Amazon Influencer Program offers an enormous opportunity for social media influencers to grow and shine with them. With a store as diverse as Amazon, influencers can choose any items they desire, create their very own storefront and promote it however they want to drive sales. Not to mention, earn money on qualifying purchases while doing it all.
What is the Amazon Influencer Program?
Officially rolled out in 2017, the Amazon Influencer Program is a more exclusive and feature-rich version of the company’s already established affiliate program. As an Amazon influencer, you will get a very high level of service and special attention from the company itself. You will receive a vanity URL to a free Amazon storefront where you can share products that appeal to your target audience the most. When customers shop your page, you will earn a commission for every qualifying purchase.
Why Did Amazon Create This Program?
With the rise of influencer marketing, Amazon came to realize that social media personalities with huge following could widen Amazon’s reach by promoting products outside the Amazon marketplace. Amazon also realized influencers were seeking more opportunities to monetize their fame by collaborating with reliable brands.
Who Qualifies for the Amazon Influencer Program?
Influencers across any category can join this program. To apply, you need to fill out an online form. Amazon will then vet the applications based on your online following, fan engagement, quality of content and the relevancy it has for Amazon customers – among other metrics assessed internally by Amazon. Currently you must have a YouTube, Instagram, Twitter or Facebook account to qualify. The program is also only available in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and India.
While Amazon has not completely revealed all the requirements, it seems that influencers with a massive following are more likely to be approved. A quick peek at some accounts show that these social media celebrities average between 10,000 and 500,000 followers.
Mark Cuban and Jillian Michaels are some of the big names participating, although there is a growing number of social media personalities and micro-bloggers joining the program.
If you qualify, you need to give permission to Amazon to access your social media channels. This means allowing them to publish posts on your behalf as well as follow and unfollow accounts.
If you don’t get approved, you can always come back in the future as the eligibility requirements may change over time.
What are the Benefits of Becoming an Amazon Influencer?
The program is a win-win for both Amazon and the influencers alike. Amazon offers a bunch of proven social sharing strategies across all channels, including podcasts and Snapchats, as well as examples of real-life influencer campaigns. Other benefits of joining Amazon Influencer Program include:
Own a personal storefront on Amazon
Get a customizable page and URL right on Amazon’s own website, and display thousands of product recommendations to your solid fan base. No need to create a website or a blog at all! With such a trusted global eCommerce marketplace, sales couldn’t get any easier!
Make your fans’ life easier
Have a one-stop shop for all your favorite items, and in turn, make your followers’ shopping experience more enjoyable as they search and find all your top picks in one place.
Get rewarded for what you love doing
When a shopper purchase through your storefront, you earn a commission on qualifying purchases. Commissions can be quite ample – ranging from 1 to 10% and higher – depending on the item bought.
Furniture sales were found to garner around 8% and many products make around 7% commission. If done purposefully, influencers can expect a steady payout.
For more details, check out Amazon’s Influencer Program standard fee rates for specific product categories.
How are Brands Capitalizing on the Power of Amazon Influencer Marketing?
It generally begins with a brand finding Amazon influencers who already have a piece of content driving sales from their followers. This could be an existing blog post, a tweet on Twitter, Pinterest pin, Facebook post, YouTube video, Quora answer, etc.
The brand then likes the post, leaves a comment or follow the Amazon influencer on social media to engage and build a relationship.
Once relationship is built, the brand will get in touch with the social media influencer through a direct message or email in an attempt to collaborate and get involved on the piece of content that is already generating sales. In most cases, brands will ask for a new content where they are featured.
Some of the best ways that brands are teaming up with Amazon influencers include:
- Product reviews drawn up as a solution to a problem or something that would make a consumer’s life easier
- Feature on best lists, favorite lists, must-have lists or top lists
- Discount codes given out on a regular basis
Why Work with Amazon Influencers?
It’s well known just how fierce the competition on the Amazon marketplace is. So having an online presence and a beautiful eCommerce store is no longer enough to shine out from your rivals. For Amazon sellers, like yourself, collaborating with a trustworthy Amazon influencer is a smart marketing strategy to help you drive direct sales and build brand awareness.
A recent study suggests that word of mouth marketing have a far greater impact in an online business’ social exposure. According to Nielsen, the most credible form of advertising comes straight from the people we know and trust. Eighty-three percent of consumers trust recommendations from people they know directly over any other type of advertising. Beyond friends and family, 88% of people trust online reviews written by other consumers as much as they trust recommendations from personal contacts.
Joining forces with Amazon influencers not only builds your brand but also makes the buying journey seamless and easy. For instance, a simple swipe-up on an influencer’s Instagram story or a quick tap on the tagged account on the influencer’s Facebook post can take a potential customer directly to your Amazon store.
Top benefits of pairing up with Amazon influencers include:
- Increased sales
- Improved PPC ad visibility
- Reduced Amazon ads ACoS
- More positive reviews from happy customers
- Show up ahead of competitors in product searches
Why Amazon? Simply because Amazon has proven itself a trustworthy and popular hub to shop online, over and over again. Odds are your target customers would rather shop through Amazon than your influencer’s website. In fact, JWT Intelligence’s survey found that 88% of 18 to 34 year olds in the U.S. prefer to shop on Amazon over other online retailers. Unsurprisingly, Amazon is responsible for nearly half of all online retail spend in the U.S.
Find out more mind blowing Amazon statistics.
Further, Amazon influencer marketing is centralized, well organized and easy to participate in. By tapping into influencer marketing, you can track specific ROI metrics. Since items are ordered from a vanity URL that the influencer shares, it’s easy to measure how many sales are made through each campaign. Amazon has a reporting tab that keeps track of how much influencers make from both sales of products and bounties. The reporting section also includes payment histories, fee schedules, and reports.
Bottom Line
With influencer marketing impacting how people purchase online, Amazon’s influencer program can certainly do wonders for your brand – as long as you do your research and spend strategically. Should you decide to partner with an Amazon influencer, make sure you choose them carefully and set a solid plan on how they can drive sales and bring value into your brand.
