Wix is a user-friendly website builder for small businesses. Its drag-and-drop functionality and free templates make it ideal for building an attractive online presence on a budget. Creative agencies may use Wix to create sites for their clients, but any individual or small business can manage it independently — saving them money right out of the gate.
Wix’s platform is well-optimized for mobile viewing and SEO. It’s easy to see why the Wix platform is trusted by small businesses everywhere — it hosts 160 million websites across the globe, after all.
The Wix app marketplace extends the possibilities of your e-commerce site even further with easy and efficient integrations. For example, it allows you to create a low-cost, low-risk Wix affiliate program that can help your business grow substantially.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a brand ambassador or influencer program in which individuals receive commissions or rewards when they drive purchases on your site. These affiliates are extensions of your brand. They may be local celebrities, major social media influencers, or some of your company’s biggest fans and most loyal customers. These are the people that can spread the word about your company in a meaningful and authentic way.
If you have a Wix store, it’s easy to start an affiliate marketing program without the need for a web developer or any outside help.
Why You Should Start a Wix Affiliate Program
Affiliate marketing produces an average of 15% of digital marketing sales. To start seeing those numbers work for you, begin your affiliate program by working with what you already have. The relationships you’ve fostered with customers can open doors to new opportunities. Nearly 80% of business consistently comes from 20% of your existing customers. Those loyal buyers can be your first affiliate partners.
As brand ambassadors, they can help build your brand’s trust and awareness. They can also help you expand your audience and increase your ROI — all at little cost and risk to you. Here are eight reasons why starting a Wix affiliate program may be your next smartest business move.
1. Build Trust
Any potential customer will trust the people they know and like — far more than a random ad. Well-known bloggers and social media influencers have built up a following that respects and trusts their recommendations. When one of them recommends your brand, expect to see a flood of new customers and boost your conversion rate.
Let’s say your company sells eco-friendly cleaning products. Perhaps there’s a local guru in the natural skincare space. She operates her own business with direct selling of products she uses and believes in. Over the years, her social following has grown, raising her profile as a thought leader and reliable professional in the beauty industry. While she already markets beauty and skincare products, your cleaning products company — which shares a similar philosophy — could be a good partner.
You now have someone credible and established that can speak on behalf of your brand. You’ll broaden your audience, and she’ll be compensated with every purchase she brings in.
2. Increase Brand Awareness
The most successful brands develop trust over time, and that comes with brand awareness. For example, when shopping for bottled water, are you more likely to choose a well-known brand or a generic one? Most people will go for the well-known brand — we often trust what we recognize. The most recognizable brands are consistent in how they’re represented.
To maintain consistency, your affiliates should be well-versed in your brand. When launching your affiliate program, you’ll be able to customize your logo, brand colors, and welcome text with Wix affiliate software. You can fill your online portal with a branded creative inventory that adheres to and reinforces your company’s image standards. Implementing and enforcing brand standards in your affiliate program helps with brand awareness and recognition.
When affiliates sign-up, they’ll be able to see exactly what you expect from them as promoters of your brand. You can even offer branded social media posts, ads, banners, text links, landing pages, emails, and other shareable content. Let your affiliates know that they can share this content if they need some inspiration.
You may also want to create affiliate newsletters, trackable coupon codes, and temporary incentives to keep your affiliates engaged and coming back to your library of shareable content. The easier you make it for your affiliates, the more they’ll be able to easily (and happily) talk up your brand in a way that aligns with your mission.
3. Expand Your Audience
Affiliate marketing can broaden your audience in a way traditional marketing often can’t. Take the above example of the company selling eco-friendly cleaning products. You may find influencers in various niches — healthy living, organic foods, environmental conservation, natural skincare — who are excited to promote your brand. You can harness their vast networks to reach people and groups you may have never considered as potential buyers.
4. Reduce Your Marketing Costs
Most marketing campaigns have a high up-front cost. It won’t matter if the campaign is successful or a total flop. Regardless, you’ll end up spending thousands on a marketing tactic that may or may not work. On the other hand, the cost of implementing an affiliate marketing program is minimal.
This is because your company only pays for performance. Affiliate partners don’t get a monthly stipend or salary. They receive commission directly based on the sales they drive. You can even choose to have an unlimited amount of affiliate partners without having to increase your spending.
An affiliate marketing program allows you to remain competitive with other similar small businesses — and even bigger players with unlimited marketing budgets.
5. Lower Your Risk
Along with being low-cost, affiliate programs are extremely low-risk. It will take some time and effort to set up, of course, but — aside from the monthly subscription cost of your affiliate program software — your business has little to lose.
With this in mind, remember to treat your affiliates well. Ensure they understand your brand guidelines and what you expect from them while also offering them extra commissions and incentives.
Commissions are often rewarded with a percentage of the total sales. Additional incentives could include monthly performance contests or bonus prizes for reaching a certain threshold of sales and conversions.
6. Boost Your ROI
Return on investment (ROI) is a metric used to determine the success of marketing campaigns or the effectiveness of dollars spent. Did you know that affiliate marketing is a $6.8 million industry? That’s a lot of potential ROI for a single marketing strategy.
Being able to quickly track ROI with Wix affiliate tracking helps you determine which influencers and affiliates are producing the most income. You can use this information to address areas of weakness, reward high performers to encourage their efforts or both. It gives you the ability to optimize your affiliate program to minimize tactics that aren’t generating any income.
7. Target Your Traffic
Your affiliates do more than help you sell a product — they can help you understand what’s working for your brand and what isn’t. Part of what makes affiliate programs so compelling is how easily they can be tracked and analyzed.
When affiliates share your content, they’ll use specific referral links. With those links, their followers will be able to reach your website quickly, and you’ll be able to target all that traffic coming in. This can help you better understand who is interested in your company and whether or not they end up making a purchase.
8. Expand on Your Training and Resources
When starting an affiliate program for your Wix store, the best types of affiliate software will provide additional affiliate marketing training and resources. For no added cost, you can have access to a robust library of guides and articles to answer any questions related to your affiliate program. Learn tips on recruiting affiliates, reviewing affiliate applications, paying your affiliates, avoiding common mistakes, and much more.
Once you have your affiliate program set up and functioning, it will quickly become a well-oiled machine. With automation capabilities, Wix affiliate software requires little management to maintain.
Start Your Wix Affiliate Program Risk-Free
With minimal start-up costs and risk, an effective affiliate marketing program can build trust and brand awareness, expand your audience, boost your ROI, and take your company to places you never expected.
