Marketing comes with all kinds of challenges, especially in today’s complex economy. How can you make sure consumers learn about your products and services, broaden your customer base, and encourage people to engage with your brand? One great answer to all these questions is to use affiliate marketing.
More and more businesses of all sizes are turning to affiliate marketing as a terrific way to reach a wider group of consumers than ever before. It’s proven to be highly effective — in fact, affiliate marketing is responsible for at least 16% of all global online sales.
If you’re not quite sure how to get started, don’t worry — we put together a guide to building an affiliate program using WordPress.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a simple yet ingenious way to attract new customers and educate the market about your products. To put it simply, it allows other websites to sell your products through their own sites — you collect the payment from the sale, of course. In return, you give the affiliate marketer a small commission.
Imagine, for example, that you run a small cosmetics line — perhaps you make lotions, lipsticks, and eyeliners. You might want to partner with a beauty blog. The blog owner agrees to sell your products through their website, and they run a few articles about the products they like best. In return, you give them a commission every time they sell one of your products.
The beauty of this system is that you open up new markets for your product, but you don’t expend any of your budget on advertising. By partnering with another website owner, you ensure that their readers will learn about your product. You also help ensure that consumers feel positive about the product.
Affiliate marketing works so well because consumers are primed to be open to you. They’re reading about your product on a website that they already trust. Many consumers today distrust marketing, but they do trust word-of-mouth advertising. Affiliate marketing is very similar to word-of-mouth marketing because consumers learn about your products through someone — a blogger or another business — that they’re already familiar with.
How Do You Set Up an Affiliate Marketing Program With WordPress?
WordPress makes it incredibly easy to set up an affiliate marketing program. You don’t need to be a tech wizard or have any specialized programming knowledge to get started. All you need to do is choose the right plugin.
Using a WordPress Affiliate Plugin
Several plugins on the market are designed to make it easy to set up your WordPress affiliate program. However, keep in mind that not all plugins are the same. Some will charge you high fees for using them. Others make it difficult to customize the details of your relationship with your affiliates.
LeadDyno’s WordPress affiliate plugin is one of the best options on the market when you’re ready to set up your WordPress affiliate program. The plugin is straightforward and intuitive to set up, and it works smoothly with WordPress, whether you’re creating a new website or simply building up your existing site.
The LeadDyno plugin is also very easy to customize. That means you’ll be able to set up the kinds of commissions you’re comfortable with. Decide how you want to compensate your partners for their sales, and you’re ready to get started.
You can set up LeadDyno to accept a wide range of payment platforms such as PayPal or Coinbase for making payments to your affiliates. LeadDyno even keeps track of the commissions for you and will handle the full payout for you if you’d like. That means you’ll have more time to concentrate on running your business without wasting time worrying about the details of your affiliate payouts.
Customizing Your Affiliate Marketing Program
Your affiliates will get a login of their own, but it won’t give them access to your full website. Instead, when they log in, they’ll be taken to their personal dashboard, where they’ll find their own sales information. They’ll be able to track their sales on a daily, weekly, and monthly scale so they can set goals for themselves.
Affiliates will get access to shareable links as well as promotional materials. Upload content in the Marketing Materials section of your LeadDyno account. Remember, your affiliates are representing your brand and helping to sell your products. That means you’ll want them to use your promotional materials whenever possible. Your goal is to keep your brand and your message strong and undiluted.
Final Thoughts
Affiliate marketing can be a game-changer for your business. It can expand your customer base and get you a much-needed foothold in new markets. Affiliate marketing can also help you build customer engagement with your brand.
After all, some of your best customers may well turn out to be influential bloggers or social media personalities. These are the people who make great affiliates for your brand. If you partner with your customers, they can help spread the word about your products — and in the process, they’ll become more engaged with your brand.
Get the word out to your customers and to everyone you know in your industry. Make sure to publicize the fact that you’re seeking affiliate partners to work with you and help sell your products. It won’t be long before you have a sizable list of affiliate partners.
Remember that affiliate marketing is a long and ongoing process. This isn’t a project that you can simply set up and then forget about — you’ll need to keep checking in with your affiliates and monitoring their progress to make sure everything stays on track.
