- What is Affiliate Marketing?
- How does Affiliate Marketing Work?
- What is the Importance of Affiliate Marketing?
- How to Start Affiliate Marketing?
- Questions to Ask Before Promoting an Affiliate Product
The concept of affiliate marketing started in 1994 after the inception of the World Wide Web and is the brainchild of William.J.Tobin. Affiliate marketing is a sales practice that allows a business to increase their sales with the help of market affiliates who target the same audience as the business owner and earn a commission by recommending the products to the customers.
Affiliate marketing has grown so much over the years and has become an important part of a marketing plan for any online business as it is an effective method of increasing sales for business by attracting new customers.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
The growth of e-commerce as a model of doing business has majorly resulted in a shift in how people are doing business. With the increase in internet connectivity and mobile phone use more people are shopping online as opposed to going to the store to buy products. This has resulted in businesses finding ways to promote their products online to reach a wide customer base.
One of how businesses promote their products is by use of affiliate marketing strategies. Affiliate marketing is a marketing tool used by businesses to increase sales and generate a significant amount of revenue and involves third party marketers whose main agenda is to promote a product through a huge marketing list to earn a commission.
In affiliate marketing, the marketer promotes a product that they have an interest in through different websites and marketing email lists and the sales are monitored through affiliate links.
The concept of affiliate marketing offers a win-win type of situation for both the business and the marketer as the more the customers a business gets the more the sales and the more the affiliate marketer makes from the commission on the sales.
How does Affiliate Marketing Work?
For the process of affiliate marketing to work efficiently, 3 key players are involved:
The brand or the seller of a product
The seller of a product may be an individual or a large business and this is a person who provides the product to sell. The seller is not actively involved in marketing.
The affiliate
The affiliate may be either an individual or a large brand and they are also known as a publisher, and they are responsible for attracting potential customers and convincing them to buy a product.
The affiliate makes a profit of off the total sales made through their links and by earning a commission off the total revenue.
The consumer
The consumer can be considered the critical player in the affiliate marketing process when the consumer purchases the product the brand and the affiliate both make profits.
The consumer may be made aware that they are in an affiliate program, or they may not even know about it as the profits the affiliate makes is not from the price of the product but the sale, therefore, the price of a product is not higher.
The workings of an affiliate marketing program may be hard to understand for people looking in from the outside but to the main beneficiaries of the system, affiliate marketing is one of the most efficient online marketing strategies.
Affiliate marketing is made possible by affiliate networks that handle the technology that is used in the tracking of affiliates and their payments. The networks give brands access to a variety of affiliates and the affiliates have access to different affiliate programs within the network.
Affiliate marketing works by first allowing the marketer access to an affiliate program by signing up for an affiliate link which is used to promote the product on the marketer’s website.
When a customer clicks on the link that is on the marketers’ website, a cookie is stored on the company website to track them. If the customer purchases a product from the affiliate link, the brand is made aware of the purchase and the affiliate then gets paid a commission of the sale.
The process is made possible through the SaaS platform that is used to track the consumer’s progress through the cycle of the purchase. The affiliate marketers are paid monthly or weekly and the payments are based on the total number of sales that have been made.
What is the Importance of Affiliate Marketing?
In the digital market, the process of affiliate marketing is an important strategy if a business wants to increase sales and hence make profits. There are many reasons to engage in affiliate marketing and these include:
Affiliate marketing helps brands expand their customer base and drive up their profits. Since affiliates have a wide reach, they will ensure that the right audience will be able to find out about the products a brand offers and even go a step further to convince the customer to purchase the product.
Since affiliate marketing is based on the performance of the affiliates, it serves as an effective tool for advertising and it is a cost-efficient way to promote a product and make sales.
Since an affiliate marketer will want to make more money from the high number of sales, they will do everything they can to attract a huge customer base and this will make the sales of a given brand go up.
The work of an affiliate marketer is to make your product attractive enough for a buyer to purchase. This will mean boosting the reputation of your brand to make it appealing to the customer.
Since an affiliate marketer has a community of people who trust their opinions, their recommendations for your product may mean more sales.
Affiliate marketing drives traffic to your site and therefore boosts your profits. Affiliate marketing also grows your brand as a wide number of people will be made aware of your brand.
Affiliate marketing is a fast and easy way to get profits as you do not require spending a lot of time and effort marketing a product, this is because the affiliates get the work done for you by directing customers to your website.
How to Start Affiliate Marketing?
To get started on affiliate marketing you need to:
Decide on a platform to use to promote a product
This may be by use of a blog or any other social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram or Facebook ensure that the platform you choose to use is optimized for search engines to rank better, you may then add affiliate links to the platform you will choose.
Choose a product niche to be able to achieve success
Choosing a niche will be enabling you to scale down and choose a product that interests you. Because marketing requires convincing customers to choose a product, you need to be well conversant with the type of product you choose to promote.
Find affiliate programs to join
These may be as many as you choose to, depending on what your goal is. The programs may be high-paying, low-volume programs or low-paying, high –volume programs.
Produce great content on your site
Produce great content on your site to promote the product to ensure that you know everything about the product you are promoting and use a convincing tone to promote it.
Position your affiliate links
Position your affiliate links where the customers will be able to easily view and click and ensure that the visitors buy the product. You will need to be convincing to be able to get people to buy the products and this will include offering discounts and having frequent giveaways.
Questions to Ask Before Promoting an Affiliate Product
Choosing a product that will enable you to make sales is important. To be able to find a product to promote you need to ask yourself some critical questions:
What is my passion?
Because affiliate marketing requires convincing you to need to find a product that you are passionate about, are you interested in technology? Or kitchen appliances? Find a product that you will easily write about and that you can confidently ask customers to buy.
What is the buyer demographic for the products?
In affiliate marketing, you need to have more customers to make more sales. Therefore, you need to find products that more people will easily buy.
Which is the best affiliate marketing program?
When choosing an affiliate program, you need to first determine what your end goal is and choose a program that will enable you to achieve your goal. You need to check on the conversion rates of the program you will choose and find out if it works for you.
Is the process of buying products from the brand easy?
It is frustrating to promote a product for a brand that does not reciprocate on the level of commitment you have put in promoting the product. Ensure that the brand you promote will offer quality service to the customers who visit their site and purchase their products.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing has made it easy for businesses to increase their profits and for the marketer to make money. The affiliate marketing system offers a way for all the people involved to benefit as the customer will get a good product, the sales of the brand will go up and the marketer will make money off the sales. It offers an easy way for brands to be easily recognized.
