While influencer marketing has been around for some time, it has reached fever pitch in the last year. Between Twitter's focus on video content, YouTube's increasing presence, and the proliferation of Instagram influencers, brands are constantly looking for the next big thing and have to take advantage of this space in order to grow their reach.

But, if they're going to do that, they need to figure out how to monetize the relationship.

Clearly, Amazon is no exception.

Back in September, the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon had reached an agreement with influencer website Kongregate to promote its Video Game Tester and Lifestyle Product Reviews products on Amazon.

Over the course of the past year, Kongregate has generated more than 75 million views across all of its videos and brand collaborations.

Now, that's not a bad number, but what makes this particularly interesting is that Amazon is paying influencers a minimum of $300 to $900 per ad exposure. According to an update from Kongregate, some of these influencers have seen as much as $3,500 per promotion, depending on how the campaign is structured.

Of course, this is also very important to take into consideration when looking at Amazon's overall strategy. It is not the only company out there.

YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and others all pay influencers big money to get them to promote their brands.

Clearly, Amazon is trying to differentiate itself, and that's not something that you can do without going all out on influencer marketing.

Can influencers really tell a brand's story?

One of the big reasons for investing in influencers is their ability to tell the story of a brand in a personal way that an ad can't. This comes from the fact that influencers have established a personal connection to their audience.

In reality, brands just want to know if someone who is not an employee of the company is going to be effective. Of course, some do, but in order to get an understanding of that, you need to look at data from all of the different channels.

That's where Amazon comes in.

For instance, if Amazon paid a female fitness influencer to post a video on YouTube promoting its Prime Video offering, she would be able to speak about the benefits of Amazon's service, whether or not it would help her get a better deal from the cable company, and/or whether or not she was going to cancel her cable in favor of Amazon.

In other words, while she is promoting an Amazon product, she is also promoting Amazon.com and getting a piece of the action there.

That goes a long way to building a following and brand loyalty for Amazon.

Based on that alone, influencer marketing does seem to work for Amazon, although it is hard to determine what the ultimate payoff for the brands is. That's a conversation for another day.

How to make the most of influencer marketing

While it might sound like Amazon is doing a good job, the reality is that it's not. Sure, it's getting a lot of money from some of these influencers, but it's not getting a lot of brand exposure as a result.

In other words, the influencer becomes more of a brand ambassador than a promoter.

However, if you are planning on trying to go after this, there are a few things that you can do.

For starters, make sure that you can find influencers that are actually related to the brand. A top official at Zappos was able to turn influencers on the forums over to a flash sale he was putting on for the team, but there are others who would be all for the sale, but not the product.

In fact, Zappos actually generated a huge amount of sales from all of its campaign.

The second piece of advice is to have a different strategy. Instead of paying hundreds of dollars to a popular figure, have a big sale that is worth hundreds of dollars.

The way that you do that is by creating a big sale that is seasonal, which is a shift from what companies have been doing, which is having product availability all year long.

By creating a seasonal sale, Amazon is able to get the most from their money, while also getting a lot of bang for their buck.

Reviews

If you sell items on Amazon, the way you earn more money from them is by writing reviews. If you’re a known influencer, they can ask you to write reviews on their products, which in return, they will share your name on their online stores.

This increases your exposure to a lot of potential customers. But if you’re not a known influencer and you have a bad reputation, you may not be able to get it as a reward.

Also, the reviews are not worth as much as one may think. This is due to the fact that many people tend to review products from their friends and acquaintances.

For these reviews to be genuine, the author has to sell the product first and then write a review. Usually, Amazon will reward you only when you write a review on an item bought by someone who bought it from your social media account.