The importance of affiliate marketing [Infographic]

Affiliate marketing can provide a lot of benefits for e-commerce businesses, but only if you get it right

According to recent studies, 81% of brands rely on affiliate links because they involve very little investment.

Affiliate marketing, an appropriate marketing solution for every e-commerce store, involves an affiliate signing up to an affiliate program offered by a retailer to first promote and then sell their products on a formulated commission-based payment model.

This affiliate, usually a publisher, is poised to promote such products and services using a unique link that sends traffic to the company’s website. If the target lead purchases the product, a percentage of the sales is then paid to the affiliate.

Essentially, affiliate marketing can be seen as expanding one’s marketing team by employing the services of third-party companies, which are paid only when the leads are converted and successful sales made.

In a world where marketing strategies and tactics bombard businesses from all directions, affiliate marketing has become a popular choice among businesses and brands.

Affiliate marketing isn’t only becoming a popular choice among brands. It has now evolved into a massive global industry worth well over $12 billion, as we can see in this infographic.

Affiliate marketing has myriad advantages that small, medium, and large business brands are trying to exploit. Little wonder it is gaining more popularity than email marketing, which used to be the undisputed king of digital marketing campaigns.

In fact, affiliate marketing rakes in as much as email marketing. What’s more, it contributes 15% of the total revenue made from digital marketing efforts.

Here a few of its other advantages:

Effective use of advertising budget

Because affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy, it reduces the money wasted on advertisement allocation. It is a widely known truth that marketing is all about increasing ROI for prospective customers, and affiliate marketing is no exception.

It reduces the risk of bad ROI since the amount of money you spend is less.

Easy tracking

Just like other marketing strategies in email marketing and website creation, affiliate marketing can be tracked. This is perhaps its greatest benefit.

Its programs give access to viewing such things as click-through rates or site views as a result of a customer having viewed an affiliate web page.

This is a very important aspect of building an affiliate program. It works because it gives an idea of which affiliates work and which do not.

In addition, it also highlights performance on the different affiliate websites by using different marketing tools such as a link placement or an ad banner.

It is not out of place to have different affiliate programs, as a selected few effective ones can then be picked out of the original number of programs.

Increase SEO

This is a subject dear to the hearts of most online retailers. Affiliate marketing can aid your site’s SEO through numerous backlinks via your affiliate websites, blogs, and (indirectly) social media pages. This is especially true if you’re working with higher-ranked partners whose audience share content about your product or service across several platforms.

Grow brand awareness

When making transactions online, customers would usually prefer to buy from retailers they are familiar with rather than go pitch their tent with an unknown label or unknown face.

It allows new companies – small or large – to grow their brand awareness by increasing the audience base, acquiring customers who have not previously heard about them.

By working with a select group of affiliates who have a knack for your niche, it goes beyond single product promotion. Your awareness scope is widened, and you can promote your brand to new leads and audiences.

Access foreign markets

If a product can be marketed worldwide, affiliate marketing is an efficient way of tapping into the global marketplace.

Using professional affiliates abroad, local knowledge can be used to market the products to foreign audiences using strategies tailored to the specific area.

Aside from that, it is a low-risk method of finding out if a product is saleable elsewhere. To aid this global reach, affiliates can also link up with global affiliate networks.

Bottom line

Marketing might be tough, but it is crucial for success. Affiliate marketing offers a flexible approach as well as a cost-effective method to promote your brand and generate new leads. It also lessens the amount of money wasted on advertisements.

To get the most out of affiliate marketing, take a look at this infographic from Hosting Tribunal.