| | DECEMBER 20199followers to create tangible brand impact in an organic manner. Such an integration establishes influencers as new-age publishers and unlocks newer ways of mon-etising their reach and receiving payments. Moreover, through various support tools and perfor-mance data, affiliate networks also help influencers gain insights into the reception of branded content amongst target audience, enabling them to generate better content over time. Brands, on the other hand, get access to native content created by top social media influencers on a larger scale through affil-iate networks. There is also the ripple effect ­ the hallmark of any engaging social media con-tent ­ to consider. Native brand integrations in influencer content can create organic conversations that can have a cascading impact through word-of-mouth, thus cre-ating a strong resonance for the brand and/or product amongst the target audience. A strong enough influencer affiliate marketing campaign can also go viral and be picked-up by traditional and new-age media houses as a case study, further adding to the impact of the brand campaign. Affiliate networks can also help brands measure the perfor-mance of their influencer affil-iate campaigns to identify what kind of content works well with which consumer demographic. This allows them to pursue more relevant influencer partnerships in the future. Through multi-ple measurement and verifica-tion tools, affiliate networks also ensure that only authentic traffic is reported, thus raising the trust and credibility in the digital mar-keting domain.The Road AheadIt's a fast paced digital world we're living in, and consumers love experimenting with new ways of consuming content. More than that, they trust the influencers that they follow to recommend products & services that are relevant to them. Social media has become the new word-of-mouth channel. Marketers should therefore look beyond paid online ad space or content to influencer affiliate marketing in order to pull-in and retain to-day's millennial consumers. Af-ter all, content is still the king, but it should also ignite conver-sations that interest today's mil-lennials ­ through the channels that they most frequently engage with. AFFILIATE NETWORKS CAN ALSO HELP BRANDS MEASURE THE PERFORMANCE OF THEIR INFLUENCER AFFILIATE CAMPAIGNS TO IDENTIFY WHAT KIND OF CONTENT WORKS WELL WITH WHICH CONSUMER DEMOGRAPHIC
< Page 8 | Page 10 >