This blog post continues our series on social media affiliate marketing. For a full picture, check out our guides on affiliate marketing on Facebook, LinkedIn, and less popular social media platforms.
Can you do affiliate marketing on Instagram? According to Meta research, 83% of consumers discover new products thanks to Instagram. Also, more than half of the respondents – 54% – said that Instagram ads have encouraged them to buy certain products and services.
Given that this platform has more than 2 billion active users, it can be argued that Instagram affiliate marketing for the solar and insurance industries is a promising area for making money.
Today, we will talk about how to start affiliate marketing on Instagram, as well as best practices to use. Stay tuned to find out how to bring in quality leads with Instagram affiliate marketing for solar and insurance businesses.
Is Instagram Good for Affiliate Marketing?
Many users perceive Instagram only as an entertainment platform where you can share photos and videos. However, we should not forget that it is the visual format of content that is most effective in digital marketing.
Below, you will find statistics that confirm this fact:
- People tend to remember information better if they have seen it in a picture rather than just read it. Consumers will remember 65% of the information in the former case and only 10% in the latter.
- According to Forbes, 91% of consumers prefer visual content to textual content. Experts of the publication also believe that the prevalence of this format has a positive impact on brand recognition and user engagement on social networks.
- The results of profile research proved that personalized images help to double the conversion rate and reduce the number of abandoned carts by 17%.
- Instagram ad reach has increased by 12.2% during the last year
Do you still doubt that affiliate marketing on Instagram is a rewarding journey? It’s time to learn how to use affiliate marketing on Instagram to bring in high-intent insurance and solar leads and change your point of view.
How To Start Instagram Affiliate Marketing: 5 Steps to Success
Before we move on to this short Instagram affiliate marketing course, let’s do a quick recap. So, what is affiliate marketing on Instagram?
It is an affiliate marketing strategy that involves paying a commission to an affiliate for promoting an advertiser’s products or services on the Instagram social network.
To do this, the marketer must create and place an affiliate link and encourage prospective customers to click on it and perform a specific action. When a prospective customer clicks on this link and makes a purchase or performs other actions, the affiliate receives a commission.
For affiliate marketing for Instagram to be effective, you should follow these tips:
Conduct In-Depth Research
This stage can be divided into the following steps:
- Decide if the insurance or solar energy industry is really your best choice. After all, when doing affiliate marketing through Instagram, you must ensure it’s as interesting as it is profitable for you. One of the ways to do that is to promote the services you specialize in.
If you work in the medical or social care industry, choose to partner with a company that specializes in life and health insurance or long-term care insurance. Do you sell cars? Then, focus on generating quality auto insurance leads. Do you believe that the future lies in alternative energy sources? Join an affiliate marketing program for solar affiliates.
- Research your target audience. To use Instagram for affiliate marketing, it is important to understand who exactly is interested in the services or products you are going to promote. By understanding the pains of potential customers, you will be able to create content that will bring in only high-quality leads.
- Analyze your competitors. This is another essential condition for successful Instagram affiliate marketing for solar and insurance businesses. You should thoroughly research which Instagram posts have the highest engagement and conversion rates.
After going through each of the steps described above, it’s time to move on to developing your marketing strategy to guide your Instagram affiliate marketing campaigns.
Determine Your Goals And How to Monitor Them
When engaging in Instagram affiliate marketing, you need to remember:
- Create a comprehensive profile of potential customers and identify their interests. Specialized tools, which are also offered by the platform itself, can help with this. For example, use Instagram Insights, a tool that helps you determine demographics, user interests, and consumer behavior.
- Develop metrics that will help you track the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns. This can be the degree of user engagement (for this you can track the number of likes, comments, or reposts), the number of subscribers, user reach, etc.
Now, you can move directly to strategy development.
Start Strategic Planning
Decide on the frequency of publishing content on your page. It’s important to strike a balance here. If you post infrequently, users will quickly forget about you and are unlikely to be interested in the service. Content oversaturation will also not play to your advantage – the annoying appearance of adverts in the feed will only irritate your subscribers.
Analysts say that the most effective publication frequency is from 0.35 to 1.25 posts per day, depending on your industry. In other words, it’s optimal to publish no more than one post per day during the working week.
Optimize Your Profile
This step is an integral part of understanding how to do affiliate marketing on Instagram. Make your profile as attractive as possible to users by following these tips:
- Take your Instagram page seriously. The color scheme, the content, the profile picture – everything on your page should match the same theme – the industry you plan to make money from.
- Write a short but succinct Instagram bio for affiliate marketing. When talking about what you do, it’s best not to exceed 150 characters. However, make sure that the affiliate marketing Instagram bio contains all the key information.
- Choose the right affiliate marketing Instagram names. Good affiliate marketing name ideas for Instagram will be usernames that display the name of your company or business area. This will make it easier for users to find you.
- Create a memorable avatar. Avatars are also responsible for attracting the attention of new followers. If you have your own company, set its logo as your profile picture. If you work as an individual, choose a picture that will correspond to your field of activity.
- Work on expanding your audience. Once all the processes are in place, you can count on the passive income Instagram affiliate marketing will bring to you. However, you will have to work hard at the stage of formation. Among other things, consider reaching out to affiliate marketing Instagram influencers to strike win-win deals and get more quality leads.
Finally, one more recommendation that will suit those who have a unique idea for an advertising campaign. In this case, you can create your Instagram profile to feature the ad campaign itself. There are many affiliate marketing Instagram accounts of this type.
A good example of affiliate marketing on Instagram is the Route Del Sol advertising campaign. This is a team of people who traveled from Alaska to Argentina in a motorhome powered entirely by renewable energy. Along the way, they promoted the idea of abandoning traditional fuels in favor of solar energy and published themed content.
They have a corresponding page on Instagram and other social media:
Source: Instagram
Create Quality Content
Instagram marketing provides affiliates with many opportunities to attract their target audience. Here are the most effective ones:
| Post user-generated content | Encourage your followers to publish posts on your page. This way, they will automatically become brand ambassadors and help build trust in your company. |
| Work with affiliate marketing Instagram influencers | For example, you can get permission to publish a topical quote (in image format, of course) on your page, which you can later discuss with your followers. |
| Use hashtags | Using hashtags extends your reach. It works like this: when a user clicks on a specific hashtag, they see all the content that has ever been posted under it. |
| Add quality images | Make sure your visual content displays properly on different devices. To do this, the size of the photos should be at least 1024×1024 pixels. You can also use image editors to create custom pictures. None of the best Instagram affiliate marketing campaigns can do without them. |
| Publish content in different format | Wondering how to do affiliate marketing on Instagram for insurance and solar industries as effectively as possible? Don’t get hung up on trivial ads. Publish posts with different content. Today, it can be a video with customer testimonials; tomorrow, it can be niche content offering valuable and unique information about the insurance or solar industries. As for the format, consider Instagram reel affiliate marketing. After all, there’s a reason behind the reel’s popularity and high engagement rates. |
| Try faceless affiliate marketing on Instagram | This is a type of promotion in which the author of the content does not reveal their face in front of the camera. This approach allows you to maintain your privacy and attract potential customers. |
| Use cross-platform promotion | Consider doing a cross-promotion on different resources – for example, on Instagram and Reddit – such platform combinations can bring good results. |
Ultimately, in-depth research of your sphere, quality content, optimized profile, clear planning, and control of results – these steps are key to effective Instagram affiliate marketing for solar and insurance businesses.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How does affiliate marketing work on Instagram?
Check out affiliate marketing Instagram examples: you choose an affiliate program, get a referral link, add it to your Instagram page, and get a commission for every deal made after a customer clicks on the link.
How to use Instagram for affiliate marketing
To use Instagram for affiliate marketing, you need to choose one of the best affiliate programs, optimize your profile to promote your products and services and create quality content that engages users.
How to create an Instagram account for affiliate marketing
To do this, create a username that reflects your business’s name or specifics, write a concise affiliate marketing bio for Instagram, sign up for influencers, and regularly publish quality content.
How many Instagram followers do you need for affiliate marketing?
2,000 followers may be enough to earn a small income from affiliate marketing on Instagram. However, for good results, the number of followers should be between 5,000 and 15,000.
