Affiliate marketing is a marketing model in which you outsource marketers (known as affiliates) and incentivize them for promoting your product.
For every sale you generate through their promotion efforts, you pay them in commission. If they don’t get you customers, you don’t pay them anything.
A simple low risk marketing strategy that requires little to no investment upfront.
All good!
However, with any business strategy, efficacy is the key consideration to its deployment, and as such, you might wonder whether affiliate marketing works or not?
Are there marketers out there who are even interested in being affiliates?
Does affiliate marketing yield improvements significant enough for it to be deemed a viable strategy for your business?
Affiliate Marketing – Making a Business Case
A quick look at the Google Trends data indicates that the number of searches for the term “affiliate marketing” rose by 30 percent between 2016 and 2017.
Surely that does say something about the rising popularity of the marketing model among internet marketers.
And why wouldn’t they be attracted to it?
After all, today, more than 20% of publishers’ revenue comes from sales that they generate as affiliates.
And it’s not just affiliates who are benefitting from affiliate marketing; the rewards are being shared mutually.
According to Business Insider, affiliate marketing now drives 16% of US ecommerce orders. It is one of the four largest sources of purchase orders for the ecommerce industry.
If that is not enough to convince you, then reviewing the case studies of Mike Geary and Barkbox might help.
Mike Geary increased his revenue to $1 million per month through affiliate marketing, and Barkbox established itself as one of the most well-known brands in its niche on Instagram, thanks to its superbly executed affiliate referral program.
Having said that, getting success with an affiliate referral program is not easy. If there are examples of successful affiliate programs to share, there are many more examples of affiliate programs that stagnated and disappeared.
There goes a lot of thinking and planning into running a successful affiliate program. Below are some tips to help you out:
- Don’t offer too low or too high in commission. You need to strike a perfect balance between how much you can afford to pay in commission without affecting your bottom line and what affiliates find tempting enough to join your program.
- Choose an affiliate tracking platform that offers easy integration with your online store and enables you to leverage multiple marketing channels for the promotion of your product.
- Join an affiliate network. It would improve your program’s visibility among affiliates.
- Treat your affiliates as partners and build strong relationships with them.
- Invite and convince influencers to join your affiliate program. They can help you generate sales.
Increase your online sales today by setting up an affiliate program.
A BONUS read: Common Affiliate Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
