How brands can use affiliate marketing to improve sales and outreach
Whatever brand you are promoting, the advent of affiiate marketing has proved to be the ideal business model. Instead of focusing efforts on blanket advertising campaigns, the promotional aspects of any brand are outsourced to third parties.
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Affiliate programs are launched which business owners can sign-up. Although they receive a commission on every sale, this is vastly outweighed by the advantages to the merchant. The marketer is now doing all the groundwork, getting brands out there.
Understanding affiliate marketing
This type of referral-based marketing has been around for a while, with its success varying depending on how much work the marketer is prepared to put into promotion. Its effectiveness cannot be understated. According to market analysis, around 15% of the digital media industry’s revenue is down to affiliate programs. This represents a fertile area for brands of all type.
Across the globe, more and more brands are shelving out considerable portions of their marketing budgets on this type of third party promotion. In fact, advertisers are now integrating affiliate marketing channels into their overall development strategies. The reasons for this are obvious. It represents a way of generating income which is low risk, while the rewards can be high. The advertiser doesn’t have to chase after customers by taking out prominent adverts; they rely on their affiliates to drum up trade.
As long as the third party is producing quality web content – and the success or failure of their affiliate program will ride on achieving eye-catching and principled content advertising the product – value is continually being added to the brand. Any brand can see how competent affiliate marketing has a direct correlation to rises in sales figures.
How brands can benefit from affiliate programs
Introducing a brand into affiliate marketing is really just an extension of the basic premise: the third party signs-up to promoting a product or service on their web platform. When any new brand is introduced there is a trickle-down effect. Customers engage with the brand at various points. It could be the case that the marketer has created a compelling video review of the items which has then been posted on social media and then shared numerous times. The brand name will gain recognition at each stage of this process.
For the affiliate marketer, who has the onus to create as attractive a picture as possible for their potential customers, it is in their interest to show the brand in a positive light. They can, therefore, tie-in the brand with their overall web content, seeking to be seen as an expert when it comes to discussing the merits of the product in a positive way. The nature of the business model means the marketer isn’t just taking the brand name and posting hyperlinks on their website or blog. Casual web browsers rarely alight on random pages with the intention of going on to make purchases. They do so because they are drawn to the buzz around the brand they are particularly interested in.
It’s then up to the marketer to display the desired brand adverts after having generated suitable levels of interest through product reviews or blog posts centered around the benefits of buying the item or investing in the services.
Improving outreach
New markets are opening all the time, and it would benefit any entrepreneur to look towards Asia, especially India. This country represents an area where costs are low, and the Internet penetration for customers is growing all the time. Running a typical CPA network like this attuned to this rising audience would make absolute business sense.
