Firstly, affiliate marketing is one of the most popular methods for growing reach and generating new traffic. Offering exposure to new, warmed up and targeted audiences, it’s easy to see why spend on an affiliate marketing programme increases year on year.
If you’re thinking that affiliate marketing could work for you, here’s 4 ways an effective affiliate marketing programme can grow your customer base and online revenue. All without blowing the marketing budget.
Four reasons why affiliate marketing works
So, how precisely does an affiliate marketing programme deliver cost-effective new sources of traffic? Let’s break this down:
- It is targeted
- Work with affiliates and affiliate networks who operate in your industry and understand it to receive targeted, warmed up traffic.
- It works hand in hand with SEO
- Affiliate marketing does not occur in a vacuum. Valuable backlinks and social signals can aid your SEO work and proves particularly effective if partners with a higher rank share details of your services.
- It is low risk
- By paying for conversions rather than clicks, affiliate links act as shortcut to direct sales. This helps to save precious marketing budget and gives you with a base on which to build upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Ultimately, turn your new visitors into repeat customers.
- It grows brand awareness
- Get your product or brand in front of new and different audiences by partnering with a select group of affiliates. Trust here is key: people are more likely to spend with a recommended brand than cheaper alternatives from unknown brands.
Do you need support with your marketing strategy? Unsure if you are getting the best returns? Book a free initial consultation with Think Beyond by calling 01565 632206.
Which affiliate marketing is best?
Review blogs, videos, social media marketing, influencer campaigns and product reviews are just some techniques that affiliates employ. The beauty of affiliate schemes lies in their versatility and helps to protect against outside forces.
Similarly, affiliate marketing is incredibly effective to scale your operation. Whether you are a start-up or a blue chip, B2B or B2C, test new products or marketplaces via affiliates under controlled terms. There are no geographic limits here. Global affiliate networks operate internationally, using local knowledge to get your brand and products into the most effective audiences.
Three reasons why affiliate programmes are overlooked
Unlike PPC, SEO or social media, affiliate marketing often doesn’t grab the headlines. But why is this the case? Here are three common misconceptions about affiliate marketing programmes:
- Trust
- Affiliates manage networks of websites that place your ads. Simple and effective ad placement that you never considered. There are so many options and few clear leaders in the field to trust that holds back wide adoption.
- Transparency
- Affiliates manage networks that you don’t see. A little like a post share, you don’t see all of the sites within the network that see your ad. This is the same as the Google display network that uses a vast array of partner sites to display ads.
- Targeting
- Affiliate targeting is less familiar to a marketing team than a direct mail or email. The audience is made up of interest networks that need to align with your brand. There is often fear that an ad will appear on an unfamiliar site.
The above reasons are also the advantages of an affiliate programme. Visitors you wouldn’t have engaged before, ads running in front of vast audiences and high interest groups. For example, would you have run an ad on Twitch before reading this sentence? Ultimately, that means you just missed out on 15m daily visitors.
Marketing support for digital growth
In conclusion, getting new visitors is hard. But declining sessions and user numbers is harder.
Think Beyond is an established marketing consultancy that helps you get the leads you need. From Cheshire, Think Beyond supports marketing managers, executives and senior teams with tailored lead generation and marketing packages. We work with some of the leading experts in digital marketing, building award-winning websites and Google partners. If you have any further questions, why not check out our article on digital marketing agency services.
To find out how we support you, call 01565 632206 or email sales@think-beyond.co.uk for a no obligation chat.
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