When a huge 63% of businesses say that one of their biggest business challenges is generating traffic and leads it’s no surprise that many businesses are looking at different ways to beat the competition.
Most business owners understand that having an effective marketing strategy is crucial to the overall success of their business.
According to Statista, affiliate marketing spend is set to reach a staggering $8.2 billion by 2022 in the U.S alone.
So why is affiliate marketing important and why is it a great strategy to grow your business?
First, let’s look at the mini answer before we take a look in more detail at why growing your brand using affiliate marketing might be a great strategy for your business
Why affiliate marketing is important:
- Limited start-up costs
- Low risk
- Increase brand awareness
- Better SEO
- More targeted traffic
- Scalability
- Increases authority and trust
- Hand-pick brand ambassadors
- Only pay for performance
- Monitor important stats and data
Ok so now we’ve checked out the brief, let’s start first by taking a look at what affiliate marketing is so you can better understand why affiliate marketing is important.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing model that financially rewards affiliate partners for driving sales or other actions to a brand.
Other actions can be anything from site visits, right through to completing a lead form.
The Youtube video below also explains what Affiliate Marketing is and how to start it in a nutshell.
One of the best things? This form of marketing can be an incredibly beneficial, low-risk way to promote your products.
The main premise of affiliate marketing is that it is essentially based on revenue sharing.
So, If you have a product and want to sell more, you can offer promoters a financial incentive through an affiliate program.
If you don’t have a product, but still want to make money, then affiliate marketing allows you to promote a product that resonates with you and you feel has value, while earning an income from it as an affiliate marketer.
So you might be wondering how affiliate marketing can help to grow your business. Read on to find out.
How Can Affiliate Marketing Grow My Business?
There are many reasons why affiliate marketing is a popular method for brands to grow.
According to Google Trends, Affiliate Marketing is seeing a sharp increase in interest from October 2019 throughout a 12 month period.
This may be because of the increased uncertainty in regular ways of earning income, many are looking to add a side hustle or because affiliate marketing can be hugely beneficial for driving sales in scaled-up businesses.
For whichever reason, this growing trend looks set to increase.
So let’s look below why you should include affiliate marketing within your marketing campaigns and why affiliate marketing is important.
“According to Google Trends, Affiliate Marketing is seeing a sharp increase in interest from October 2019 throughout a 12 month period”
Why Affiliate Marketing is a Good Addition to my Marketing Campaigns
We all know that traffic and visitors don’t come free, and with so many brands vying for people’s attention, it’s becoming ever more difficult to breakthrough.
Affiliate marketing partnerships can enhance your efforts when they’re executed correctly.
So why would you need to add affiliate marketing to your marketing campaigns? Let’s take a look.
Limited start-up costs – Although an affiliate program requires some investment of time and finance, it’s worth realizing it’s a minimal outlay when compared to the costs involved in buying advertising and employing a team of staff, for example.
Low risk – rather than using up valuable budgeting resources to create leads that need more work and nurture to convert, use affiliate marketing to create a direct form of custom where you can build relationships and also upsell at the optimum moment. By paying for the performance only, you are able to mitigate against overspending on marketing and ensure a low-risk option.
Increase brand awareness – By starting an affiliate marketing campaign both small and larger businesses increase exposure to new audiences and effectively grow brand awareness. By working only with a select group of marketers you will be able to expose your product and service to a whole new group of possible buyers. Most consumers will buy more readily from a seller they are comfortable with and more likely to shop with them than from a merchant they don’t know, even for a cheaper deal.
Better SEO – Affiliate Marketing can help build SEO with backlinks to other sites and social pages. This works especially well if you are working with higher-ranking partners such as Amazon. These audiences will then go on to socially share your product details or your brand to a wider audience.
More targeted traffic – it can be easier to grow and maintain your target audience by working with affiliates who understand your industry and are already active in it. This way you will more likely receive targeted sales from a warmed-up audience. You will also be able to build on this going forward and more effectively build relationships with your customer base.
Scale your business – with affiliate marketing you are able to test out new areas for customers, experience new marketplaces, and scale your business for a minimal cost. Affiliate marketing is also perfect for start-ups or for scaling your business without a huge cost. This kind of marketing gives you the flexibility to build your business at a cost that is easily controllable.
Increases authority and trust – working with brand champions who are trusted in your industry will help to solidify your place in the market. The added confidence your customers or potential customers gain by your collaboration with trusted bloggers and other reputable websites will lead to more business and more trust in your product or service.
Hand-pick brand ambassadors – When working with affiliates, you are able to cherry-pick those who are best suited and those who will give the best representation of your brand. As each affiliate applies to come on board with your business. You will get the opportunity to investigate how they might promote your product and choose those most likely to align with your brand ethos.
Only pay for performance – With traditional pay-per-click advertising, if you are receiving low quality leads you will still have to pay up, regardless of whether you get any sales. It’s not enough to pay for leads that may or not turn into sales, and pay-per-click can see your advertising budget whittle away in front of your eyes, without a return. With affiliate marketing, you will only pay your marketer upon the point of a sale. Affiliate marketing gives you the flexibility to hit upon influencers who can convert into sales. If they don’t, you aren’t out of pocket.
Monitor data – Working with a trusted affiliate network to manage your affiliate marketing allows you access to a detailed dashboard and sales reports. Through this, you can monitor your data and make important tweaks to your campaigns. An affiliate dashboard will help you to make the best decisions and form a strategy as to how your affiliate team is performing.
Affiliate Marketing Partnership
And finally…
Affiliate marketing celebrated its 30th birthday in 2019 with originally the whole industry represented by one company, William J. Tobin, the founder of PC Flowers & Gifts.
With this sector now estimated to be worth around 12 billion dollars, and influencers such as Forbes magazine describing affiliate marketing as having a bright future for both content and vendor creators make sure you add this invaluable marketing stream to your business.
Make sure you check out our article on how to get started with affiliate marketing.
You may also be interested in how to complement your business can benefit from cost-effective ecommerce solutions and manage your customer communications with email marketing
