Affiliate Program
Metricool offers our very own affiliate program! So, If you love Metricool as much as we love you, join our affiliate and ambassador program. Because you deserve a reward every time you recommend us to your customers, neighbors, friends, or even acquaintances.
To sign up click the button below:
If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing, we invite you to check out our complete head-to-toe guide on Affiliate marketing from affiliate marketing marketplaces to programs, to how it differs on different platforms, and so much more, click the button below:
