Running an e-commerce store is easier than ever. You can get your store online in minutes by using Ecwid — a flexible, medium-independent e-Commerce platform. It allows you to create a custom store, accept payments, track orders, and manage shipments all in one place. Best of all, it’s cloud-based, so you don’t need to install anything.
If you’re already using Ecwid, you probably love it for the reasons above. You likely also know that you can use Ecwid to instantly add a store to any site you already have. Putting your products online is as simple as pressing a few buttons. But if your Ecwid store is already up and running, you might be wondering what comes next. For many e-Commerce stores, that next step is starting an affiliate program.
An affiliate program allows your biggest fans to become part of your marketing plan. You register people as your affiliates, and they talk about your program to their friends and audience. The affiliates get a small percentage of every sale you make through their link. Meanwhile, you get marketing that you only pay for when it succeeds.
What Can an Ecwid Affiliate Program Do For You?
If you’re considering setting up an Ecwid affiliate program, keep reading to learn the five significant benefits of incorporating an Ecwid affiliate plugin into your site.
1. Diversify Revenue and Marketing
The first and most obvious benefit of any affiliate program is its impact on your revenue. Starting an affiliate program gives you a brand new way to increase your sales numbers. It’s never a good idea to rely too heavily on one form of marketing, after all. With affiliate marketing, you add a new channel of revenue and diversify your base.
Affiliates are incentivized to send targeted traffic your way because they’re compensated for that work by receiving a percentage of sales from their links. As a result, you get more exposure to people who are primed to buy.
Even better, your affiliates will market your business for you. To encourage people to buy your products through their links, affiliates will use their own marketing methods. Depending on your affiliates, your store could appear everywhere — from influencer posts to email campaigns to social media advertisements. Best of all, you won’t need to manage any of this marketing yourself.
2. Build Consumer Trust
Internet users are losing trust in traditional advertising and marketing. Instead, influencers and brand ambassadors are taking the stage as trustworthy and engaging marketers. Customers trust influencers to be honest about the products they recommend because they seem approachable and genuine.
Affiliates put in a lot of work to earn their audience’s trust. They maintain that trust by only recommending worthwhile products and services. Working with these people is an easy way to enhance “social proof.”
Social proof is a demonstration that people in the real world like and uses a product. Online social proof is essential for building trust, especially in young e-Commerce companies. You can use an Ecwid affiliate program to create social proof and earn the trust of potential customers.
3. Reach a Broader Audience
Along with consumer trust, your affiliates help you build your audience as a whole. Many influencers and affiliate marketers have audiences of thousands of people. When they put your store in front of those people, you get exposure to new audiences that you may not have been able to reach otherwise.
A good affiliate will only apply to your program if they know that their audience will buy and enjoy your products. Meanwhile, you can handpick partners and only accept those that align with your business. That means that affiliate marketing is the easiest way to put your business in front of people who fit your target demographic perfectly.
That exposure is invaluable for building your customer base. Even if an individual affiliate post doesn’t convince someone to buy, it can still increase brand awareness. If an affiliate remains in your program, they will continue to talk to their audience about your products. Over time, that will increase social proof of your brand and can win over hesitant people.
4. Scale Your Business
When your sales numbers and audience size increase, you have the perfect opportunity to scale your business. Your company has more freedom when it has a larger audience and higher profits. Whether you want to increase your product offerings, hire additional staff, or open physical locations, having more sales helps.
An Ecwid affiliate marketing program is the perfect way to make that happen. You can let your affiliates send new customers your way. Those extra sales give you the resources you need to scale your business without doing all the work yourself. More importantly, those sales demonstrate that scaling your business is worthwhile. They prove that your audience is large enough to support your business even if it gets larger.
5. Increase ROI Without Increasing Effort
You’re busy running your e-Commerce store, so any new programs you start must be low-cost and easy to manage. An Ecwid affiliate program fits those requirements perfectly.
An affiliate program has limited start-up costs. The right Ecwid affiliate app will be a small addition to your budget. You’ll only pay the affiliates themselves when they actually lead to sales. That means you only pay for performance, making the investment low-risk.
Meanwhile, an affiliate program dramatically increases your return on investment (ROI). Since affiliates send high converting traffic, they have a high affiliate ROI compared to other marketing techniques.
Once you get your affiliate program up and running, you can leave it on semi-autopilot. The relatively low management required allows you to focus on running your business instead of running the program.
Are You Ready to Start Your Ecwid Affiliate Program?
If you’re ready to add an affiliate program to your Ecwid site, you can get started today with LeadDyno. No matter how big or small your business may be, LeadDyno can support your affiliate program.
LeadDyno offers one-click integration with Ecwid, so you don’t need to change your platform. Meanwhile, it can automate affiliate recruiting, payment, and stat tracking. You can even set up different affiliate tiers to reward your best partners.
