Affiliate Marketing On Instagram – A Complete Guide

And How To Automate The Entire Process

Instagram has become a huge player in the world of digital marketing.

But it’s also become super competitive.

If you want to stand out on Instagram and score valuable traffic, you need a strategy.

Updated: January 17, 2024 by Bill Burniece

Everything To Know About Marketing On Instagram

Affiliate marketing is quite profitable in general, but it is can prove especially beneficial for brands and influencers when combined with the popular Instagram platform.

By connecting your follower base with the company or the product this company wants to sell, you can earn commissions from every sale that was made through your individual link you give your followers.

Below on this page will be everything you should know about affiliate marketing on Instagram.

Benefits Of Affiliate Marketing On Instagram For Brands

Of course you already know how profitable affiliate marketing is, but it’s also important to mention its benefits for brands looking to engage in long-term affiliate relationships:

Increased Brand Awareness: Brands will get more exposure with the help of affiliate marketers. This will also increase brand awareness as brands will often be tagged in posts and Stories by affiliate marketers.
Improved Engagement & Bigger Following: Once someone goes to the brand’s profile or to the brand’s website, there is a much bigger chance that this brand will see its engagement levels rise. Moreover, the brand’s follower base will grow too.
New Relationships: Building new relationships with bloggers and influencers is also very important for brands as this opens more and more opportunities both for brands and for the influencers.
Increased Revenue: Word of mouth marketing can increase the conversion rate of up to 4.5% and is incredibly effective. Brands will definitely see an increase in revenue as affiliate marketing is closely linked with word of mouth promotion.
Cross-Promotional Opportunities: Expand your brand’s reach by using all of the promotional tools that Instagram Marketing provides.

Table of Contents

Instagram Tips, Tricks & Hacks

1. Write A Compelling & Creative Bio

Your bio is critically important on Instagram. More so than on nearly every other social platforms.

And the tough part is that you only have 150 characters to do it in, so you must make each one count.

Your bio is the first thing people will look at when they visit your Instagram page. This is your opportunity to make a great first impression, establish your voice and set yourself apart from others – which is vital on Instagram.

For starters, include some keywords to quickly tell people what you’re all about. Ideally, come up with a tagline or short description that tells visitors what’s in it for them.

Know exactly who your target audience is and communicate as effectively as you can with them.

Create a hashtag with your unique tagline or handle to encourage sharing, tagging and branding. Also add some special characters to spice things up.

Finally, include a link with a strong call-to-action to your homepage or landing page.

2. Use A Business Account

Not just for branding, an Instagram business account allows you access to features that aren’t available on a personal Instagram account:

You’ll have access to Instagram’s analytics where you’ll get the key performance metrics of your pages followers to gain valuable audience insight
You will be able to add live links to your Instagram Stories
An Instagram business account gives you the ability to schedule your posts
Being able to add a valuable contact button
Having access to Instagram’s advertising platform
The ability to turn your feed into an online shop with product tagging

3. Set Yourself Apart Visually

Instagram is really cool because of its emphasis on the visual element. As an Instagram marketer, you need to take full advantage of this.

Use the same color themes, fonts and filters in all of your content to start earning important visual brand recognition.

Be different. Don’t just copy what others are doing. Instagram users love uniqueness.

Plus use the highest quality graphics and pictures that you can. Anything less just doesn’t cut it on Instagram.

If you’re less on the creative side, you can outsource this task on a platform like Fiverr where there are plenty of pros who can crush this task for you.

4. Use Instagram Stories Frequently

People love storytelling. The Instagram stories feature use a slideshow format that allows you to tell a compelling story visually.

You can get super creative with Instagram stories and should. But before you can master the creative side, you’ll need a little practice using the editing & accessory features Instagram offers.

Take the time to learn the editing platform is time well spent since the more your content stands out, the better.

You can also repost your Instagram stories which is a key feature.

5. Don’t Overpost

Many Instagram marketing newbies mess this one up. Usually because nobody told them in advance.

While it’s important to post consistently, do no overpost. The best practice is to post at least once each day, but never more than 2-3 times in a day.

Since Instagram marketing is more about quality over quantity, post when you have something really interesting to say. That will serve you well.

6. Once You’re Comfortable With The Platform, Look To Partner With Influencers

Influencers have already done the hard work for you, and if you can leverage that it’s worth the time and expense.

Just make sure you are working with an influencer who has the same target audience that you do.

How To Increase Your Instagram Engagement In 2024

Why Market On Instagram?

I’m sure you already know that Instagram is a great photo and video sharing platform that is growing at an explosive rate.

What you may not know yet is that Instagram is also a tremendous marketing tool that allows businesses and brands to market themselves without having to spends tons of money. That may not be the case forever, but for now it’s awesome. It continues to be a great marketing tool for many brands that are looking to gain exposure, build their online fan base and turn them into potential customers.

Instagram has become one of the fastest growing and hottest social media platforms on the web. If you think it’s just for sharing pictures you’re missing out on a tremendous opportunity to creatively bring targeted traffic to your sites.

Instagram has over 500 million users each and every day
Instagram has well over a billion monthly users
Engagement is 10 times higher than Facebook, 58 times higher than Pinterest, and 84 higher than on Twitter
Instagram is a top 5 social platform
A third of Instagram users have used their mobile to purchase a product online
You’ll reach 100% of your followers per post… compared to just 6% on Facebook

What Instagram can do for you is help you create a presence, expand your sphere of influence, draw in new followers and friends, and humanize your brand. And if you think that since you only sell other peoples products as an affiliate marketer you don’t need branding then you’re mistaken. I’ll save the topic of branding for another day but with social media going more and more visual (Instagram, Pinterest) you need a logo or a name to promote to start forming your own tribe.

The key to Instagram traffic is to NOT treat it as a photo album. Think of Instagram as a tool to help you give value to people who don’t know you. You must focus your efforts on using it to meet new people who can become your followers and eventually your customers.

Why Instagram Is A Buyers Goldmine

Instagram allows you, the digital marketer, to tap into 700 million buyers who engage offers many times more than people presently do on Facebook. And as of this writing is creating more “free traffic millionaires” each and every day than all the other internet platforms combined.

Who is cashing in on free Instagram traffic?

People like Ali Maffuci, who started “Inspiralized”, an Instagram account on turning vegetables into simple spaghetti dishes. She’s now quit her corporate job and is raking in thousands of dollars daily.
And Shirley Braha who has over 2 million followers on “Marniethedog”, just by posting pictures of her dog, she now earns a fortune by featuring famous celebrities.
And “thefatjewish” who only posts other people’s funny pictures and now makes 6 figures promoting their accounts, too.

Who Succeeds On Instagram?

It is true that you must keep in mind some factors that will influence your success as an affiliate marketer on Instagram. Here are the top three characteristics your profile must possess:

Brand Value: Both your profile (whether you are an influencer or a brand looking to promote other brands and their products) and the product or brand you are promoting should have value. You must be trusted by your followers. Likewise, the product or brand you are promoting must have a good reputation.
“Good” Following: A “good” following is one that is not made up of bots or paid followers. A good place to start from is 5,000-15,000 followers, but even a smaller dedicated follower base can be effective. As long as you get at least 100 likes on your posts consistently and your followers engage with your content, you can be sure that you have a good chance at affiliate marketing.
Relevancy: Last but not least, the product you choose to promote must be relevant to your followers. If you are an influencer connected to makeup, then you should probably choose products for personal care and, well, makeup.

Translating Instagram Content for More Exposure

Before we get into the process itself, it is important to mention a tactic that you can benefit from in order to increase your exposure and subsequently the number of your followers.

Instead of only producing content in English, consider translating it to other languages with the help of an online translation service such as The Word Point. You will be able to reach multilingual audiences and then become a better affiliate marketer.

Creating a New Profile or Transitioning

As an affiliate marketer, you have two options available to you: create a new profile or transition from your usual user profile to an affiliate marketing one. To create a good Instagram profile, consider such things:

Username: Choose a username that will be easily found by your followers when they want to find you or tag you. If you want one username for all your social media accounts, you can check its availability across platforms with the help of Check Usernames.
Profile Picture & Bio: Use your profile picture and bio to reflect what you or your brand stands for. You have a limit of 150 characters, so use them wisely.
Privacy Setting: Make sure that you have a public account so that you can be discovered easily and don’t have to approve every follower.
Captioning, Tagging, & Geo-Tagging: Write great captions, include tags and include your location in some posts.

If you decided to transition from being a usual Instagram user to an affiliate marketer, then you will probably have to increase your following count. Use hashtags in your posts, host giveaways and contests, make sponsored posts and be patient. It will take some time in any case.

Promoting Links on Instagram

Unlike on other social media platforms, Instagram doesn’t enable you to link to external websites in your post captions. This means that you have only several options when it comes to including your affiliate link:

Link In Bio: The most obvious option is including a link in your bio. This can be either permanent or semi-permanent depending on the purpose. If you are collaborating only with one brand, then this is probably the best option for you as you can include only one link in your bio.
Linkable Instagram Gallery App: A linkable Instagram Gallery App such as Linkin.bio allows you to have a personal gallery that has links from all of your posts. The link to your gallery can be included in your bio for your followers to get access to it.
Link In Stories With Swipe-Up: Unfortunately, this option is only available to accounts that have over 10,000 followers. The Swipe-Up feature allows your followers to swipe up on your stories to go to an external page or an Instagram profile you link.
Shortened Link: This is the riskiest option as not all of your followers will be willing to use it. You can use a URL shortener such as Bl.ink to shorten your link and allow your followers to type it in by themselves in an external browser.

Popular Affiliate Marketing Marketplaces

Now that you know all of the ins and outs of affiliate marketing on Instagram, you need to get in touch with brands who want to have their products promoted with your help. Here are a few popular affiliate marketing marketplaces to get in touch with them:

Understanding the FTC Laws

When you are an affiliate marketer, you must remember to inform your audience about the fact that you are one. When you are promoting a product or brand, don’t forget to include the #ad tag in the caption that is easily noticeable.

Other Instagram Marketing Tools

Social media has emerged as a very attractive marketing channel for brand managers as it allows them to interact with users on atop Instagram marketing tools image more personal level and build the engagement that drives enduring customer loyalty and delivers a superior ROI. Among all the social media platforms, Instagram has quickly become a market leader for brand marketing.

Not only is its one-billion-plus monthly active users represent a very attractive population to market a diverse range of products and services but also it has the best rate of engagement across all social media networks. According to business.com, millennial users, typically the most affluent segment with the highest intent to purchase, comprise over 60% of Instagram’s user base.

Given the very attractive nature of Instagram for brand growth, there are many businesses that in a radical departure from traditional product development concepts are developing products and services that are especially marketable to Instagram users.

Marketing on Instagram can be scaled up very quickly with the help of some very useful tools. A quick look at some of the top tools that can assist brand managers to better leverage Instagram’s strengths to build brand awareness, increase reach and boost conversions.

SocialCaptain

Marketing on Instagram assumes that you have a sufficient number of followers to focus on marketing efforts on. When you first set up your Instagram account, your priority is to grow your following and typically you can only do this effectively by liking and commenting on the posts of the people whom you want to be your followers. However, the organic growth of the Instagram follower base can take a lot of time and effort.

Using SocialCaptain, an automation tool can help to take the pressure off by interacting with other Instagram profiles that it identifies with the help of artificial intelligence to ensure you can target real Instagram users that represent your ideal target audience. The tool can be configured to like posts, follow users, and comment in a meaningful way on content types that you have specified.

Even though SocialCaptain can be very useful in speeding up the follower acquisition process, experts suggest that you should not rely completely on it but also use manual methods to grow your follower base. Complete reliance on automation can make your approach spammy and rob it of the credibility that is essential for every brand interaction.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the pioneering social media scheduling tools and despite having been around for a long time has lost none of its original appeal for managing social media accounts, including Instagram. You can now publish content directly to Instagram using Hootsuite, a feature that was sorely missed earlier.

The most useful feature of this tool is the capability of scheduling your Instagram posts in advance thus leaving you free to attend to other vital marketing and account management tasks. By using the post scheduling feature, you can ensure that your posts can be published at the most optimum times for different audiences around the globe across different time zone without anybody needing to stay wake round-the-clock.

Grum

Grum is a versatile scheduling tool that is functionally similar to Hootsuite; however, it has been specifically developed for Instagram users. If your publishing strategy is primarily focused on Instagram, you will find features like scheduling a post for the future easy to set up and execute, as you do not need to reconfirm it later as you would need to when using Hootsuite.

Another feature that campaign managers will like is that it is possible to add the first comment to any of your own posts automatically. This is very useful as many experts think it is better to use the most important hashtag in the first comment than in the photo caption that often tends to dilute the punch of the caption by making it look cleaner. For example, a post that polls the question does Instagram tell you when someone screenshots can have the #instagramscreenshot in the first comment.

Tailwind

Tailwind is a versatile tool incorporating multiple features like scheduling, analytics, social listening, and management of user-generated content, monitoring hashtags, besides managing target audiences. It is specifically designed for team-based collaborative activities. It also enables marketing managers to manage multiple Instagram accounts simultaneously. Its status as an official Instagram partner has enabled it to win a lot of popularity and it boasts of a number of large brands among its user like Walmart, eBay, Viacom, General Mills, etc.

Hashtracking

Paying close attention to Instagram analytics is crucial for making your marketing campaigns effective and maximizing the return on investment. With the Hashtracking too, brand managers can track the progress of the marketing campaign, analyze its performance, refine the content strategy, grow the follower base, and do everything to make the campaign more effective.

Hashtracking incorporates ColorTracking, a feature that analyzes the colors in your posts that drive the maximum engagement and lists the results accordingly. This helps brand managers to establish what color schemes are the most preferred by the followers so that posts in the future can be dressed up in the suggested colors to drive better engagement.

Minter

Minter is a popular Instagram analytics tool that not only has a full set of features for obtaining detailed insights into the performance of your Instagram marketing campaigns but also allows you to monitor the competition in your sector. This feature helps brand managers to keep themselves updated on what is happening in the Instagram environment so that they can tweak their content strategy for better engagement with their target audiences. The analytics data can be exported in various file formats to which your logo can also be added, which is very useful for agencies that are monitoring client campaigns and need to send in regular performance reports.

Conclusion

Social media, and in particular Instagram, represents a very exciting opportunity for brand managers to expand their reach, raise brand awareness, and engage with their target audiences in a more personalized manner. Taking the help of the numerous Instagram marketing and analytics tools available can enable brand managers to conduct their campaigns more efficiently and effectively.

Instagram Marketing Q&A

How does Instagram work for marketing?

Write a strong bio
Post consistently
Use story telling
Be cool to others
Pay attention to branding
Follow and engage others
Use hashtags on every post
Go the extra mile and be creative

Why is Instagram good for marketing?

Instagram has over 500 million users each and every day
Instagram has well over a billion monthly users
Engagement is 10 times higher than Facebook, 58 times higher than Pinterest, and 84 higher than on Twitter
Instagram is a top 5 social platform
A third of Instagram users have used their mobile to purchase a product online
You’ll reach 100% of your followers per post… compared to just 6% on Facebook

Does Instagram promotion really work?
Yes, if it is done right. A targeted promotion on a hot Instagram post can make it go viral.

Article Contributors:

Frank Hamilton

Kristen Smith. Kristen has been working on the importance of social media in marketing with thousands of real Instagram followers for her postings. You can visit blastup.com for more information.

You might also like: Instagram affiliate program

Affiliate Disclosure

Disclosure: The operator of this website is a 3rd party marketer with a material connection to product/service providers appearing on this site in that we are compensated for sales made through our affiliate links.

If you have any questions please contact me: bill@highpayingaffiliateprograms.com