LISA: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Performance Marketers Toolkit, the series where we explore the biggest challenges modern marketers face, and the performance enhancing solutions that help overcome them.

I'm Lisa Maynard, VP of Marketing at Awin. In each episode, we'll look at a real world marketing challenge and how brands are solving it through the agility of the affiliate channel and the help of Awin's technology.

Today we're tackling a problem every marketer investing in influencer or creators will recognize. How do you actually prove the impact of social activity on sales? Influencer marketing continues to surge. According to Bloomberg, global influencer marketing spend is projected to grow by 36%. Reaching $33 billion this year.

Yet, despite that growth, creator IQ data suggests that almost half of marketers still struggle to measure their creator ROI. With closed social platforms, privacy restrictions, and the decline of third party cookies, connecting a post to a purchase is harder than ever. So [00:01:00] how can brands bring accountability back to influence and finally connect the dots between inspiration and conversion?

That's where the affiliate channel offers a bridge. By treating creators like performance partners using unique links or voucher codes, brands can reward them for the genuine sales they drive, even when traditional tracking isn't possible. It's an approach that turns influence into outcomes and awareness into measurable performance.

JOE: Another thing I think Andrew kind of touched on was, and influencers was kind of one of the things we wanted to do there. So if we're gonna work with these influencers, how do we make sure we don't spend all of our money and not drive any sales and kind of just get burned essentially. So that was the beauty of affiliate spaces, right?

One, we can, you know, it was a totally untapped channel that they hadn't had. And, and two was the affiliate model really protects you from getting burned on those flat fee deals where how do I know what I'm getting back out of this?

LISA: That was Joe Sanfilippo from Today's Business joining us on Awin-Win Marketing Podcast to describe how they help the US eyewear brand, Tomahawk Shades, merge their [00:02:00] influencer and affiliate activity. That accountability - paying for results, not promises - gave the team the confidence to test creator collaborations more freely, and one of those experiments became an unexpected success story. Here's Tomahawk Shade's founder Andrew Shapiro.

ANDREW: There was this one guy on on TikTok, Mr. Hamilton. He was a school teacher. Just had fun, really out there. And we basically approached him.

We're like, "Hey, we, we don't know where this is gonna go. We're like, let's give you an affiliate code. Let's see what happens." He posted one video and it was just sale, sale, sale, sale, sale. We're like, what's going on? We couldn't believe it. I think that, yeah, he, he texted me those days like, have you seen these numbers?

And I was like, no, I haven't checked it out. Like I didn't really think of it.

And all of a sudden it's like, look, how many codes were you? So we're like, wow, this is great.

JOE: Yeah. And that's why we always say like, throw stuff at the wall. 'cause you don't, you never know when, like there's gonna be some sort of anomaly like that.

LISA: That one TikTok Post shows what happens when social influence meets performance marketing. But to make that kind of partnership scalable across multiple different creators and platforms, brands need [00:03:00] technology that can attribute every sale accurately, even when cookies or links can't.

That's where Awin's Voucher Attribution tool comes in.

Voucher attribution enables advertisers to reward partners based on voucher code use, rather than relying solely on cookies or tracking links. It means that even on platforms where tracking is much more difficult, like TikTok, Instagram reels, or snapchat, sales can still be tied back to the specific creator who drove them.

For marketers, that means proof of performance in a cookie list environment, fair reward for creators who deliver real sales and unified reporting that puts influencers alongside every other affiliate partner. In short, it brings clarity and accountability back to creator marketing. And the numbers prove it.

Advertisers using Awin's Voucher Attribution tool, see on average more than double the ROI compared with those that don't. In fact, brands using the tool achieve an average ROI of around $27 for every dollar spent versus just $13 for those who don't. When you can track, attribute and reward creator [00:04:00] driven sales properly - performance follows.

So if you're working with influencers or creators and want to see which posts actually drive conversions, Awin's Voucher Attribution turns guesswork into data, letting you track, reward, and scale those partnerships with confidence.

Thanks for joining me for this episode of The Performance Marketers Toolkit.

Join us next time as we tackle another marketing challenge and show how Awin helps marketers enhance their performance.