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The eCommerce industry already recognizes that affiliate marketing is one of the most efficient ways to increase sales and is becoming one of the most trusted online marketing methods.
The chance to put your product or service in front of highly interested yet hard-to-reach people in normal circumstances is pretty great, and it can help you increase your business profitability within a short period.
Due to small investments and the performance-based marketing model, affiliate marketing is expected to take over email marketing by 2022. It’s almost on the same level as email marketing regarding the best online marketing method to generate revenues.
Affiliate programs can be a good way for marketing specialists and retailers of any size to reach a wider audience while earning new customers and increasing revenue. However, it can be difficult for new businesses to decide where to start.
But before we get into that, let’s explore a bit more about the Affiliate Model of marketing.
In essence, affiliate marketing allows a person to promote your product or service and earn a commission on every sale or conversion.
A business can either build its affiliate system or join an established affiliate program that acts as a marketplace for affiliates and businesses.
Affiliate programs give you access to a network of partners who promote your products among their audiences through a trackable link that lets the consumers shop directly at your online store.
In return, these members get a fixed commission for each sale or a flexible commission based on your sales number or amount.
Affiliates can promote that trackable link on their website or blog, their social network profiles, or even emails. When customers click on that link and finally make a purchase in your store, you pay the commission based on the total amount of that order.
Affiliate software is necessary when building your affiliate network. It allows you to manage your program and rapidly track crucial affiliate marketing data. You can always know which affiliates are accountable for which transactions, streamline your payments, and enhance your effective loyalty connections.
With software like UpPromote Affiliate & Referral, you can manage your affiliate program with just a few clicks and have a seamless onboarding process. Moreover, you can create a default commission, personalize the signup form, and easily set up payment.
Most affiliate programs’ commission structure for affiliates is based on each order that comes from their unique affiliate link and is known as affiliate commission.
However, some affiliate programs also choose to pay commissions based on an action like email collection, clicks, or a combination of the three. Usually, affiliate programs offer multiple ways for businesses to set the affiliate’s commission structure, which is pretty customizable.
Deciding which commission structure is the best option for your business depends on the main objective of your affiliate marketing.
If you want to increase brand awareness and recognition, the best option could be pay per action where action can be email collection, a phone number, etc. If you want to increase revenues, the best option would be the typical pay-per-sale.
The two main ways in which retailers implement an affiliate marketing program are: Build your own program and go directly to affiliates, or join an external affiliate network to access those affiliates and let them decide about your offer.
Both options have pros and cons, but for a small or medium-sized business, joining an already-established affiliate network is always a good idea.
So now I believe that you have a basic idea of affiliate marketing, how it works, and how it can help your online business.
Assuming you have either joined an affiliate network or have your own affiliate setup in place, let’s see how you can find and get affiliates to start working for you.
One good option for finding affiliates is to work with an affiliate management agency specializing in finding and recruiting affiliates.
Working with an affiliate agency is best suited for brands that need to expand their bandwidth for ongoing affiliate partner discovery and outreach.
You can choose to use only the recruitment services and outsource the heavy lifting of recruitment, or you can outsource your entire program to an agency.
Either way, affiliate agencies can offer guidance on making your offer and commission structure more attractive to prospective partners.
An affiliate agency can also help negotiate better deals with affiliates through existing relationships, and they have experience working with a wide variety of partners and different types of affiliates.
A good agency can help you find and recruit the right mix of high-quality affiliates that are best suited to achieving your specific goals.
Perform[cb] Agency is an affiliate management agency that has been leading the charge since 2002 and specializes in building the perfect combination of partnerships and promotions tailored to meet any brand’s KPIs.
Their latest expert guide, The C-Suite’s Guide to Outcome-Based Marketing, is packed with strategic insights gathered over the last decade to supercharge growth across 24+ media channels, build data-driven relationships, and boost ROAS by up to 50%.
Fiverr Marketplace has its pros and cons however, you can find great gigs if you look hard enough.
One of the best and easiest ways to find an affiliate to promote your product is by choosing 10 sellers on Fiverr that offer a gig to promote your product and test them all with unique affiliate links to be able to track their performance.
Out of 10, you should find at least 1 or 2 that are performing well and are profitable. Then reach out to them and start to develop a long term partnership with them.
Rinse and repeat.
This is the pretty obvious one, so putting it in at the end. You can simply join popular and reputable affiliate networks like ClickBank, ShareASale, or CommissionJunction. Some of them charge you to list your product, whereas others simply take a commission on each sale.
If you are a retailer, you can use Refersion, a free marketplace, to publish and promote your affiliate program. Their marketplace attracts many great affiliates who are looking for new products to promote.
Marketers often use these networks to find products or services to promote. Also, when you join a network, there is a good chance that affiliates come to you automatically instead of you reaching out to them.
The critical thing on these networks is to make sure that you offer a competitive commission structure and lucrative incentives.
Also, you might need to provide marketing material, such as banners or graphics for your affiliates.
The biggest benefit of joining these networks is they can help you steer your affiliate marketing in the right direction due to their years of experience and expertise. You can directly talk to their support representative or go to their knowledge hub.
These networks offer pretty comprehensive guides for new businesses on how to use and exploit the full potential of affiliate marketing for their brand.
Aside from these networks, you can also find affiliate program directories to promote your program (many of these are free, such as this one).
Influencers are the talk of the town lately and it continues to echo in every marketing conference or blog. They are people with strong followership based on their expertise or popularity in a specific niche. They can be actors, artists or even a stay at home dad.
By using influencer marketing reach, selecting a suitable product based on the platform, and offering high-quality marketing material, you can increase your sales significantly.
There are several platforms where you can find influencers who can help you get good results for your business.
Platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, etc. are becoming a habit for millions of people who use them daily for hours. Influencers mold these people’s opinion about a product or service by either recommending or rejecting it.
Say you are a gaming company, and you would like to find influencers to promote your gaming accessory or your game, the best option would be YouTube.
There are some pretty famous influencers like PewDiePie who would charge you pretty high for recommending your product but if you are just starting then there are several other influencers who are ready to work with you in your budget.
A simple search on YouTube will bring you several gaming channels.
As you can see there are the ones with millions of subscribers and then there are some with 200k subscribers as well.
You can even go for channels with 50K subscribers. You can go to their “About Page” and see their contact info or message them directly as well.
They are more than ready to work as an affiliate. They’ll even guide you on the best way to promote your product.
People often start blogging if they are passionate about something. For instance, if a person’s hobby is woodworking, a blog is a nice idea to keep yourself motivated as well as find like-minded people who are searching for anything related to woodworking on the internet.
Most often, if a person is good at something and provides helpful content on his/her blog to help other people with the same interest, the blog eventually becomes quite popular among those like-minded people. Using these already established blogs is a good way to start your affiliate marketing.
There are paid products that can help you connect with potential affiliates whose blog or site matches your needs (like this one or this one) or you can do it yourself.
You can also find niche blogs in your target market and directly offer them your affiliate program. For instance, if you are selling “pet toys” then a simple search of “dog care guide blog” in Google will bring you lots of results.
These are pet-focused blogs and people reading them are potential buyers of pet products.
You can contact these blogs or websites by going to their About Us or Contact page and send them an email. But make sure to offer something worthy enough to catch their attention.
They probably get these types of emails every day and even working with some affiliates already. So you need to be a little bit creative in your approach when asking them to join you as an affiliate.
Coupon sites are still unbelievably popular among customers. You can find several coupon sites, such as RetailMeNot, and contact them directly to discuss how to put your brand on their website.
With coupon sites, the reach of your brand grows dramatically, as it has the power to reach online shoppers that you would never do otherwise. Plus their visitors are customers so the conversion ratio is pretty high.
Keep in mind that these affiliates are coupon sites, so you must offer a discount for customers as well.
You would be surprised to know how many people still use forums and groups. There are still Facebook groups with thousands of active members.
Say you are promoting a restaurant, then a restaurant or eating-out-related group or page on Facebook is your perfect chance to promote your product. You can contact the page or group owner and offer them your affiliate program.
Similarly, there are very active niche forums that attract both buyers and sellers. For instance, in the wellness and medical spheres, TalkHealthPartnership is the UK’s leading health-related community.
You can contact them and offer them your affiliate network. There is a sub-forum with the name “Online Clinics” where doctors participate and answer questions online.
You can reach out to these doctors by using the private messaging feature of forums and work out some sort of deal.
You can also reach out to the most active members of the forum and offer them your affiliate program so they can earn while helping people at the same time.
You might have heard that your customers are your best salespeople. As true as this statement is, this is the most underrated method of getting affiliates for your product or service.
A happy customer is more inclined to suggest your product to family or friends. What’s better than earning while doing this?
Now there is a pretty high chance that your customer is using Facebook and as per research, an average Facebook user has 155 friends.
This means your customer can put your product in front of 155 people who trust him/her.
With every order confirmation or delivery email you sent to your customer, you can tell them about your affiliate network. There is a pretty good chance that if your customer is happy with your product or service, he is more than willing to promote your product.
But before asking your customers to recommend your product to their friends or family, make sure that he/she is satisfied with the product or service. Make sure that you have an awesome & active customer service to sort out any customer issue.
Here are some easy ways to find affiliates for your product. But remember that this is just the first part.
The key to a successful marketing plan is making your offer appealing, offering high incentives, and rewarding your affiliates based on their sales.
If carried out properly, affiliate programs can greatly benefit your business. They can increase sales, increase brand recognition, and even strengthen existing customers’ confidence in your business. Therefore, many businesses now rely on affiliate marketing in one way or another.
Always remember that when an affiliate chooses to work with you, they act as your brand ambassadors. And like any other business, you must ensure your brand integrity remains the same.
You need to be careful about which affiliate network to join and what material they use to represent your brand. If done correctly, affiliate marketing can greatly improve your eCommerce business and help you generate more sales.
Author Bio: Haseeb Najam has been working in search marketing since 2006. His expertise includes SEO, SEM, Link Building, Product Development, and critiquing local food.
Affiliate marketers can help you reach a wider audience, drive traffic to your website, and boost sales. They are often passionate about your niche and can create high-quality content that resonates with their audience.
Start by ensuring your customer service and support is of a high standard. This will go a long way in attracting the right affiliates to your program. Then show off your customer-to-affiliate success stories through sharing testimonials on you website. For other effective tips, read our full article on ways to find the perfect affiliates for selling your products.
Fake engagement: Inflated follower counts or engagement metrics purchased through bots.
Low-quality content: Affiliates who create spammy or irrelevant content that doesn't align with your brand.
Negative reputation: Affiliates known for promoting low-quality products or using unethical marketing tactics.
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