How to Save Time with Content Approvals

When scaling affiliate campaigns, there comes a point when it is no longer feasible to review all of the UGC created for your brand. This often happens when you’re activating dozens of influencers or more within a 6-month period. As a best practice, brands should break down content created by their affiliates into two categories: influencers that promote referral links and influencers that create branded content. Here’s how to save time with content approvals.

Referral Links

For influencers that promote referral links, payments will be made when conversions occur. The results are directly tied to not only the performance of a creator’s post but also the frequency and remarketing strategy that is used with their audience. This means there is an added incentive for the creator to post high-quality content very often!

If you’re activating dozens or hundreds of affiliates, you’ll be tied up in endless content approvals which will hold up the promotion process of your campaign. Rather than slow down your backlog and stifle brand awareness, we recommend skipping content approvals for influencers that are receiving commission-based payouts and allowing these influencers to post as freely and as often as they wish with the referral link you provide them. We do recommend imposing a start and end date for the payouts, so you can fully assess their performance based on your company’s standard attribution windows.

Below is an example of how one influencer remarketed their referral link across Instagram and YouTube.

Branded Content

For influencers that create branded content, the rate that is paid is based on a creator’s likeness and potential influence, as opposed to referral links that pay based on performance. As a best practice, we recommend content approvals when paying for branded content so you can control the narrative for your brand, ensure the content meets your brand standards,  and get the most value out for your influencer fee.

In these types of posts, the creator is required to indicate that the post is an #ad, #sponsored, or #paid. See an example below:

Approving Content on the Captiv8 Platform

Streamline Your Workflow

As your brand’s affiliate marketing program scales, it will become more important to define standard operating procedures and streamline the workflow so you can review the branded content that’s necessary to drive both brand awareness and performance. The Captiv8 platform currently supports both referral links and content approvals for branded content campaigns through our Shopify integration. Click here to learn more about our Shopify integration or visit Captiv8.io for more info.