What is Affiliate Marketing? The 5 Benefits
You’ve probably heard of affiliate marketing, but you’re not sure what it’s all about and what benefits it can bring you.
Affiliate marketing is a popular tactic to boost sales and generate significant online revenue. It’s hugely beneficial for both brands and affiliate marketers…
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the process by which an affiliate earns a commission for marketing another person or company’s products. The affiliate merely searches for a product he likes and then promotes it and receives a share of the profit from each sale he makes. Sales get tracked by affiliate links from one website to another.
Affiliate marketing is a results-based business in which affiliates get money by splitting the revenue.
Affiliates become independent promoters of their chosen products, services or even a range of products. Affiliates are free to pick and choose the appropriate techniques or strategies to reach the highest number of customers.
Affiliate marketing is a huge opportunity to get money on the internet but be mistaken if you think it is effortless. It is a job like any other, bringing huge benefits but requiring knowledge, experience and work.
But after all, what are the main advantages of affiliate marketing for the advertiser? Is it worth paying commissions for an affiliate to promote our products or services? Is it necessary? Does Affiliate Marketing give a return?
Main benefits of having affiliates working for your company:
The main advantage of having an affiliate program is that it is entirely performance-based. Since affiliates only receive a commission after the desired action occurs, they are more motivated to drive conversion.
This way company saves time and money, allowing it to focus on other business strategies.
We can find Affiliates in every marketplace and all existing product categories. There are always relevant sites to associate ourselves with. The good news is that many of these affiliates already have an established visitor base. These partnerships offer the opportunity to expand into new markets and reach to explore, giving your brand a much firmer online presence. Think of these partners as an extension of your existing marketing or sales team.
Partnering with trusted bloggers and websites can increase your brand and product’s reputation. These partners will promote your products and further build consumer trust in your product or service. During the research phase of a purchase, consumers are more likely to trust the opinion of a third party than the content produced on the website selling the product itself. Consumers see it as an independent and unbiased opinion, therefore more credible. Consumers are also more likely to trust the websites they go to for recommendations on particular products/services.
For many reasons already mentioned, affiliate marketing can be highly cost-effective. If you only pay commissions when the desired conversion occurs, you are not wasting advertising budgets on channels with no proven value. Additionally, recruiting affiliates in new markets is an easy way to get into that market without the overheads of creating an entire marketing campaign reducing the need to invest money in an unproven market to test if it works.
5. Affiliates can quickly scale their traffic (and sales)
In combination with other marketing efforts, recruiting affiliates to your programme will allow you to boost your traffic faster. As more sites link to your pages, you will have more chances of converting those users into customers.
Also, while affiliate links do not directly impact search engine rankings, they will have a ‘halo effect’ in having more people research your products and navigate to your pages – which is great for your position in the search rankings. As well as a higher level of referral traffic, you’ll see an increase in your direct and organic traffic.
Conclusion:
Affiliate marketing can be a very efficient, low-risk investment to help expand your marketing efforts beyond traditional marketing. For the reasons listed here, affiliate marketing is almost always worth the investment and can take your online shop to new heights.
Of course, there are also some disadvantages that we’ll talk about here shortly.
Are you already using affiliate marketing? How’s it going? Feel free to get in touch with us and comment below!
LAST UPDATE ON APRIL 2024
