At its core, affiliate marketing is all about earning a commission by promoting someone else’s products. Affiliate marketers find a product that they like, genuinely enjoy and believe in, and promote it to the widest possible audience that they can. The more they’re able to generate sales on behalf of that company, the more money they’re able to earn with each purchase – thus creating a mutually beneficial situation for everyone involved.
Affiliate marketing is also big business, regardless of which side of the relationship you come down on. According to one recent study, affiliate marketing literally accounts for 15% of all digital media revenue on the Internet. The entire sector itself is worth about $12 billion, and spending is predicted to grow by a massive 10% over the next few years alone. Based on all of that, it’s easy to see why about 81% of brands currently have some type of affiliate marketing program in play.
In terms of digital marketing, it’s clear that affiliate marketing is one of the biggest opportunities to come along for even small businesses in quite some time. But if you really want to make the most out of this modern day phenomenon – and enjoy a return on investment that is worth the effort you put in to find the right affiliates in the first place – you’ll need to keep a few important things in mind along the way.
It All Begins With a Plan
Maybe the most important thing to understand in terms of affiliate marketing success is that your campaign isn’t just going to build itself – especially in those early days. If you’re a new company with a few unproven products or services under your belt, you can’t just expect that affiliates are going to come knocking on your door. More than likely, you’re going to have to go out and find people to build relationships with – and that means you need a plan for how to make that happen.
If you sign up for some type of affiliate network without a plan in place, you’re creating a situation where low conversions (and even lower returns) are all but a guarantee. Instead, you need to begin by thinking about the answers to the following questions:
- What would your ideal affiliate actually look like? What type of person do you feel best represents your products and services?
- Who, specifically, are the people you’re targeting? Who are the types of people that they’re paying attention to?
- Where do a lot of the people who are your potential customers spend the majority of their time while on the Internet?
- With regards to your specific product niche, what does the competition currently look like? What are some of those other organizations doing right and, more importantly, what are they doing wrong?
- What, exactly, can you offer affiliates to make them want to work with you?
That last point is particularly important, as it requires a better understanding of what everyone else around you is doing. Obviously, no affiliate is going to work with you and expect nothing in return – which means that you need to have a compelling offer and an even more compelling commission rate. But if you offer 3% on every sale and all of your competitors are offering 10%, you’re really providing very little incentive to get out there and push your message.
So for the best results, you need to do your research into what the average commission rates are for your industry and (most importantly) what you can afford to spend. Then, reach out to affiliates using sites like Respona and see what types of relationships you can build.
Again, things are going to go slow in these early days but if you play your cards right, the results will more than speak for themselves.
For Affiliate Marketing Success, Help the Affiliates Help You
Everyone knows that content is king in terms of marketing these days, and your affiliates are going to need as much of it as possible. During those early days of your own program, you can’t just expect people to put the effort in to build it for you – which means you’re going to have to do a lot of this legwork on your own.
Really, what you need to do is sit down and use a tool like Visme (which I founded to help people better communicate with one another) to craft content that is A) specific to your brand and that highlights your products and services, and B) that can easily be customized to each affiliate before they send it out into the world in an effort to build up sales.
Create social media graphics that are fun and exciting that your affiliates can share on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Come up with email sequences that offer all the information that someone would need to make a purchase, with blanks that the affiliates can fill in before sending. The next time you spend a few days coming up with that high quality white paper or presentation, leave space for them to personalize it to match their own audiences before they think about distribution.
Think about your affiliate program as a two-way street in the truest sense of the term. If you want someone to help you, you need to help them in return – and that means that during the early days of your program you’re probably going to handle a lot of the content creation needs on your own. But that’s okay, because as your sales increase and your commissions do the same, you can start to ask for something more in exchange for a larger piece of the proverbial pie.
But really, the most important thing to remember about your affiliate program is that you’re trying to create a genuine relationship with these people in every sense of the term. They’re not your employees and they shouldn’t be treated as such – instead, you should look at them like partners.
Reach out to them and work together, collaborating on as much content as possible. Always check in to find out what they need and what they’d like to see more of. Value their input and use it to shift the direction of your own strategy moving forward. Always keep them in-the-loop regarding any big changes you might be making or any exciting surprises you have in store.
If you create this type of genuine relationship with as many affiliates as possible, make no mistake: it will absolutely serve both of you well for years to come.
About the Author: Payman Taei is the founder of Visme, an easy-to-use online tool to create engaging presentations, infographics, and other forms of visual content. He is also the founder of HindSite Interactive, an award-winning Maryland digital agency specializing in website design, user experience and web app development.