With almost everything happening online, there are loads of different ways to market online. Two such ways that are widely popular are Influencer marketing and Affiliate marketing. Let’s admit, the confusion about which one of the two is better has led us to find ourselves scratching our heads over which online marketing strategy is better - Influencer marketing or Affiliate marketing?

Well, fret not. We have just the answer for you! But before we jump right in, let us have a quick conversation about both.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Say you are looking for an itinerary to visit India, so you check for a travel blogger’s website that could offer you a free itinerary for a 10 day trip. You check out their entire blog post and notice there is a link to avail discount on car rentals. You click on that link and end up availing the offer. Apart from you availing an offer on car rentals, there are two other things that happened here:

1. The travel blogger earned revenue from it (percentage of the sale or a fixed fee);

2. The car rental service just got a lead and converted it into a sale.

This, is affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing refers to an arrangement between a brand and an ‘affiliate’ (could be individual or a business or another website) wherein the brand pays a percentage of sale that takes place through a unique link on the affiliate’s website.

What are the benefits of Affiliate Marketing?

1. Performance Based

Affiliate programs are generally performance oriented, meaning an affiliate only earns if a person actually makes a purchase using the affiliate’s link. This performance based incentive drives affiliates to bring in more leads and conversions.

2. Cost-effective

In case of affiliate marketing, it is not just the initial costs that are low, but it is also cost-effective overall. In case of other online ad-placements you have to pay a fixed amount irrespective of whether you get leads or not. And more often than not, these leads prove to be just a squander of time, money and other resources. But, in case of affiliate marketing you only pay affiliates for actual conversions, meaning, no more spending big money on valueless leads.

3. Boosts traffic

Affiliate marketing per se does not boost your SEO rankings, but having multiple affiliates enables you to boost traffic on your website. More the number of affiliates that back link to your website, more will be the number of actual leads browsing through your website and thus a boost in your website’s traffic.

4. Increased sales conversion

We have already deduced the fact that valueless leads are a waste of time, money and other resources. But, affiliate marketing brings you actual leads that often convert into sales.

5. Easy to implement and track results

Implementation costs of affiliate marketing are bare minimum. On the other hand, understanding the return on investment is easy too. Every affiliate is given a unique link and any clicks or sales via affiliate marketing can be precisely traced back to the exact affiliate. This makes it easy for you to track the performance of each affiliate in your affiliate program.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing refers to the marketing of a product or service with the help of an influencer. The reason they are called influencers is because they have the ability to affect the purchases of their followers who could be your potential consumers. These influencers have over the years built their personal brand in desired niches and created a fairly loyal follower base.

Why is Influencer Marketing advantageous?

1. Unmatched ROI

Rate of return is an important factor for measuring the success of any online marketing campaign. Influencer marketing has a great rate of return. Infact, influencer marketing has a better rate of return (ROI) in comparison with print media too.

2. Targeting the right audience

Niche targeting is a major advantage of influencer marketing. With influencer marketing, you can target an influencer’s widespread audience at once. All you have to do is find the right influencer!

3. Credible

Influencer marketing is credible and statistics prove that to you. According to statistics:

I - 70% of teens trust influencers more than traditional celebrities

II - 86% of women seek purchase related advices from social media

III - 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations

Influencers have the ability to influence because they provide their followers with value, inspiration and build a long lasting connection with them. Their followers trust them and the statistics make it clear as a day, that influencer marketing is credible.

4. Suitable to All Businesses

Be it a multi-national, a mide-size firm or even a local mom and pop shop, influencer marketing if done right, works for all.

5. It is not pushy

Can you imagine the level of saturation people have hit that they are now spending their hard earned money to block online ads? But how will you get past these ad-blockers? They are everywhere!

Two words. Influencer marketing is your answer. Influencer marketing has a human factor that regular online ads do not. The very human nature of influencer marketing is what helps you break through the barriers of ad-blockers.

6. Cost Effective

When it comes to influencer marketing, businesses need not burn their pockets to advertise as in the case of billboard or television advertises. Also, compared to affiliate marketing, influencer marketing provides a better reach and to more people at a given point of time.

7. Lead Generation

Influencer marketing helps you generate relevant leads. Because, influencers having well defined niches have instilled in the minds of their followers an image of being an expert in their respective niche. Influencer marketing helps you skip past the pain and pressure of generating false leads.

8. Boosts SEO

Influencer marketing is a great way to boost SEO. Influencers, while marketing your product, create relevant content surrounding your product. This relevancy increases your domain authority score and thus boosts your SEO.

WHAT MAKES INFLUENCER MARKETING BETTER THAN AFFILIATE MARKETING?

With affiliate marketing, you can achieve sales conversions, but with influencer marketing you can do much more. A proper influencer marketing helps you achieve not only leads and conversions but also the following:

- Increased brand awareness

- Build an audience

- Reach a wider audience

- Build reputation.

SO WHAT SHOULD YOU CHOOSE?

The obvious choice seems influencer marketing. But, we’ll let you in on a secret! A right blend of affiliate marketing with influencer marketing will give you optimum results and the best of both worlds.