22% of marketing agencies, brands, and other relevant professionals still experience significant difficulty (and 56% experiences medium difficulty), in their search for finding appropriate influencers (influencer marketing report, 2021).
Instagram wants to take the role of middleman to help creators and companies find each other, and has found a way to obtain this. The video and photo-sharing social network has been working on new ways for creators to monetise Instagram content, including affiliate marketing tools, Instagram creator shops, and a branded content marketplace.
Nowadays, it is common practice for brands to pay influencers to share sponsored content through their channel in which they subtly or much less subtly promote the sponsor’s products. Instagram is now looking to make the system more attractive to all parties. The platform strives to play a more active role as an intermediary between advertisers and content creators. “We should be able to help brands find creators who are uniquely aligned with the work we are trying to do and vice versa ” mentioned Instagram chief Adam Mosseri in a live broadcast.
How to Earn Money on Instagram
Traditionally, content creators have been earning revenue on Instagram through their own means, which requires messaging online brands, putting together e-commerce stores (to sell merchandise), and joining Instagram affiliate programs. The newly announced features are a first attempt on Instagram’s behalf to unify and streamline those processes by making it possible for creators to achieve all of this within the app.
Thanks to these new features, content creators will be able to earn multiple revenue streams through:
- Simplified brand partnerships
Instagram is creating a “creator marketplace” for brands, where they would get to discover and/or sponsor emerging content creators. Creators who normally would not draw a lot of attention could end up on a brand’s radar. By bringing this digital marketplace to life, establishing brand partnerships for all parties involved will be simplified.
Instagram chief Adam Mosseri shared a few words about this: “If we can help with matchmaking, we can help drive more dollars to the smaller creators who can do amazing work for brands.”
- Creator shops
Instagram creator shops will make it possible for content creators to sell merchandise on their IG profile. Once sponsor and creator have found each other through the marketplace, they can further expand their collaboration. In 2020, Instagram already introduced Instagram shops, including live shopping and enabling check out within the app, and now creator shops are added to the list. Creator shops are unique as regular users will also be able to set up their own IG store.
Zuckerberg stated. “Online stays open…And one part of being a content creator business model is you create great content and then you can sell stuff. So having creator shops is awesome.”
- Instagram’s affiliate commerce program
Besides being a creator marketplace and a shopping platform, Instagram is also developing an affiliate tagging system for creators, which enables creators to tag either products or brands in their posts, and earn a commission payment if their link generates product sales for a brand on the app.
What Does This Mean for Your Business?
As content creators can now showcase themselves and their channel in a digital marketplace, advertisers can look there for the content creators whose audience best matches their target groups. Working with a marketplace will, therefore, not only give emerging Instagram influencers a boost to commercialize their content, but also allow advertisers to find content creators that match their criteria much more easily.
Do you want to learn more about these new features and how they can help you achieve your digital marketing strategy? Contact us now or check out our Influencer marketing service page!
