CPA Networks and Influencer Marketing: How Can we Really Benefit from it? by Olivier Bourque, CrakRevenue, October 7, 2020 CrakRevenue Gives You the Secrets to Succeed Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you’ve probably noticed that you can’t go through a day without hearing the word “Influencers.” As marketers, we cannot ignore the influencer marketing trend, and most importantly, we need to ask ourselves: how can we benefit from it? If you want to start making money using influencers to promote your brand, or if you are an influencer wanting to make money while promoting a brand, you must address three main business components: brand image, revenue model, and sales tracking. Adding influencer marketing to your current business model is a great idea, especially since influencers already have an audience you can reach. You need to make sure your product is a good fit for the influencer’s audience. It may seem obvious, but there can be a mismatch between an influencer and their audience more often than you think. You just need to do the research and figure out if it’s the case or not. Moreover, there is already a plethora of platforms that will help you analyze influencers’ audiences very accurately. Most importantly, make sure the influencer will fit within your communication strategy. If not, they can hurt your brand by taking creative liberties. Therefore, detailed and specific contracts are mandatory! As a CPA network with a powerful Media Buy team, we always need to evaluate what is best for us and our advertisers. With influencers, we either negotiate flat fee deals or, like other affiliates, pay them based on performance. Both strategies have their pros and cons: Option 1 – The flat fee.Advertisers want to get a CPA as low as possible; a flat fee ensures full control over costs, but there are no guaranteed results. If sales are high, this strategy will be cost efficient. If sales are low, this strategy can be expensive. Option 2 – Sales based payouts.If sales really kick in, payouts based on sales can prove costly for an advertiser. However, if it’s the other way around, losses are minimized. It’s a revenue model is entirely risk-free. It’s always good to test each option out, but when in doubt, just go with what feels right according to your sales and ROI objectives. Once the influencer/product match and revenue model are set, be sure to track all sales properly. Clicks on different links within an influencer’s post are the easy part. The real challenge is to make sure you also follow sales that come later. Promo codes are a great way to match sales with posts, even though the customer does not click on a link right away. Promoting a second URL from the product’s URL is also an option. This promotion style has its limitations since the brand is often the part that impacts customers. The best way to have a complete view of results is to build a strong relationship with your advertisers to share statistics and isolate results given a specific action. Conclusion Influencers are powerful sales funnels. However, just like any traffic type, they come with their own set of challenges. But it is a proven marketing method that has made its mark and that’s going to be a powerful funnel in the coming years. Filed under: Blue Book, Featured, Revenue Tagged under: affiliate marketing, influencer marketing