As a business owner or entrepreneur, you can use many digital marketing strategies, such as social media marketing, email marketing, and content marketing, to get exposure and grow your business . You may run some campaigns and spend money on them using these strategies without obtaining any sales or leads. It happens sometimes . Digital marketing is a long-term investment, and as with any investment, there will be wins and losses, but ultimately you will get a return on your investment.
But what if there is a digital marketing strategy where you can get influencers, bloggers, and vloggers to promote your products or services and you do not pay them until you get real results like sales, followers, or leads? That will be awesome, yah?
Actually , there is such a strategy , and it is called affiliate marketing. I will cover every aspect of affiliate marketing in this post , including what it is, its types, advantages and disadvantages, and how to choose the best strategy and best affiliate.
Table Of Contents
Table Of Contents
What is affiliate marketing?
The main parts of the affiliate marketing system
Types of affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing promotion techniques
The advantages of affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing disadvantages
Affiliate network vs affiliate program: Which is better to use?
How do you find the right affiliate for your business?
Conclusion
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a process where businesses recruit influencers, bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, or other businesses to promote their products or services and pay them only when they drive sales, generate leads, or drive traffic to their websites.
You can pay the affiliate per sales, leads, clicks, or app installation.
In affiliate marketing, each affiliate is given a special link from which clicks can be tracked , usually with the help of cookies. The user is then tracked by the cookie to see if he made a purchase. If he does so within a specified time, then the business owner should pay the affiliate a percentage as a commission.
Each cookie has a length, or âcookie lifeâ, which defines how long the cookie will track the userâs online activity.
The main parts of the affiliate marketing system
Any affiliate marketing system should comprise these parts:
The Merchant
Also known as the seller, vendor, advertiser, retailer, and creator, the merchant can be a big company, an entrepreneur, or business owner that has a product or service and recruits affiliates to promote it.
The Affiliate
Also known as the publisher, this is the party who does the marketing, promotes, and attracts potential customers to buy the merchantâs products The affiliate can be one individual, a company, or an entire site dedicated to finding products related to a certain topic and promoting them.
The consumer
He is the potential customer or target audience for affiliate marketing to attract him and convince him to make a purchase.
Consumers need to know they are part of an affiliate marketing system. Usually, publishers use a short disclaimer like âIf you purchase items on this site, I may earn a small.
The Network
An affiliate network is a platform that works as an intermediary between merchants and affiliates. A merchant uses the affiliate network to find a good affiliate (publisher) who can promote his products or services, and the affiliate uses the network to choose the products he wants to promote.
An example of a network is the Amazon affiliate program, where the merchants add their products and the affiliate chooses from them and promotes them in their own way.
Some businesses may not use an affiliate network; they may work directly with publishers or run their own affiliate program because the affiliate network has some shortcomings that I will talk about in the next few sections.
Types of affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing allows anyone to promote any product or service; some affiliates may have experience in the industry and do niche content to build relationships with people who are interested, while others may have none; As a result, affiliate marketing has been classified into the following types:
Unattached
The unattached affiliate has no experience in the industry and has no followers or connections with the products he is promoting. He may just run pay per click or any type of ad to promote the products and earn money.
Related
This type of affiliate has followers and experience in the industry. He creates niche content to attract interested people and build authority and relationships with them. He has the ability to influence them and convince them to buy your product. They are very selective because they donât want to recommend a bad product or service to their followers and lose them.
Involved
An involved affiliate is closely tied to the product. He has tried the product, trusted it, and become sure that it will suit his followers and give them a good experience. Then he will promote it and recommend it to them.
Hiring this affiliate may cost you more money than the other types, but it is worth investing in.
Affiliate marketing promotion techniques
Affiliates can market a companyâs products or services in a number of ways, and you only pay them if their strategies are successful and result in any form of benefit for you. Here are a few examples :
Influencer marketing
Here you get influencers to promote your products or services to their audience on Instagram , YouTube, or other channels. The influencer may make videos about your products, put them in his story, mention your brand, and include links back to your website.
Blogging
Most bloggers use affiliate marketing to monetize their blogs. Business owners look for niche blogs that specialize in topics related to their industry, and the traffic they receive is the businessâs target audience. The blogger can write posts with affiliate links or banners for your products, or he can write reviews or product comparisons.
Search affiliates
In this case, the affiliate uses his own money to promote your products in search results or to use an advertising technique to drive traffic to your website, such as pay-per-click ads or social media ads.
MicroSites
Microsites are separated from the main site. They can be a single landing page or a collection of pages with their own domain or sub-domain. Here, affiliates put your products on these sites and do their own marketing efforts, whether it is a PPC or email campaign or social media to attract people to visit these sites and make a purchase.
Email marketing
Affiliates who have an email list may include links to your products or services in their newsletters, or they may run dedicated email campaigns promoting your brand for their list.
Advantages of affiliate marketing
Itâs a good way to boost your brand awareness and generate word of mouth
with affiliate marketing you will get influencers, bloggers, vloggers, and podcasters to talk about your business and your products and recommend them to their followers. This will make your brand reach out to more people, which will increase your brand awareness and generate more word of mouth.
It allows you to market your products with less money and less effort.
Because most affiliates have some kind of marketing experience, affiliate marketing is a very effective strategy, especially for startups who donât have a large marketing budget, a dedicated marketing team, or the time or experience to market their products or services. You only need to pay them a percentage of the profits from sales in exchange for them marketing your goods, bringing you consumers, and making all other necessary efforts.
Enhance social proof
Consumers nowadays are more informed and have higher expectations than ever before. They heavily rely on brand reputation and social proof. It has been found that nearly 95% of shoppers examine online reviews before making a purchasing decision. When you work with genuine affiliates who have put in the effort and produced valuable content to gain the trust of their audience, they will pass some of this trust to your business and provide more social proof for your products because their audience knows that this influencer will always give them the best.
You never lose money if you havenât generated sales
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based model of marketing built for profitability. Unlike other marketing strategies, you are not paying for potential buyers through impressions or clicks, you only pay for closed sales.
Affiliate marketing disadvantages
Although affiliate marketing is an effective marketing strategy , you should be aware of some of its drawbacks. One of these drawbacks is that you may not have control over the message that can be spread about your brand, so be careful not to choose an affiliate who will poorly represent your brand , because some affiliates just want to make money and donât care too much about sharing your brandâs values and messages.
Additionally, they can send you traffic from unreliable sources, which would provide you with unreliable leads.
Affiliate network vs affiliate program which is better to use
When you first start affiliate marketing, you may get confused about whether to join an established affiliate network or create your own affiliate program. Letâs make a comparison of them and then decide which one is better.
In an affiliate marketing network, you will find a ready database that contains many influencers, bloggers, and other marketers. You just need to choose the best one for you and reach out to them and get them to promote your products.
Affiliate networks provide an easy way to find potential affiliates and manage your relationship with them. These networks take care of much of the administrative overhead associated with running an affiliate program, so you can concentrate on building relationships with your affiliates and generating revenue.
If youâre just getting started in affiliate marketing, itâs best to use an affiliate network instead of setting up your own affiliate program
On the other hand, with affiliate programs, you need to establish your own platform, then search for marketers and ask them to join your program. That means you need to establish your own network.
Now you may say, âI will use an affiliate network. Why should I establish my own and search for marketers to join it? Wait a minute!
What will make you choose to establish your own program is the affiliate networkâs high costs. Almost all affiliate marketing networks have sign-up fees that start at $500 and can go up to $3000.These fees are just to have an account on the network. Then you should pay the affiliate commission, which ranges from 15% to 50%. In addition to that, you should pay 1 to 2% of the commission to the network. Other than that, you should pay monthly fees for the network. Even if you didnât get sales, you will need to subtract these fees from your overall profit.
For some businesses, this is too many fees. Add to that, with affiliate networks, you donât have control over the data. Thatâs why some businesses prefer to run their own affiliate program because it costs less than joining an affiliate network.
There is another option to do affiliate marketing, which is to search for influencers, bloggers, or any marketer and ask them to promote your products while you give them a percentage as a commission per every sale, or develop a partnership with other
Businesses that have audience similar to your target audience can cross promote your products and services and get mutual benefit. This will be the choice for you if affiliate networks donât suit you and you donât want to run your own program.
How to find the right affiliate for your business?
The first step is to find an affiliate on the right channel for your audience, whether itâs social media, blogs, or forums. It is critical to reach your audience where they are, and to ensure that the affiliate has a large enough audience that matches your target audience. Also, make sure that they are authentic and provide valuable content that builds trust with their audience. And lastly, make sure they are great storytellers who will draw customers in and persuade them to buy.
Conclusion
As an entrepreneur, the risk of using affiliate marketing is extremely low, and the reward is high. You only need to pay affiliates when a customer converts, not when they drive people to your website, but make sure to choose the right affiliate network that has reasonable fees and reasonable commissions to get a good profit margin and good ROI.
Steer clear of networks that ask you to pay 30â50% commission plus monthly fees and sign-up fees. I think Hupspot has some kind of good affiliate network with a 15% commission. You can start with it or you can choose the other options, which are to start your own affiliate program, partner up with other businesses, or reach out to the influencers on their own channel and ask them to promote your products or services for a good commission.
