You may not, however, know how best use affiliate to drive revenue growth..

Affiliate marketing—the strategy of teaming up with other entities to have them promote your products—is one of the most promising paths to brand and sales growth. If you’re wanting to learn how to start affiliate marketing, you might need some guidance. And, as with all paths, the journey is a lot less challenging when you have a map.

Well, here’s your map, intrepid traveler. These seven affiliate marketing tips will guide you toward more sales, increased website traffic and a greater market share for affiliate marketing success.

1. Choose your affiliates wisely

Perhaps this first tip should go without saying, but we’re going to say it anyway: Who you partner with matters. Follower or subscriber counts are far from the only metric to consider. Choosing potential affiliates requires considering a few factors. 

First, there’s the affiliate’s public perception. Are they seen as a reputable source in the community? Do they produce high-quality content? Are they aligned with your organization’s values? These are all questions to ask as you conduct your preliminary research.

Then, there’s the notion of “fit.” Do these potential affiliates reach your target demographic? If not, your message might reach thousands of people—but they’ll be the wrong people.

Finally—and only when you’re satisfied with the other aspects—look at the metrics. Does your potential affiliate have a sizable audience? Do those three million followers actually watch their videos or read their articles? Some creators artificially inflate their numbers to draw in more marketing dollars; be on the lookout for those “too good to be true” scenarios.

Choosing the right affiliate partner can have significant influence on your affiliate marketing strategies.

2. Avoid the hard sell; provide value instead

Today’s consumers are smart. They know when a listicle or TikTok is pushing a particular product. When it’s easier to scroll to the next piece of content than sit through an obvious ad, the “hard sell” rarely works.

With that in mind, the trick to a successful affiliate marketing strategy is to make the average person not care that they’re reading or watching a product promotion. How do you do that? By producing content that provides the audience value.

Even though your team typically isn’t generating the affiliate’s content, you still have a say as the brand in what the publisher posts. As you write the content brief for your would-be affiliates, consider steering them toward a less sales-y approach. Instead, encourage your partners to create valuable affiliate marketing content that is:

• Educational
• Entertaining
• Investigative
• Groundbreaking
• Humorous

In short, your affiliate ads shouldn’t feel like ads. The organic approach will go a long way in convincing consumers to try your brand.

To help your affiliates create value-first content, try to provide them with as much information as possible. Internal statistics, unique selling points, branded infographics—anything makes a difference.

3. Pair affiliate promotions with deals

Affiliate marketing partnerships allow you to position your offerings in front of more people. But you still need to give those people a reason to try your brand. For many, a seal of approval from their favorite YouTuber, content creator or media outlet may not be enough of an incentive.

So, why not leverage affiliate promotions? Try tacking an offer onto your affiliate marketing. Pairing a glowing, transparent review with a deal is a surefire way to bring interested consumers to your site.

If you’ve been on social media in the last few years, you’ve likely seen some variation of this “promote and promo” approach. Influencers will often post videos and include a personalized 15%-off promo code at the end. Blogs and media outlets often do the same when adding an affiliate link.

4. Push your best-selling products

While it’s tempting to use affiliate marketing to drive traffic to new offerings, your best-sellers top the list for a reason. So, why not put your best foot forward and show potential new customers your bread and butter?

Whether you’re a newer brand or not, there’s plenty to gain from focusing your marketing efforts on your best products. When a consumer begins their journey to your brand with an unforgettable product or service, they’re likely to come back for more. So, when choosing an affiliate product, then of the one that symbolizes your brand perfectly.  

5. Set up your website for success (and conversions)

It’s all well and good to run a successful affiliate program that boosts your website traffic into the stratosphere. But what is the experience for the customer like after they land on your site?

If it’s slow, glitchy or disorganized, your marketing spend will be all for naught. Something as simple as a sluggish landing page can cause consumers to head for the hills. Case in point: For every extra second it takes a mobile page to load, conversions can drop by up to 20%.²

Similarly, if your e-commerce site isn’t intuitive, customers may feel confused or frustrated. And, as you know from Marketing 101, that’s the last thing users want.

If you’re running an affiliate marketing campaign with multiple affiliates, proactively prepare for the additional website traffic and make sure its functioning in tip-top shape. Even better, create a simplified landing page for all of your partners to promote. You may even want a product-specific page for each offer.

That way, when interested consumers follow the affiliate link, they can enjoy an intentional user experience. Not only will you increase your likelihood of conversion, but you’ll also provide a memorable first impression that will keep customers coming back.

6. Diversify your affiliate channels

When you think of affiliate marketing, you might picture a product roundup on a blog post or a viral Instagram Reel from a notable influencer. In reality, affiliate marketing is many things—and you should take advantage of them all.

By utilizing multiple channels, you can reach a wider audience than ever before. Depending on your brand, you might target one or more of the following:

• Affiliate email marketing – With affiliate email marketing, you dodge the spam filter by having an already-trusted source reach out to your target audience on your behalf. With the average email open rate hovering around 21%, you’re guaranteed to have eyes on your affiliate content.³
• Social media (influencers) – 59% of brands partner with influencers to expand their reach via social media platform.⁴ And there’s a reason influencers have dominated the affiliate marketing space in recent years. By connecting with potential customers in a casual, everyday setting like TikTok or Instagram, affiliated influencers earn their audience’s trust—then pass that on to you.
• Blogs and other publications – From news organizations to personal blogs, write-ups have long been staples of affiliate marketing. While an article may not reach as many people as a viral video, the long-form approach allows for quality over quantity—not to mention valuable SEO gains. 
• Coupon, loyalty and review sites – Occupying a different online space than media outlets, these sites reach consumers at all points of the customer journey. With a staggering 93% of consumers today reading online reviews before purchasing a product or service, this affiliate space is certainly one to prioritize.⁵

7. Don’t discount the micro-influencer

More eyes translates to more clicks, right? Well, maybe. But are they meaningful clicks?

While you may be interested in partnering with a mega-famous Instagram star, so is everyone else. The high competition means popular influencers can charge an arm and a leg for a partnership. And even if you do land a contract with a superstar, how can you guarantee that they’ll focus enough on your brand and not on their other partners? You can’t.

Micro-influencers (those with 10k–50k followers on social media)⁶ provide a welcome alternative.

When you partner with a smaller blog, content creator or website, you open your marketing to several possible advantages, including:

• Reduced costs – Lesser-known influencers are often more willing to accept a smaller affiliate commission.
• Authenticity – Smaller creators post less sponsored content overall, so their audiences have less “marketing fatigue” and more trust. 
• Specificity – Micro-influencers tend to occupy niche markets, allowing you to work with prospective affiliates who align with your exact target audience. 

Bonus tip: Let affiliate marketing experts do the work for you

If you want to implement all of these tips at once (and dozens of others), consider working with a digital growth marketing firm like Power Digital. Partnering with seasoned affiliate marketing experts saves you time vetting prospective affiliates, strategizing content, and optimizing your website. And the sales? They’ll come flowing in. 

At Power Digital, we take affiliate management to the next level by handling the nitty-gritty for you. From start to finish, we’ll take care of every part of the process. Our team will analyze your current efforts to see what’s working, connect your brand with world-class affiliates and fine-tune as we go—with your vision and goals at the helm. 

Ready to see where we can grow together? Drop us a line—we’d love to chat.

Sources: 

1. Statista. Affiliate marketing spending in the United States from 2010 to 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/693438/affiliate-marketing-spending/
2. Think with Google. Marketing Strategies. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and-mobile/mobile-page-speed-conversion-data/
3. Mailchimp. 2022 Email Marketing Statistics and Benchmarks by Industry. https://mailchimp.com/en-ca/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/
4. Kinsta. 17 Affiliate Marketing Statistics You Need to Know In 2022. https://kinsta.com/affiliate-academy/affiliate-marketing-statistics
5. Trust Mary. Reviews » Online Reviews: Statistics That Will Blow Your Mind [2022]. https://trustmary.com/reviews/online-reviews-statistics-that-will-blow-your-mind/
6. Forbes. Micro-Influencers: When Smaller Is Better. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2021/06/02/micro-influencers-when-smaller-is-better

The post 7 Affiliate Marketing Tips appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

Well, you can. It’s called affiliate marketing.

While it’s nothing new, affiliate marketing continues to trend upward as more and more brands lean into having third parties vouch for them. 2022 saw businesses spend $8.2 billion on affiliate marketing in the U.S. market, and if the historic data is anything to go by, 2023 will be even bigger.¹

Whether you’ve tried affiliate marketing or not, now is the ideal time to start perfecting your approach. To help you see what optimized affiliations can bring in 2023 and beyond, we’ve put together this list of six affiliate marketing strategies.

1. Offer exclusive promos

At its core, an affiliate marketing strategy is a straightforward partnership. Your brand teams up with a website, blogger or influencer and rewards them for generating clicks or sales for your business. 

Usually, the reward is a commission on the sales they bring in (as tracked by a unique link or code), but it could also be a flat rate. The affiliate partner promotes your product to their supporters, and you acquire some new leads.

The issue with this model is the lack of benefits for the consumer. While you and the affiliate stand to gain financially, the average person has no real reason to try a product that a vlogger says is worthwhile—even if it’s their favorite creator.

With that in mind, offering a deal to your affiliate’s audience is essential. But it shouldn’t be just any deal. It should be exclusive to that affiliate. Whatever it is—a steeper discount or a BOGO offer, perhaps—if it creates a sense of exclusivity, it benefits everyone.

An exclusive promo becomes a win-win-win for you, your affiliate and the consumer:

• Your brand enjoys more targeted interest, clicks and sales.
• The affiliate gains a reason for new people to view their content.
• The consumer scores an opportunity to try a product vetted by someone they trust at a discount.

2. Set up a tiered payment model

Because most affiliate marketing contracts work on a commission model, there’s already a built-in incentive to promote your brand. However, stagnant commission fees don’t inspire a strong, continued work ethic—especially as inflation looms.

To further incentivize your affiliates, you can set up a tiered commission model that works like this: The more business an affiliate generates, the higher their commission becomes. For example, you could set your initial affiliate commission fee to 5%. After 200 sales, maybe their cut rises to 7.5%; at 1000 sales, it jumps to 10%. 

Now affiliates have a reason to promote your brand in the long term.

The bottom line? Find ways to incentivize your affiliates. When done correctly, the additional volume generated by your top-performing affiliates will drive revenue and balance out larger commission fees.

3. Keep the communications coming

On the topic of continued, fruitful partnerships with affiliates, one affiliate marketing strategy stands out: Communication.

One of the most important affiliate marketing tips is keeping up effective and clear communication with your partners. The best affiliate marketing partnerships are ongoing ones. Over several years, a single hard-working affiliate partner can massively boost your bottom line and customer loyalty. However, they can’t do it alone—they need your support.

A successful affiliate marketing program requires regular two-way communication. While it’s tempting to think of affiliate marketing as an effortless growth machine, the reality is that you still need to put work into the relationship. 

For your affiliates to perform at their best, they need to know about:

• Messaging changes
• New products
• New promotions
• Best practices
• Deadlines

To keep affiliates up-to-date, you can:

• Set up a newsletter for affiliates – Add an affiliate newsletter sign up to your website, or BCC all your partners in a monthly email.
• Create an online portal – While it may take some extra effort, a self-service portal for affiliates will free up time in the long run.
• Communicate directly – An email blast may feel too impersonal for your most significant partnerships. Consider calling or emailing your biggest players directly.

4. Tackle affiliate marketing from all angles

Are you familiar with the Marketing Rule of 7? It’s a classic business adage that suggests consumers need to see your marketing efforts seven times before they buy in.²

Whether you believe in a magic number or not, there’s a kernel of truth to the rule: Exposure leads to opportunities.

Creating an effective affiliate marketing strategy involves all the angles. To maximize exposure in your affiliate marketing campaign, you need to think about the customer journey and find ways to insert your brand into each part.

From beginning to end, the customer’s journey through affiliate marketing will (often) look like this:

• Content sites – This is the classic “awareness” stage. Whether it’s a media site like BuzzFeed or a social media platform like TikTok, high-traffic content aggregators allow you to cast a wide net. For many, this stage will be the first impression of your brand.
• Review sites or specialized blogs – Once a consumer is aware of you, they may start researching your brand. At this point, their search will likely lead them from general content sites to more niche publications.
• Loyalty and cashback sites – Savvy shoppers often head to cashback sites like Rakuten first to read reviews and save money.
• Coupon and deal sites – When the consumer is finally ready to buy, they might head to a deal website like RetailMeNot.

When you partner with affiliates across each of these platforms, you can all but guarantee eyes on your brand. Eventually, some of those eyes will turn to the Check Out button on your website.

5. Affiliate marketing meets artificial intelligence

Whether you like it or not, AI is on the rise in most industries. Instead of running from the future, embrace it head-on—including using it for your affiliate program.

The sooner you familiarize yourself with AI-powered tools for affiliate marketing, the sooner you can focus on other harder-to-automate tasks.

Here are some of the responsibilities that AI can simplify for you and your team:

• Analytics – Toolsets like Google’s Analytics Intelligence exploit machine learning to give you precise data—and even actionable insights—without coding.³ In moments, AI can tell you which channels are performing best.
• Fraud detection – From affiliates generating phony clicks to false positive transactions, fraud is always a concern. AI prediction and detection tools can keep you safe.⁴
• Keyword research – Services like Twinword offer AI-powered keyword tools for all your written affiliate marketing content needs. If you’ll be supplying blog or media partners with a list of desired keywords, these tools will save you time.
• Affiliate questions – If you have a particularly large affiliate marketing program, you may be able to use AI chatbots to field simple questions from affiliates. Your response time will be quicker, your answers will be consistent and your affiliates will never be without support.

As mentioned, if your affiliate marketing work will involve written content or blogs, search engine optimization, AI tools, analytics, and more all are beneficial for your program.

6. Go international

If you’re ready for an advanced affiliate marketing strategy, consider going international. If you’re only focusing your affiliate marketing on North American or European creators (and audiences), you’re missing out on billions of potential customers.

Depending on the product or service you offer, you can easily partner with affiliates around the world. From South America to Asia, there are countless opportunities to team up with local publications and creators.

In many ways, affiliate marketing is the best entry point into a new market. When your brand makes its first foray into a foreign country, you have minimal name recognition—and no insight into the landscape.

An international affiliate acts as your translator. A locally-based influencer or media outlet can tailor your instructions to their (already captive) audience. Immediately, you gain access to hyperlocal cultural and regional knowledge. And, because affiliate marketing is relatively risk-free, you can experiment in new markets without blowing your budget.

Of course, operating in different countries means following a different set of laws and regulations. Be sure to loop in your legal team before branching out—otherwise, your explorations may not last long.

Let a growth marketing firm handle strategy for you

Although affiliate marketing is a tried-and-true approach to growth with clear benefits, knowing which strategies are best to attain such growth isn’t as straightforward. Here, we’ve touched on a handful of ways to improve your affiliate marketing efforts. But these are only the tip of the iceberg. If you’re ready to learn how to start affiliate marketing, consider teaming up with an agency.

When you partner with a tech-enabled growth firm and digital marketing agency like Power Digital, you gain access to the entire picture. Thanks to years of diving into the murky waters of marketing, we provide deep insights into future-proof strategies.

Our affiliate management program takes the strategizing off your plate, allowing you to focus on what you do best—whatever that may be. To learn more about making affiliate marketing work for you, drop us a line or get a proposal. We’d love to be affiliated with you.

Sources: 

1. Statista. Affiliate marketing spending in the United States from 2010 to 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/693438/affiliate-marketing-spending/
2. Forbes. How To Maximize Your Marketing Message. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2021/08/02/how-to-maximize-your-marketing-message
3. Google. About Analytics Intelligence. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/7411707
4. IBM. AI improves fraud detection, prediction and prevention. https://www.ibm.com/uk-en/analytics/fraud-prediction

The post 6 affiliate marketing strategies for 2023 appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

However, reviews aren’t the only one-way ticket to brand growth and loyalty. Another way to build trust and grow your revenue through social proof is to harness affiliate marketing. This strategy provides third parties payment in exchange for promoting a product. Whether you partner with a social media influencer or a well-known magazine, affiliate marketing can open you up to a world of new potential customers—for a relatively small investment.

Regardless of the size of your brand, you can use this tried-and-true marketing strategy to your advantage. As is often the case, the trickiest part is starting out. With that in mind, we’ve put together this step-by-step guide on how to start affiliate marketing.

Step 1: Define your demographic

One of the most important affiliate marketing tips is defining your demographic. Before you can try affiliate marketing, you need to understand whom you’re marketing to. If you’ve been in business for a while, you likely know your target audience already. However, you need to understand more than the typical age and gender of your customers to run a successful affiliate program.

There are billions of social media accounts, blogs, newspapers and review sites out there.² Because there’s so much choice, publications and influencers tend to create content that caters to a particular niche. When you know which chosen niche your ideal customers fall under, you’ll know which affiliates to work with and which to avoid.

For this reason, the process starts with a deep dive into your demographic data. One way to pinpoint your ideal customer is to develop one or more buyer personas.

A buyer persona is a sketch of a fictional customer that represents the “perfect” fit for your brand. To come up with these personas, you’ll want to think about the following details:

• Age
• Gender
• Income level
• Education level
• Personal values
• Hobbies and interests
• Likes and dislikes
• Media consumption habits
• Other lifestyle choices

By the end, you’ll have an outline of the consumer who supports—or whom you want to support—your brand. The clearer your picture is, the easier your next steps will be in creating an affiliate marketing campaign and strategy.

Step 2: Decide on a payment model

Now that you’ve homed in on your ideal audience, it’s time to think about how you’ll reach those people through affiliate marketing. But before you start thinking of potential affiliates and making offers, you’ll need all your ducks in a row.

First up: Let’s talk money.

The good news is that affiliate marketing is a relatively affordable option for brands of every size, even a small business. Still, your expenses (and your affiliate program’s success) will depend on how you compensate your partners.

In general, there are three ways to structure your payments:

1. A percentage of sales (commission)

The commission model is the most common contract for affiliate marketing partnerships. This model incentivizes your affiliates to become true ambassadors for your brand. How? When an affiliate stands to earn more by talking more about your brand, they probably will.

The process is simple: Your affiliate partner promotes your product or service and encourages consumers to check it out. For each sale they facilitate from the affiliate product, they earn a small commission (often between 5 and 15%). To track an affiliate’s sales, you’ll usually provide them with a unique purchase link or a personalized promo code that customers can enter at checkout.

Affiliate Commission-based partnerships are appropriate for most scenarios. There’s no upfront cost for you (a rare phenomenon in marketing) and there’s a clear incentive to push your product.

2. A flat rate

Of course, the issue with offering a percentage is that there’s no telling how much you might spend. While low-risk, commission-based models can slowly eat into your margins.

One alternative? Offering a one-time payment in exchange for coverage.

Flat-rate spending makes budget balancing a breeze, as there’s no uncertainty around how much you’ll spend on your affiliate marketing campaign. However, a fixed payout doesn’t encourage your affiliates to vouch tirelessly for your brand. Instead, you’ll receive exactly what you paid for—one listicle, a few short TikToks or an affiliate email marketing blast.

3. An exchange of products or services

If your marketing budget is on the smaller side, you can also ask affiliates to promote your brand in exchange for your products.

Ideally, you’ll use this model sparingly—after all, free shoes or software don’t pay the bills. When you’re not offering cold, hard cash, you probably won’t see as many takers.

Still, like other affiliate marketing strategies, this one has its uses. Freebies are especially effective when you’re trying to drum up unbiased product reviews.

Step 3: Draft a contract

Once you’ve settled on a payment model, you can begin drafting a standard contract for your soon-to-be affiliates. Consider crafting a template. That way, it’ll be easier to modify it for future campaigns or partnerships.

Ideally, your affiliate contract should include:

• Definitions – Clearly defining each term at the beginning of the contract guarantees clarity.
• Relationship – Notably, affiliates are not employees. It’s wise to clarify this distinction within the contract.
• Payment model and timelines – Here, you’ll explain how and when you’ll pay your affiliate. Will this be through a commissioned affiliate link, a flat rate, etc. 
• An NDA/confidentiality section – If you have to provide insider info to help an affiliate market your product, a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) protects your intellectual property.
• Termination details – This section should cover when the contract ends, what happens when it does and what (if anything) could lead to an early termination of the partnership.

Note that this is not legal advice. Before you send out your contract, you may want to touch base with a legal professional as well.

Step 4: Create your how-to guide for affiliates

All of the legalese is only ½ of your contract. The other portion of your affiliate partnership agreement should cover the dos and don’ts of posting about your brand. To ensure you see successful affiliate marketing efforts the way your brand sees it, consider a branded document for each content creator or affiliate partner. A branded document guides your affiliates toward quality content creation that aligns with your branding, values and messaging.

Some stipulations to include are:

• How to say or write out your brand name.
• Types of acceptable advertisements with examples.
• Where a partner can and can’t display their affiliate link.
• The ideal length of an article or video.
• Words or phrases to say/avoid.
• Hashtags to use.

Keep in mind that the more you ask of your affiliates, the more you’ll want to fork over to ensure a job well done. 

Step 5: Assemble your affiliates

With a plan and an ironclad contract in place, you’re ready to approach the potential affiliates you want as partners.

For some platforms—namely social media and blogs—you can go directly to the source. Sending a direct message or email to a content creator can certainly bring you results. However, unsolicited requests may go unread, especially if you’re dealing with a high-profile entity.

To find people who are actively soliciting affiliate partnerships, you can turn to affiliate marketplaces. These platforms put a network of creators and publications at your fingertips. While these sites are convenient and may help stretch your marketing budget further, your mileage may vary.

Want the best of both worlds? For a low-effort approach that brings results, you can always join forces with an affiliate marketing agency. An agency can handle the ins and outs of setting up partnerships while all but guaranteeing success. You’re also far more likely to see a return on your investment.

Step 6: Analyze and react

Finally, it’s worth noting that your responsibilities don’t end when the contracts are signed. To squeeze every last drop from your affiliate marketing budget, you should monitor your partners and react as needed.

Unlike traditional marketing efforts, you can modify an affiliate program at the drop of a hat (contract permitting, of course). For example, if you notice a blog post is barely generating clicks, you can suspend your partnership. If one of your partners is absolutely crushing it, you can offer them a higher commission to further incentivize their work and possibly increase affiliate revenue.

By paying attention to where your campaign is making waves, you can slowly develop a long-standing affiliate program that runs in the background. From there, you can sit back and watch the sales come in.

Start affiliate marketing today with Power Digital

While it may only be a six-step process, starting an affiliate marketing program for your brand requires significant time and effort. It’s worth it, of course. But in a world where time always seems to slip away, sometimes it pays—literally—to have the experts handle the affiliate marketing efforts for you.

At Power Digital, we’re the growth marketing firm  that makes effortless affiliate marketing possible. If you want a no-risk path to more site traffic and higher SEO rankings, our affiliate management strategy is the answer.

Let’s partner up and find you the best affiliate partners.

Sources: 

1. Trustpilot. Social proof: What is it, and why is it important for eCommerce? https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/build-trusted-brand/what-is-social-proof-and-why-is-it-important-for-marketing
2. Statista. Number of social media users worldwide from 2018 to 2027. https://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/

The post How to start affiliate marketing for your business appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

That was then.

Since the advent of affiliate marketing, brands no longer need to interrupt consumers. Instead, they can place content with the media outlets, individuals, and organizations people have already elected to follow.

When done right, combining affiliate marketing with the medium that’s a constant in modern life—email—can have a massive impact on your ROI, all while offering customers an experience as pleasurable as reading their daily digest.¹

In this guide, we’ll take a look at what affiliate email marketing is, how it works, and the best practices for ensuring you see the proof in your morning pudding.

Affiliate Email Marketing 101

Affiliate email marketing fuses two principal approaches to advertising in the digital age:

• Email marketing, valued at $7.5 billion in 2020 and projected to scale to $10 billion in 2023.²
• Affiliate marketing, slated to cross the $8.2 billion spending mark in 2022.¹

Together, they constitute two of the highest-value marketing techniques in modern media, with consistently high appraisals of ROI for companies who deploy them.

Let’s take a look at each approach discretely and see what they’re capable of when they join forces.

Class is in session.

What is Email Marketing?

Since its inception, email marketing remains the single most popular marketing channel in the digital sphere. Here are some stats to whet your palette:

• On average, companies who invest in e-marketing infrastructure earn back $45 on every dollar they spend.²
• Email marketing has an 80% retention rate, which makes it key for retaining the clients you earn organically—and for keeping them entertained through content marketing.
• As one of the main conduits of branded content, email marketing is used by 87% of companies to reach their subscribers. It’s a close second to today’s forerunner, social media, used by 89% of brands.³

Among consumers, 46% of respondents to a Statista survey indicated that email was their preferred method of communication with brands.⁶ Signing up is voluntary, as is opting out, which means email is poised to benefit from another stand-alone digital marketing strand: affiliate marketing.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy wherein a company partners with a third party to:

• Increase brand visibility
• Reach new audiences and untapped markets through well-targeted emails
• Observe their customers’ preferences and behavior across platforms
• Shore up brand credibility, authenticity, and relatability
• Assimilate more intimately into the lives of their customers

Affiliate marketing ascended alongside the social media surge and the shift towards a more lateral marketplace. Like all approaches to advertising, the fuel is the evergreen, ever-human instinct to trust and emulate the friends and figures we admire.

In its early form, this email marketing tool closely resembled traditional advertising, with most partners blatantly advertising the brands they worked with in their digital content.

Today, affiliate partnerships are far more sophisticated—particularly as more brands discover the remarkable economy and earn-back potential of medium and micro-influencers in the digital sphere.

Putting it All Together: What is Affiliate Email Marketing?

Creators have been looking for ways to monetize their work since the dawn of the internet. With a new wave of platforms like TikTok, they have more tapered, targeted access to their audiences than ever before. Email, in particular, is seeing a renaissance in a big way, with the revival of newsletter and blogging formats through platforms like Substack and Medium.

Remember, there are 7.8 billion on planet Earth. Among them:

• 4.3 billion of them use email.³
• 3.6 billion use social media.⁴

By connecting with affiliates who vibrate with your brand identity and partnering with them through an established medium like email, you can reach new banks of potential customers through channels you simply can’t access as a brand—all while keeping spending low.

So, how does this system work to the mutual benefit of affiliates and companies? And when social media seems to be at a saturation point, what does email bring to the table?

Let’s find out.

How Does Affiliate Email Marketing Work?

The first step in initiating an affiliate email marketing campaign is to cement your strategy. For this, you’ll want a marketing partner on your side who can identify the right affiliates you should be working with.

Once you’ve partnered with creators, there are three ways companies can compensate an affiliate:

• Pay per click – Affiliates are paid based on the number of clicks achieved through the affiliate links provided in the email. They are not compensated for organic searches made by their audience.
• Pay per lead – Affiliates are paid when members of their audience give their contact information (ie., email addresses) to a brand vis a vis an affiliate link. This is important for email list management, as it loops them into the brand’s email list, making them potential customers.
• Pay per sale – Affiliates are paid when a reader makes a purchase through the brand’s website, accessed through an affiliate link. In this case, affiliates are usually compensated by commission, with a percentage of the sale they helped to inspire.

Working out which type of compensation fits your affiliate marketing campaign is just one piece of the puzzle. Vetting your affiliates to avoid affiliate fraud is essential for ensuring a legitimate, results-driven partnership, whether you’re looking to increase website visitors or sales revenue.⁵

A qualified marketing agency can connect with legitimate partners, oversee your contracts, and manage your network so that your message is received as intended.

4 Ways Affiliate Email Marketing Can Improve Performance

It’s estimated that around 333.2 billion emails get sent every day. Yet it’s fair to say only a handful that enter the inbox are messages we actually want to read. While email is critical to the marketing ecosystem writ large, click-to-open rates (CTOR) skew low, hovering at 14% around the world.⁶

Affiliate partnerships help you bypass the Spam filters (and the Trash bin) and get some air time with potential customers. Let’s take a look at how a tactful, analytics-informed affiliate email marketing campaign can improve your company’s performance in 4 powerful ways.

#1 Low Expenditures

The main appeal affiliate email marketing holds for brands is its affordability.⁷ Rather than shelling out to create branded content, affiliate marketers team up with affiliates who are already creating content of their own for a confirmed audience.

Furthermore, the relative simplicity of email makes it far less resource-intensive compared with video or image-based media. All that’s needed is a traceable affiliate link to track your progress. And with a higher percentage of people using email than other platforms, you’ll enjoy the highest potential for brand visibility.

#2 Considerable Earnings

Back in 2016, companies reported up to 20% of their revenue was garnered through affiliate marketing channels. Since then, spending has ballooned from approximately $5.4 billion to around $8 billion, with more and more companies yielding remarkable ROIs.⁸

Whatever your industry, affiliate marketing is a long game. The highest returns come from the longest-standing partnerships, which means it’s crucial to:

• Invest time and energy into nurturing with your affiliate network
• Harness email analytics to illuminate your blind spots and get to know your audience better

Not every company uses their email marketing affiliate program strategically. Having an affiliate partner in place to draft a strategy, cultivate your relationships, and leverage the data you acquire is critical for making this medium work and guiding a fresh batch of customers down the funnel.

#3 Reaching new audiences

In affiliate marketing writ large, some sectors tend to profit more from their programs than others. Historically, these have included:

• Fashion and beauty
• Wellness and lifestyle
• Luxury goods
• Gaming
• Tech
• Niche hobbies

It’s that last category that becomes particularly important when it comes to affiliate email marketing. Online communities are trending smaller, splintering into close-knit special interest groups that become harder to access through traditional pathways.

With that, brands are taking notice of so-called “nano” or “micro” influencers: individuals who have smaller social followings, but a high caliber of trust and engagement with their audience. 

Email marketing is built for the migration niche, and in coupling with the lower cost of partnering with smaller-scale affiliates, it’s a uniquely positioned medium to reach your target audience at a considerably lower price point.⁹

#4 Getting to Know Your Audience Better

There’s a tremendous amount of data you can cull from email to get to know your subscriber base on more intimate terms. Affiliate links are traceable, which means you’ll be able to easily gauge the number of clicks generated, sales made, and actions taken through your partnerships. An affiliate marketer can see all of this within just minutes of sending emails out.

When coupled with your own email marketing initiatives, that information can be interpreted with even more specificity. Through email marketing, you can learn:

• Which content generates engagement
• How users are sharing your content
• When subscribers are more inclined to read a message
• The success of messaging through A/B testing

Aligning with personalization and segmentation email marketing trends, brands have even greater control over their messaging and how it’s received. With the right creative and analytic force behind you, you can learn more about what works, what doesn’t, and for whom.

Build Your Affiliate Network with Power Digital

Trust in the media is at an all-time low. According to a 2021 Gallup poll, a measly 7% of Americans report having a “great deal” of faith in traditional media.

Rather than follow faceless outlets, organizations, or companies, most users prefer to follow individual figures as opposed to the conglomerates they work for—which makes cherry-picking a respected battery of affiliates essential for garnering trust from your target audience.

To build your team, you’ll need a sharp-shooting affiliate partner from a digital marketing agency that can bring the right affiliates to the table and ensure your messaging resonates together. Starting your first affiliate email campaign doesn’t have to be challenging. Luckily, with Power Digital’s email marketing service, you can level up your affiliate marketing with ease. Work with Power Digital to succeed in the outbox, the inbox, and beyond.

Sources: 

1. Statista. Affiliate marketing spending in the United States from 2010 to 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/693438/affiliate-marketing-spending/
2. Statista. E-mail marketing worldwide – statistics & facts. https://www.statista.com/topics/1446/e-mail-marketing/#dossierKeyfigures
3. Oberlo. 10 Email Marketing Statistics. https://www.oberlo.com/blog/email-marketing-statistics
4. Statista. Number of social network users worldwide from 2017 to 2025 (in billions). https://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/
5. Investopedia. Affiliate fraud. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/affiliate-fraud.asp
6. Statista. E-mail marketing worldwide – statistics & facts. https://www.statista.com/topics/1446/e-mail-marketing/#dossierKeyfigures
7. Investopedia. Affiliate marketing. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/affiliate-marketing.asp
8. Investopedia. Make Money With Affiliate Marketing. https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/affiliate-marketing-can-you-really-make-money/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20survey%2C%209,link%20between%20experience%20and%20revenues
9. Forbes. Micro-Influencers: When Smaller Is Better. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2021/06/02/micro-influencers-when-smaller-is-better/?sh=3cd1be11539b
10. Gallup. Americans’ Trust in Media Dips to Second Lowest on Record. https://news.gallup.com/poll/355526/americans-trust-media-dips-second-lowest-record.aspx

The post What Is Affiliate Email Marketing? appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

But which types of marketing programs will exalt your marketing platform to new levels? That’s exactly what our digital marketing agency is here to help you find out. 

Follow along as we explore the best affiliate marketing program by type, paying special attention to niche industries. Let’s get started. 

How Affiliate Marketing Programs Work

If you’re new to the world of affiliate management and marketing, let’s revisit how to start affiliate marketing.

An affiliate marketing program isn’t really a program at all, but rather an agreement between a company and an affiliate. The affiliate can be another business or an online influencer that wishes to market the company’s products or services to their audience—for a price.

The programs give marketers the opportunity to earn a fixed commission in return for driving traffic to the businesses’ product pages. Typically, an affiliate marketer will only earn commissions if a purchase is made, though some affiliate marketing programs also pay a commission rate  simply for driving traffic to the company’s site. Marketers can achieve this through web content such as:

• Blogs
• Social media
• Video streaming

Oftentimes, marketers promote products using product integration. Product integration is essentially a covert product placement, in which the marketer takes a more authentic approach to sell the product. For example:

• Small scale – A popular Youtuber who regularly talks about mental health in their videos may draw upon their own experience when promoting an online therapy portal they’ve partnered with. 
• Large scale – A television show may write an entire storyline around visiting a popular retailer, such as Target. 

Either way, product placement is a more authentic form of advertising. And in today’s world, authentic means credible. That’s partly why affiliate marketing is so fruitful. 

Affiliate marketing also offers marketers a flexible and cost-effective way to grow their brand. With an affiliate marketing program, marketers can expand their marketing reach, too. 

Choose a Niche to Choose a Program

As an affiliate marketer, you’ve most likely identified your target niche market. A marketing niche is an incredibly specific marketing strategy typically defined by a singular product or service. 

For example, as a motorcycle aficionado and blogger, an affiliate marketer will target a niche market rather than the general population of motorcycle enthusiasts. A motorcycle blogger’s audience may be motorcycle enthusiasts who work a 9-to-5 and are looking for a comfortable chopper they can take for epic cross-country adventures during their annual two-week vacation. Or, that audience may be sports bike fanatics who make extreme speeds a part of their daily life. 

Generally speaking, niches with evergreen value are the most profitable. These include:

• • Tech – Webhosting, gaming, and software
  • Health and Fitness – Weight loss, yoga, lifestyle diets, CBD, essential oils, and marijuana

• Lifestyle, Home, and Family – Home security, home appliances, clothing, and pet products.
• Financial – Cryptocurrency, investing, credit cards, and mortgage companies

Take your niche into account when determining which affiliate marketing program to join.

Best Tech Affiliate Marketing Programs

Tech is not only evergreen, it’s ever-evolving—and the industry’s innovations don’t appear to be stopping anytime soon. As such, tech affiliate marketers are some of the top earners. 

While there is truly a wide array of tech affiliate marketing programs, we’ve compiled three of the most reliable and profitable programs in the biz:

• Razer – Gamers across all platforms recognize the Razer brand as the top guns of gaming equipment and accessories. It’s elite and expensive, meaning commissions are rather large, even if you’re only getting 5%. More specifically, the Razer Affiliate program offers up to 10% of affiliate commission on the sale of Razer products once a visitor makes a purchase through an affiliate link. Commissions are paid on a monthly basis, and there are no sign-up fees. 
• Logitech – More mainstream than Razer, Logitech offers a slew of everyday technology from wireless mouses to Bluetooth speakers. Its marketing program offers the successful affiliate 4-10% commission on product sales. The affiliate links also have a 30-day cookie, meaning any purchases made within 30 days of following the link will count toward the affiliate’s commission. Customers’ orders typically average at $125, meaning higher commissions for affiliates.¹
• Microsoft – The multinational technology company offers a Microsoft 365 affiliate program, in which affiliate marketers can earn commission by referring their audience to Microsoft 365 products. Once purchased, an affiliate partner will earn a fixed dollar amount (USD) depending on which service the customer bought. The highest price point is $20 for Microsoft 365 Business Premium. It’s free to sign up and the affiliate link’s cookie life lasts 60 days. Marketers can also choose from a variety of content and banners to best represent their brand.

Of course, if your niche is environmental lighting, Razer, Logitech, and Microsoft’s affiliate marketing programs may not be the best pick for your brand or your audience. 

Helpful tip: When choosing an affiliate marketing program that fits your niche, research top companies in that category to identify whether they have an affiliate marketing program. If they do, you’ve found the right fit!

Best Health and Fitness Affiliate Marketing Programs 

Health and fitness never go out of style. For those swimming in the world of Shavasana and veganism, here are a few top-earning health and fitness affiliate programs to consider joining:

• Fitbit – The electronics and fitness company is widely recognized and compatible with a just as wide range of devices. What does that mean? Name recognition will mean your audience will be more likely to make a purchase. Affiliates can earn up to 3% on commissions. Additionally, affiliates that drive larger numbers to the website are subject to higher rates. Fitbit also provides a WordPress plugin that lets affiliates add and manage multiple affiliate links from any program.² 
• Reebok – The sports and clothing company offers 7% on all click-through sales. In addition, each link has a 30-day cookie, allowing affiliates to get credit on purchases made within 30 days of the original click. The program allows marketers to display Reebok’s products directly on their websites, too.³ 
• Weight Watchers – The weight loss program offers a $10 commission for every subscription. It’s also partnered with Commission Junction, a third-party affiliate commission tracker, where affiliates can create a secure account and create various banners and links for their affiliate platform.  

Helpful tip: When in doubt, partner with a big-name company. They’re more likely to get clicks as they’re a trusted name in the industry.

Best Lifestyle Affiliate Marketing Program 

For those marketers who dabble in the realm of lifestyle blogging (or vlogging), the number of affiliate marketing programs is just as bountiful as your online shopping cart, but of course, there are a few that stand out. Let’s dive in. 

• Amazon Associates – The multinational Amazon marketplace is a treasure trove of products just waiting to be shipped to doors worldwide. As such, Amazon is a great partner for the affiliate marketer. But what is the Amazon Affiliate Program exactly?  The Amazon affiliate marketing program, called Amazon Associates, offers a commission rate by product category, the highest being 10% for luxury beauty products. The program also offers fixed-rate earnings for referrals to its subscription services.
• ShareASale – Not a program, but a network, ShareASale connects affiliates to a wide variety of merchants within the lifestyle niche, including home, fashion, wedding, and sports products. It’s a great opportunity for marketers to expand their reach while receiving a whopping 20% payout. 
• Awin – Like ShareASale, Awin connects affiliates to a global network of advertisers and publishers. In addition to home and lifestyle, Awin also includes markets in dating, insurance, and travel for bloggers looking to spread their wings. 

Helpful tip: An affiliate marketing program primarily relies on click-through purchases when calculating affiliate income, while a marketing network determines affiliates’ pay by the size of the marketer’s network. Additionally, a portion of the commission will be awarded to the network itself, since it acts as a third party.

Best Financial Affiliate Marketing Programs 

For marketers immersed in the world of BitCoin and stock exchanges, consider an affiliate partnership with a financial institution when looking for an affiliate marketing program. 

• USAA Credit Cards – USAA already caters to a very specific niche: active and retired members of the military and their families. It also offers a slew of financial products, from home insurance policies to auto loans. Affiliates can earn up to $25 in commission for each referral to one of USAA’s services or policies. 
• CIT Bank – CIT Bank offers a fixed rate of $100 per lead to its financial products, which include personal loans, savings accounts, mortgages, and commercial financing. 
• Gusto – The “G” in Gusto stands for generous. The payroll and software company that works with business owners offers its affiliates a minimum of $100 for every referral of a small business owner. Gusto offers a $50 commission for every accountant referral, too. Also, the cookie period of each affiliate link lasts 120 days, increasing the possibility of getting paid. Gusto also has a team of professionals to assist affiliates with promotions!

Helpful tip: When deciding on the best affiliate program for you, identify the type of software each program uses—when possible. The best affiliate marketing software includes Tipalti, PartnerStack, and Everflow.

Join Power Digital Marketing’s Affiliate Agency 

The objective of affiliate marketing is three-fold: Cultivate a brand, build an audience, and earn online revenue. If you’re looking for a more hands-on affiliate program, consider joining Power Digital Marketing’s Affiliate Agency.

Power Digital Marketing brings marketing platforms to new levels. Our team helps marketing trailblazers manage their affiliate networks with efficiency to improve traffic and build stronger professional relationships. Work with us today and expand your horizons to a whole new realm of digital enterprise. 

Sources: 

1. Logitech. Logitech Affiliate Program. https://www.logitech.com/en-us/promo/affiliate-program.html
2. Fitbit. Fitbit Affiliates. https://www.fitbit.com/global/us/partners/affiliates
3. Reebok. What is the Reebok Affiliate Program? https://www.reebok.com/us/what-is-the-reebok-affiliate-program.html

The post Best Affiliate Marketing Programs appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

But these aren’t digital coins and treasures.

A Twitch Affiliate is a qualified streamer who can earn an income by live streaming video games, creative content, and musical broadcasts on the online streaming platform.

Twitch Affiliates can earn coins, but beyond that, the bestowment of Twitch Affiliate is the first stepping stone toward becoming a Twitch Partner—a coveted title bestrewn in streaming riches. 

In this short guide, we will cover the ways Twitch users can reach affiliate management and partner status and the things marketers should know when considering how to start affiliate marketing.

The Twitch Affiliate Tutorial

On a streamer’s journey toward becoming a Twitch Affiliate, they must complete four critical tasks:

• Reach 50 followers
• Stream for a total of eight hours
• Stream on seven different days
• Earn an average of three viewers

Does that sound too easy? Keep in mind that streamers must also complete each undertaking within a span of 30 days.¹

Using the “Path to Affiliate Achievement” on Twitch users’ Creator Dashboard, streamers can track their progress and set goals. Streamers will then see a checkmark next to each completed task.

Press Start: The Twitch Affiliate Invitation

So how can a streamer officially join the Twitch Partner program? Once the tasks are completed, Twitch streamers will become eligible to register with the Twitch Affiliate program and begin monetizing their channel through live streaming and subscriber perks.

To begin, gamers will receive an email that notifies them of their eligibility. 

An invitation, like Willy Wonka’s coveted golden ticket, acts as a passport into an elite community of creatives. Of Twitch’s 9.5 million monthly broadcasters, only 1.2 million are affiliates.² 

Once invited, a notification on the channel’s dashboard informs streamers that they can register for the program by providing:

• General information
• Agreement to the Twitch Affiliate Agreement
• Tax information
• Payment information

Once the information is processed, Twitch Affiliates can then begin earning Channel Points, which allow affiliates to reward their subscribers with fun perks, such as highlighting their messages in the live chat or using an emote. 

Side Quest: What is an Emote?

Emotes are customized emojis that Twitch Affiliate streamers create to reward their loyal subscribers. A Twitch Emote is unique to the streaming platform and are used by subscribers to communicate with streamers within the live stream’s chatbox.

Some streamers also use emotes as plugins to embellish their live streams and channels. Twitch Affiliates can upload original images to their channel for subscriber use to build their audience and promote their content within the Twitch-verse. 

In most cases, streamers group emotes by each subscriber tier—the highest tier having access to the best emotes—whether they’re renderings of the streamer’s face or a heart-eyed bunny. 

Ways to Earn on Twitch

As you know, a Twitch Affiliate can use his or her channel to gather revenue. As a Twitch Affiliate, there are four ways to monetize channels and earn an income:

• Subscriptions –  Anyone can view a live stream, but a streamer must accept his or her subscribers. Affiliates can charge a variety of tiers of subscription options at varying prices: $4.99, $9.99, $24.99, and the Prime free subscription. Subscribers often receive perks or exclusive emotes, depending on their subscription status and tier.
• Donations from Subscribers – Subscriber-based donations, called bits, are used by viewers to “cheer on” the streamer during live broadcasts. For every bit given, the streamer earns one cent. During a chat, bits appear as gem-shaped emotes.
• Game Sales – Twitch sells numerous games and in-game items. When a Twitch Affiliate plays and streams one of these games, the affiliate can earn a 5% revenue share if a Twitch user purchases the game from the Twitch Affiliate’s channel. 
• Advertising Revenue – Affiliates earn a percentage of ad revenue from the advertisements streamed on their channels. The streamers can also customize ad length and frequency. 

Leveling Up: Sponsorships and Partnerships

Should marketers partner with Twitch Affiliates?

It depends on their goals. While some affiliates may have dedicated viewerships that align with your target audience, a Twitch Affiliate is just one tier above the slew of streamers that populate Twitch’s platform.

While it is elite, it’s not the highest-ranking title. 

Twitch sponsorships are typically reserved for big-name streamers with large audiences. And most of these streamers are Twitch Partners.

To identify the appropriate influencers on Twitch, it’s important to understand the difference between these two designations, their income streams, and their ability to deepen engagement with their viewership base.

The Twitch Affiliate

As we’ve covered, Twitch affiliate streamers can earn revenue through subscriptions, donations, game sales, and ad revenue. They can also customize their emotes for an extra thank-you to subscribers.

The purpose of the Twitch affiliate program is to assist gamers and streamers in making the equivalent of a part-time income. The program is available globally, too. 

• A Twitch Affiliate who’s looking to grow along with your business might be willing to highlight your products for a lower price than a Partner.
• With fewer sponsorships, Affiliates may have more time and resources to dedicate to your brand.

Think you’re ready to join the Twitch Partner Program? Before partnering with a Twitch Affiliate, make sure their platform aligns with your product and voice. Then, set clear KPIs for your collaboration.

The Twitch Partner

What is a partnered streamer exactly and what does it require? A Twitch Partnership, is the creme de la creme of the Twitch-verse. As a Twitch Partner, streamers can earn the equivalent of a full-time salary.³ To become a Twitch Partner one must first become a Twitch Affiliate. And no, streamers can’t be both an affiliate and partner.

In order to become a Twitch Partner, streamers must follow the Path to Partner achievement plan, which includes:⁴

• Becoming a Twitch Affiliate
• Streaming for 25 hours
• Streaming on 12 different days
• Averaging 75 concurrent viewers

Like the path toward becoming a Twitch Affiliate, each task must be completed within a 30-day timespan. 

How Twitch Partners Foster Engagement

Many sponsors choose to collaborate with partners because of their larger audiences. And besides the numbers, partners also gain access to tools for customizing their channels.

Twitch Partners can grow viewership and cultivate their brand with:

• Custom chat badges – When a Twitch streamer’s subscribers participate in a chat, a subscriber chat badge is displayed next to their name. As the subscriber meets different milestones, such as reaching six months as a follower, partners can customize new badges to reward their fans.
• Custom bit badges and cheernotes – In the same line as custom chat badges, streamers can also outfit generous viewers with customized badges that signify the subscriber’s level of generosity. As the tiers increase, partners can customize each badge to create more excitement. It’s a great opportunity to style channels and cultivate a brand. 
• Free lifetime channel subscription – Partners can gift a subscriber with a free lifetime subscription once they reach 50 subscribers, 250 subscribers, and 500 subscribers. Once gifted, the subscriber will be subscribed to the partner’s channel indefinitely.
• Ad-free Viewing – Twitch Partners have the option of gifting their subscribers with ad-free viewing during live streams. If ads are disabled for subscribers, revenue is calculated based on the number of non-subscribed viewer impressions.

Twitch Partners can also store their live streams on demand for up to 60 days, in comparison to the 14 days allotted to Twitch Affiliates.

Altogether, that could mean more views and engagement around your highlighted product or service.

Game Over: Losing the Title of Twitch Affiliate

Even after completing the tasks and growing their channel, Twitch Affiliates may lose their status and perks. Twitch Affiliates are in danger of losing their status if they: 

• Break Twitch’s Community Guidelines and Terms of Service
• Remain inactive
• Simultaneously stream on Twitch and another viewing platform

Marketers interested in partnering with streamers should carefully survey their content and recent activity.

Next, we’ll take a deeper look at each of these three potential routes out of Affiliate Land.

Breaking the Rules

As a whole, Twitch considers the role of its affiliates models to the streaming community. As such, a failure to abide by Twitch’s Community Guidelines and Terms of Service may result in a suspension of monetary compensation, the loss of affiliate status, and sometimes even a loss of the Twitch account as a whole.

Essentially, a Twitch Affiliate must not:

• Violate any law, contract, or intellectual property
• Create content that is obscene, abusive, threatening, or inflammatory
• Impersonate a person or entity
• Send junk mail or spam
• Harvest email addresses or personal information
• Modify, damage, or interfere with Twitch codes, services, and properties

Inactivity

Twitch Affiliates may also lose their affiliate status if they’re considered inactive streamers, meaning that they’ve been inactive for more than a year. Twitch Affiliates that only stream once every few months can still maintain affiliate status. 

Simultaneous Streaming

Streaming on Twitch while streaming the same content on another platform breaks the Twitch Affiliate agreement and is grounds for termination from the program. 

However, it is possible for Twitch Affiliates to post content on another platform—they just can’t stream it at the same time. The good news? Twitch Affiliates can upload their Videos-On-Demand to platforms like Youtube without a penalty.

PDM: Your Next Multiplayer 

Twitch Affiliate status is a powerful way for streamers to build their personal brand, earn revenue, and expand their audience while parachuting into battle royale arenas and diffusing planted bombs.

Likewise, partnering with a Twitch Affiliate or Partner can help your company form its own legion of game-playing fans.

At Power Digital Marketing, we’re experts in creating winning marketing strategies with our

diverse inventory of marketing tools. Our dedicated team of creative and web-development specialists has your back in the face of SEO strategy, advertising, and influencer partnerships, which will have your company raising the ranks in no time. Looking to expand within some of the best affiliate marketing programs? Check us out today to learn more about the Amazon Affiliate Program to add to your affiliate portfolio. 

Group up with Power Digital Marketing today to 1UP your brand. 

Sources: 

1. Twitch. Twitch Affiliate Program. https://affiliate.twitch.tv/
2. Business of Apps. Twitch Statistics. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitch-statistics/
3. Twitch. Twitch Partner Program. https://www.twitch.tv/p/partners/
4. Twitch. Achievements. https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/achievements?language=en_US 

The post What is a Twitch Affiliate? appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

Third-party affiliates receive an affiliate commission for each affiliate sale from a company to share their products and services and, consequently, drive sales.²

If you’re a business owner looking to create a new growth strategy or someone hoping to build a side hustle, learning the mechanics of affiliate management and marketing can pay off big time. 

So how do you start affiliate marketing? Let’s dive in!

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

The prominence of social media and digital marketing has been a boon for the world of affiliate marketing. Business Insider attributes 15% of e-commerce revenue to affiliate marketing. That’s because some of the best affiliate marketing programs are easier than ever. 

Anyone can create a social media profile or website and build their affiliate network audience, and businesses can access sophisticated software to track affiliate product sales sources and conversion rates. Still not sure about the nitty-gritty of how affiliate marketing works?

Let’s break it down:

1. Start a Program – If an online company wants to increase its audience and sales, it can start an affiliate program.
2. Find an Affiliate – They’ll connect with affiliates with established audiences through a blog post, websites, email lists, or social media profiles.
3. Connect to Your New Target Audience – The affiliate marketer will promote the company’s affiliate product or services on their individual affiliate site or affiliate network and include a unique tracking affiliate link provided by the company.
4. Make the Sale – When someone clicks that tracking affiliate link that is associated with the affiliate partnership, they’ll be redirected to the business’s website, and the business will automatically record the source of that customer.

If the potential customer makes a purchase, the affiliate marketer receives their affiliate income or commission. That commission might be in the form of a discount, free product, or even five to ten percent of the sale amount.

Both the business and the affiliate share the same goal: to drive affiliate sales. This unified financial benefit creates a promising affiliate partnership.

How Much Money Do Affiliate Marketers Make?

The affiliate income varies widely based on factors like:

• The audience
• The product or service
• The time invested 

A full-fledged influencer can make six figures while a niche micro-influencer can make a couple hundred dollars. As a general rule, the more time you invest in your affiliate marketing, the more money you earn.³

Types of Affiliate Marketing

We can divide the affiliate marketing strategy into three main categories:

1. Unattached Affiliate Marketing – With unattached affiliate marketing, the third-party affiliate has no direct connection to what they promote nor any skills, expertise, or authority regarding the product or service. It’s easy to build an unattached affiliate marketing program; however, the affiliate has no relationship with the customers or product.
2. Related Affiliate Marketing – Related affiliate marketing is the other side of the coin. The affiliate will have a relationship with the product or service they promote because it relates to their personal brand and identity. Related affiliates can drive more traffic than unattached affiliates because of their authority and their audience’s trust.
3. Involved Affiliate Marketing – On the far side of the spectrum is involved affiliate marketing. These affiliates have used the product they promote, so their word is trustworthy and genuine. This can help generate more sales; however, it can also potentially backfire on the affiliate if the product or service ever experience customer backlash. Unlike unattached or related affiliate marketing, involved affiliates can make claims about the product or service because they have firsthand experience with it. 

If you’re hoping to become an affiliate, you can start with unattached affiliate marketing as you build your personal brand and audience. Businesses can experiment with each of these three styles to find which type generates leads with the highest conversion rates.² 

The Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing

Like any marketing strategy, affiliate marketing has both pros and cons. Let’s take a look at some of the distinct advantages and disadvantages for the business and the affiliate, respectively.

Advantages For Businesses

Business can enjoy benefits such as:

• Low-Cost Advertising – Affiliate marketing programs are a low-cost option, especially because the affiliate carries the potential cost of advertising.
• Return on Investment – There is generally a high return on investment because businesses only need to pay the affiliate for traffic that converts to sales.
• Creativity – Businesses can enjoy the creativity and novelty brought by their external affiliate partners.
• Control – The company will establish the terms for the affiliate marketing program so that they can maintain full control. 
• Increased Reach – Companies can diversify and grow their audience by partnering with affiliates globally.

Advantages For Affiliates

Eager affiliates also can look forward to some enticing benefits like:

• Increased Income – Affiliates receive compensation for converted sales as well as incentives like free products, services, or discounts. 
• Growth Opportunities – Affiliates can develop their marketing skills and creativity through affiliate programs to build their online presence and eventually increase their rates.

Disadvantages For Businesses 

Businesses can avoid the major disadvantages of affiliate marketing through proper planning and experience. Watch out for disadvantages like:

• False Analytics – Early affiliate marketing programs that paid per click or per impression were vulnerable to software that could artificially boost clicks or impressions; however, modern programs are less susceptible to this manipulation.
• Potential Fraud – There are still ways to defraud affiliate marketing programs. Tactics include buying misspelled domain names to earn commission on the redirected link, filling registration forms with false information, or purchasing AdWords for high-ranking search terms. 
• Required Planning – To decrease fraud, businesses need to plan their affiliate programs effectively and clearly define their partnership agreements. Businesses also need to provide extensive details on how they want their brand and products represented.
• Additional Manpower – Because affiliate marketing programs still attract fraud, they require the business to monitor affiliates and enforce partnership agreements. 

Disadvantages For Affiliates 

Unfortunately, some of the advantages for businesses become disadvantages for their affiliates. In particular, consider the:

• One-Sided Risk – Affiliates carry the cost of advertising, so the risk for both parties is not equivalent.  
• Lack of Control – Since the business defines the terms of the affiliate marketing program, affiliates have less control; however, as they grow their brand and audience, affiliates also increase their bargaining power.²

How to Get Involved with Affiliate Marketing

Now that you know the answer to what affiliate marketing is, you can implement this marketing strategy yourself. Whether you’re a business or an individual, you can create an affiliate marketing program or become an affiliate with minimal upfront investment.

For Businesses

Since the advertising impetus is on the affiliate, building an affiliate marketing program as a business is a straightforward process. Consider following these four steps:

1. Define the Partnership – Start with a clearly defined partnership agreement. Decide what kinds of affiliates you want to work with, how they will be compensated, how they should represent your brand, and how they will be penalized for reneging on your deal. A binding contract will protect you from headaches down the road.
2. Promote the Program – Find your affiliates. Major e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Etsy, and eBay allow potential affiliates to apply to their program. If you’re a smaller business, you might need to reach out directly to influencers and stakeholders whose online presence aligns with your brand and intended audience.²
3. Track the Sales – Build your sales funnel. Decide how you will track your buyers’ path from the affiliates page to clicking purchase. You will likely need to invest in a specific service that tracks customer analytics if you haven’t already.
4. Survey the Success – Audit your program. Are leads converting? Is the commission cutting into your bottom line? Would a different style of affiliate marketing work better? Surveying the success of your affiliate marketing program helps you get ahead of any roadblocks down the line.

For Affiliates

With these five steps, potential affiliates can grow their influence and develop an enviable side hustle. The five steps include:

1. Develop your Identity – Start with an internal audit. Could you be a fashion blogger? A foodie? An online comedian? Hone in on a major aspect of your identity that you can center your content around. 
2. Know Your Audience – Think about your audience. What kind of content would they want to see? Which social media platform or marketing channel will they respond to best? A clear understanding of your future audience will help you begin to grow your influence.
3. Grow Your Personal Brand – Focus on growth. Create timely and relevant content that will grow your audience and your organic reach. Develop a social schedule and strategy to increase your influence.
4. Research Affiliate Marketing Programs – Begin researching potential affiliate marketing programs. Find products or services that align with your personal brand and audience demographics  
5. Create Content – Develop enticing content. Imagine what might convince your audience to purchase the product or service you advertise and invest in organic and paid strategies to capture leads.³

Are You Ready to Enter the World of Affiliate Marketing?

According to Forbes, e-commerce will reach a trillion dollars in annual sales for the first time in 2022.³ Companies and potential affiliates alike should develop affiliate marketing strategies to keep pace with the incredible growth of e-commerce.

The future of shopping is undeniably online, and affiliate marketing will continue to be a major channel for customer outreach and conversion. If you’re ready to start your affiliate marketing journey, our digital marketing agency is ready to help. Whether you choose the Amazon Affiliate program or want to learn more about what a Twitch affiliate is, we’re here to guide you through your affiliate journey!

Sources: 

1. Dummies. What is Affiliate Marketing and How Does It Work? https://www.dummies.com/business/marketing/what-is-affiliate-marketing-and-how-does-it-work/ 
2. Investopedia. Affiliate Marketing. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/affiliate-marketing.asp 
3. Entrepreneur. 3 Tips to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/367966  

The post What is Affiliate Marketing appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

Many people are, however, turning to affiliate management and affiliate marketing program options.

Much like fishing, affiliate marketing work offers a respite from the rigid Monday-through-Friday work life. Once equipped with an online affiliate platform and a solid affiliate network, an affiliate partner can cast their line into a wide-open lake that’s just swimming with companies looking for word-of-mouth affiliate marketing business opportunities.

And just like a fisherman with his bait and tackle box, the path toward the affiliate marketing business can be a very profitable venture for the modern-day affiliate partner, marketer, or influencer—the more lines in the water, the more fish a successful affiliate marketer can catch. Read on and learn how to start affiliate marketing and let your affiliate income stream in.

Affiliate Marketing: The Basics

What is Affiliate Marketing? Affiliate marketing is a partnership between an individual and a company or potential affiliates intended to build brand awareness and generate revenue. Essentially, the individual:

• Promotes a company’s products on an online platform, such as a blog or social media account.
• Receives a commission based on the amount of traffic or affiliate sale that their endorsement generates for the business.

For example, a baking blogger regularly shares his recipes with his online audience on social media. To boost his revenue, he might partner with a vendor that sells reusable silicone muffin cups as an affiliate product. In his upcoming blog post about a new blueberry muffin recipe, he’ll mention how much he loves these convenient, environmentally friendly muffin cups and link to the affiliate product page or affiliate offer page. In return, the retailer will award the blogger a percentage of the sales.

In essence, an affiliate marketer is a salesperson for a business. However, unlike a member of the company’s internal sales team, an affiliate marketer can partner with many different companies and earn an affiliate sale commission from each, with increased freedom to share any content they’d like with their audience or affiliate network.

How to Become An Affiliate Marketer

Though the mechanics may differ, becoming an affiliate marketer isn’t all that different from starting a thriving business. You’ll need to set up an online affiliate platform that’s both functional and profitable. 

In order to attract potential affiliates, affiliate marketing beginners must:

• Create a digital identity across various social media platforms
• Choose a niche market 
• Create engaging content to build your brand
• Find the right affiliate programs
• Continue to create engaging content for your partners

Sounds doable? Let’s get started.

#1 Create a Digital Identity

The first step is to join or create an online platform from which you can shout to the masses. Affiliate marketing is compatible with many platforms, including Instagram and Twitter, and most successful influencers have accounts on more than one major platform. However, the most profitable platforms are typically:

• A Youtube channel
• A personal blog

It’s much easier to generate an audience on these platforms—and it’s cheap, too. 

Once you create an account, customize your profile, and design your website in the case of a blog, you’ll want to spend some time implementing SEO strategies. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of including leading keywords that improve your platform’s ranking on search engines, such as Google, and increase traffic to your site. 

#2 Choose a Niche

As you create your social accounts, identify a niche market you hope to work within. This should inform your Instagram handle, website URL, and subsequent design and content choices to create a consistent brand that stands out—and that companies will gravitate towards. 

Don’t know where to start? There are so many to choose from, including:

• Fashion and beauty
• Spirituality, health, or self-help
• Food
• Gaming
• Travel

However, the more specific you are, the better chance you have at securing an affiliate program. 

If you’re looking to get into the beauty market, avoid branding yourself as a general makeup artist. Instead, you might market yourself as a “gaudy-to-gorgeous makeup guru specializing in anime recreations” or a “single mom traveling the world with her baby boy on her back.” 

You get the idea.

#3 Create Engaging Content

A unique offering attracts the right audience—anime cosplayers or young mothers still desperate for adventure but not sure where to start, for example. Whatever you choose, make sure it’s something that you’re passionate enough about to create consistent, engaging content. Consistency is key and will drive more traffic to your platform of choice. 

What constitutes engaging content? Realistically, it’s anything your audience wants to see or read about. That could include:

• Video tutorials of make-up looks, DIY projects, recipes, and so on
• How-to blogs, also perfect for recipes and teaching new skills
• Personal anecdotes that your audience will relate to, like failings-turned-lessons 
• Inspiration photos of summer outfits, living room decor, backyard landscaping, etc.
• Instagram Reels or TikToks sharing advice or humorous stories
• Links to other relevant articles, online courses, book recommendations, and more

Be aware: The competition is tough. As of 2021, there are over 31.7 million active bloggers in the United States alone—and roughly 25% start blogs for self-employment.¹ Combat the masses with unique content that’s unable to be replicated. 

#4 Find Affiliate Programs

After identifying what you want to post and where, it’s time to move onto the money-making stage. Some companies will reach out to successful Instagram influencers and YouTube bloggers to form partnerships, but there are also existing programs that aspiring affiliate marketers can seek out. 

There are three types of affiliate offer programs to choose from:

• High pay, low volume – For those focusing on a niche product or service, a high-paying, low-volume program is most likely the best pick. These types of programs will pay as much as $700 a month for as few as 80 customers.² 
• Low pay, high volume – These types of affiliate programs are typically associated with companies and products with mass appeal. For example, Amazon’s affiliate program offers its affiliates up to 10% on commissions for anything Amazon sells. Affiliates will also receive a percentage of the entire purchase price, rather than the price of the single product.
• High pay, high volume – Affiliate programs with high pay and low volume often include credit card companies. However, these types of programs are typically for the more experienced affiliate marketers, already swimming in cash.

In general, high-paying programs are often the best affiliate marketing programs, especially if you’re looking to use affiliate marketing as your primary source of income. But how does one find these types of programs? 

• Affiliate directories – Affiliate directories are a great resource. Listings are often sorted by specific niches or categories, making it easy to find the most relevant program for your content. 
• Similar products – If you’re already promoting a certain type of product or know what type of product you want to promote, search relevant online retailers and visit their website to see if the company has an affiliate program.
• Search engines –  An easy way to find an affiliate marketing program is to type the term into a search engine alongside your niche. Plenty of relevant programs will appear.

It’s also important to know how each affiliate program offers commission. Some programs offer a one-time payment for every referral while others offer recurring commissions. In addition to payment structure, it may also be beneficial to check each program’s online reviews and overall product offerings. A large number of products provides more opportunities for content creation.

Be aware: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires transparency when it comes to profit-making endorsements. As such, you’ll need to notify your audience when promoting a product or service with a quick disclaimer. 

#5 Create Content for Your Partner Companies

Unique and engaging content practically guarantees affiliate marketing success. Why? Great content brings in large audiences, and large audiences yield an increased likelihood of product purchases. 

As such, you’ll need to create high-quality posts regarding the products you’re promoting through:

• Link placement – An affiliate link is a type of URL that contains the name or username of the affiliate marketer. Affiliate marketers can post these links within Youtube descriptions or blog posts for their audience to use. The link leads users to the company’s product page. Ultimately, they’re used by the company to track the traffic sent over by the affiliate. 
• Direct mention – While affiliate links are more subtle, direct mentions of the products can be more effective. Sometimes, it can be a verbal call to action. Other times it may be an embedded image of the product itself. 

The best way to ensure your reviews are relevant and convincing is to actually buy and test out the product yourself. However, there are a few general guidelines to follow when creating online content to make sure it goes the extra mile and attracts the audience you want.

Creating Content for YouTube

When creating Youtube videos, it’s essential to craft high-quality videos during the filming and editing processes. Pay attention to details such as:

• Lighting – Effective lighting gives the viewer tonal cues. Use warm lighting to draw viewers in or dark, shadowy effects to indicate drama, and always make sure products are displayed under bright light for viewer accessibility.
• Audio – Not only is high-quality audio necessary for clarity, but it can also add some extra spunk to your video. Consider adding non-distracting music to convey a certain mood or to embellish moments of silence, like B-roll footage.
• B-roll – B-roll footage is the alternative footage that supplements the main shots. For example, if you’re promoting a brand of leggings, the B-roll footage may include you unpacking the pants from the box or modeling them on your body. 

Creating Content for Blogs

Blogs are a little different because of the glaring distinctions between the visual and written word. As such, bloggers must pay special attention to:

• Visual engagement – Whether it’s the website’s design layout or the use of supplemental images, it’s essential to embellish a blog with high-quality visuals that keep the reader engaged. 
• Word count – Blogs surpassing 3,000 words tend to receive more traffic because they have better SEO performance and therefore receive more views and shares.¹ However, if your topic can’t sustain an epic-length article, readers may click off the page before they come across your carefully placed affiliate link.
• Scannability – Most people online won’t read every word you write. When writing your blog, create white space by adding bullet points or section breaks to give the reader’s eyes a break. Break longer topics into multiple sections with clear headlines indicating each new major idea. Utilize bold and italicized fonts to mark important sections you want your readers to pay special attention to—like the affiliate links. 

Start Affiliate Marketing with Power Digital Marketing

As the saying goes, if fishing were easy it’d be called catching. While success is never guaranteed, affiliate marketing is a great way to disengage from the tedious nine-to-five.

With Power Digital Marketing agency as your affiliate marketing agency, we’ll guide you on how to do affiliate marketing. You’ll work on a commission basis, while increasing your traffic, audience, and revenue. We’re here to help as you grow your brand and cultivate your online image—but you’re always the one with the fishing pole in your hands. 

Experience the power of performance-based affiliate marketing today. 

Sources: 

1. First Site Guide. Blogging Statistics 2021. https://firstsiteguide.com/blogging-stats/
2. Ahrefs. Affiliate Marketing. https://ahrefs.com/blog/affiliate-marketing/

The post How to Start Affiliate Marketing appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

It Started with Amazon

A key thing to note looking back at 2020 was Amazon’s big move — slashing their Amazon Associates commission payouts back in April 2020. “The reductions are significant across product categories. For example, the fee rate for furniture fell to 3% from 8% and the percentage for grocery declined to 1% from 5%,” reports Bloomberg. Amazon’s reduced commissions certainly had an impact on larger mass media partners such as Buzzfeed, Hearst Media Corporation, and Meredith who often use Amazon affiliate links in their shoppable round-up content, targeted to encourage consumers to shop their product recommendations. While the Amazon commission cuts posed a setback for larger digital publishers, partners like Buzzfeed who rely heavily on affiliate partnerships turned to create their own solutions. They even launched their own marketplace where consumers can shop directly on the site, without ever leaving, and other media outlets are starting to follow the affiliate marketing trend a la Well+Good and Forbes. 

Moving into the Holiday

We also saw the changing COVID-19 consumer shopping habits impact the way top tier media publishers are approaching the brands they feature, with key learnings from Holiday Gift Guide coverage in Q4 of 2020. Publishers, editors, freelancers, and affiliate managers galore expressed the importance of brands having an affiliate marketing program and offering a competitive commission rate to even be considered within published content. While the world of traditional PR isn’t dead, the lines are certainly blurred as brands with competitive affiliate offers are likely more certain to have top spots in round-up coverage or any spot at all. Prioritizing brands and products that have accessible affiliate links was one way media outlets could help to recover their media revenue as a result of the COVID-19-related consumer spending shifts in 2020 as they receive a commission on any sales they refer via an affiliate link. 

Promotional Shifts

Finally, the affiliate channel was also key in supporting the changing promotions, sales, and offers eCommerce brands launched this year. Adobe Analytics reports that Black Friday consumer spending increased by 22% year- over-year to $9 billion dollars while Cyber Monday spend increased by 15% year-over-year, with consumer spending topping $10.8 billion. This is majorly in part due to less consumers shopping in person and instead shopping online. However, it’s also important to highlight the change in promotions offered across online brands this year. 

More brands decided to compete with Amazon’s Prime Day that happened in October 2020 and ran their own sales and exclusive deals to compete with the marketplace. Additionally, several eCommerce brands chose to launch their Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals much earlier in November rather than sticking to the traditional post-Thanksgiving BFCM weekend sales. 

Of note, the affiliate channel was especially important during this Q4 high traffic shopping season. Publisher communication and ensuring your brands’ offers were live across virtually every lower-funnel affiliate partner and were picked up and highlighted in Holiday Gift Guides and round-up content were key to presenting consumers with the most up-to-date and lucrative sales and deals. Affiliate managers were working strategically with media publishers to ensure all of the shifting deal information was correct and posted in a timely manner to maximize visibility across potential new customers during this period. 

Affiliate Marketing 2020 in a Nutshell

All in all, the affiliate platform was extremely important to brands in the 2020 madness. As a performance-based channel where you are only paying once an actual order is driven, the risks are low and the returns are high. We expect to continue to see growth within the affiliate platform, and expansion into more unique partnerships such as continued integration between affiliate and PR, affiliate and influencer marketing, and even brand to brand partnerships leveraging successful affiliate-based relationships in 2021. 

The post How the Affiliate Marketing Industry Changed in 2020  appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

The Significance of Review/Comparison Sites

An affiliate marketing review site is a marketing tool used by a company or digital marketing agency that has enabled the consumer, or website visitor, to have less buyers remorse if they were lured by Amazon ads, leading to overall higher customer satisfaction and affiliate commission. According to Statista, since COVID-19, millennials and Gen Z consumers have increased their digital spending by more than 63%, causing users more now than ever to rely on affiliate marketing review sites in order to help them make purchasing decisions. 

The key to developing and strengthening a successful affiliate marketing program is to take advantage of your affiliate network and identify reliable review or comparison sites to increase affiliate revenue and create brand awareness for your target audience. To generate traffic for a product or to the affiliate site, an affiliate marketer could build their own review site or hire a website builder, but this would take a lot of time and be costly. One shortcut to this is to reach out to already existing affiliate marketing review sites.

Benefits of Review Sites to Affiliate Programs

Having an established and credible review platform for an affiliate website can lead to an increase in affiliate commission and sales. An affiliate marketing program should look for a trustworthy review platform that specializes in the seemingly profitable niche for the particular affiliate product they’re marketing for. This is essentially “killing a bird with two stones.” You should also verify that the affiliate marketing software that is being used is efficient and suitable for your business needs. 

With honest and reputable reviews, review sites in specific niches have already established their audience confidence. Thus, the target audience is likely to trust the review site’s recommendations and increase the conversion rate. When researching for niche review sites, it is important for an affiliate partner to watch out for their overall credibility and reputation of this beneficial digital marketing tool.

Finding Credible Review Sites For Your Affiliate Program 

According to Inc, 84% of consumers trust reviews as much as their friends, signifying the importance of finding a credible review site for your affiliate website or program. Listed below are three general rules to keep in mind when determining if a review site is credible for your affiliate program:

#1: Research the Review Site. Researching feedback on a review site will help determine the degree of confidence in their opinions. Be wary of “new review sites” since they won’t have as much credibility as established reviewers. Lastly, make sure to read other related product articles. 

#2: Watch out for Similar Wording in Reviews. This can be a powerful indicator for an affiliate partner that the review sites are being compensated for their reviews, leading to a biased evaluation. To identify if this is a trend, read other reviews.

#3: Ignore Drastic Review Sites. If a review site regularly posts an excessive amount of negative or positive reviews, then it can be a strong indicator to do more research on the site. The site may have incentives to post drastic reviews which could overall lead to biased information. 

What was Learned?

With the growth of online shopping, a successful affiliate marketer should know review sites have the power to help affiliate programs provide their clients with the best service and create more product traffic. When using review sites to promote an affiliate program, it is important to understand how to choose the right one, as a review site influences consumers’ purchasing decisions. When done right, selecting the right review site can lead to an increase in the affiliate product’s sales and brand awareness for that affiliate management program.

The post How Review or Comparison Sites are Beneficial to Affiliate Programs appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

Merging Your Influencer and Affiliate Strategy

Influencer marketing is similar to affiliate marketing in that you’re partnering with an affiliate or influencer, looking to tap into an engaged target audience and drive awareness that ultimately creates measurable results for your brand. An ‘affiliate’ can be many things, from top tier media sites to lower-funnel coupon sites, while influencers are likely social media personalities and bloggers. We’ve found that it’s easy, and necessary, to leverage your affiliate marketing program into your influencer strategies to maximize your campaign results.

• Influencer marketing campaigns aren’t meant to be one-and-done posts, as the purpose of working with quality influencers is to truly ‘influence’ their followers into ultimately purchasing your products. Creating long-term influencer relationships is key to driving increased engagement and traffic to your site while developing a trusted relationship with followers. After your initial paid marketing campaign runs – or even during – invite your influencers to join your affiliate marketing program. 
• Onboarding key influencers to your affiliate program allows for longer-term partnerships outside of the few months of an influencer marketing campaign. Influencers typically partner with brands they genuinely love, so offering recurring commission outside of your initial paid agreement incentivizes influencers to continue to promote you, such as linking your products in holiday gift guides and their ‘best-of’ product round-ups shared across Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, and other social media platforms. 
• Micro-influencers also make for great affiliate partners. Normally, micro-influencers are most cost-effective to partner with, and oftentimes you can leverage an affiliate commission in exchange for exposure across Instagram posts and stories. This is a great recruitment tactic to build up your affiliate partner base and drive exposure across niche and engaged audiences. 

Leveraging Affiliates to Drive SERP Exposure

SEO means being discovered consistently across every space your leads look, learn, and buy. Ever have a dream keyword you’ve been looking to rank for but has been virtually impossible due to the competition on page 1 of Google? Take a look at those who are ranking – oftentimes, you’ll find highly-trafficked content sites ranking above you. That’s where affiliate marketing comes into play. 

• Google is known to favor relevancy above all when choosing what sites get to appear on page 1, with the goal of providing users with credible information so they continue to use Google. You’ll often see product round-ups and best-of lists ranking high on page 1. 
• By adding key partners with high domain authority and strong organic traffic to your affiliate network, there’s a high likelihood your brand can be included in these round-ups and best-of-lists and have a key presence in the SERP, while your site may not be present. 
• The key to success here is identifying highly searched keywords and the affiliate publishers ranking in tandem. Developing a strong relationship with these publishers and being strategic and competitive around your affiliate commission offering will increase the chances of being featured on these press-worthy features. 

Amplifying Affiliate Placements Through PPC Ads

Lastly, don’t discount the opportunity to utilize affiliate placements within your pay-per-click advertising. Affiliate placements drive long-term brand value and recurring revenue when secured across the right sites, so take that to the next step by using paid ads to get the word out and target users with high intent. 

• Custom-intent audiences allow you to build cold traffic audiences based on search intent. Google Display Network and Youtube now also allow you to input URLs to retarget users who have visited specific landing pages, including affiliate partner feature stories. 
• Targeting top tier media sites and placement coverage should be a key part of your affiliate strategy, as media partners use affiliate marketing to monetize their editorial content and are always looking for hot, new brands to feature in their stories. When securing a top placement with a media partner, utilize this affiliate link in your paid campaigns by implementing custom-intent URL targeting. 
• This is simple and effective. Retarget those who already have read up on your brand, products, and unique story through a display ad or Youtube ad campaign, maximizing the likelihood of converting users who are already familiar with you. The results are notable and worth including in your paid advertising strategy. 

While affiliate marketing is a cost-effective way to drive results, don’t limit yourself there. Consider these strategies as complementary to your wider digital marketing mix, only improving the results you see in your holistic marketing campaigns and taking your affiliate program to the next level. 

The post How Does Affiliate Marketing Compliment Other Digital Channels? appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

Merging Your Influencer and Affiliate Strategy

Influencer marketing is similar to affiliate marketing, in that you’re partnering with an affiliate or influencer, looking to tap into an engaged audience and ultimately drive awareness and thus, measurable results for your brand. An ‘affiliate’ can be many things, from top tier media sites to lower-funnel coupon sites, while influencers are likely social media personalities and bloggers. We’ve found that it’s easy, and necessary, to leverage your affiliate program into your influencer strategies to maximize your campaign results.

• Influencer campaigns aren’t meant to be one-and-done posts, as the purpose of working with quality influencers is to truly ‘influence’ their followers into ultimately purchasing your products. Creating long-term influencer relationships is key to driving increased engagement and traffic to your site while developing a trusted relationship with followers. After your initial paid campaign run – or even during – invite your influencers to join your affiliate program. 
• Onboarding key influencers to your affiliate program allows for longer-term partnerships outside of a few months of an influencer campaign. Influencers typically partner with brands they genuinely love, so offering an affiliate commission outside of your paid agreement incentivizes influencers to continue to promote you, such as linking your products in holiday gift guides and their ‘best-of’ product round-ups shared across Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, and more. 
• Micro-influencers also make for great affiliate partners. Normally, micro-influencers are most cost-effective to partner with, and often times you can leverage an affiliate commission in exchange for exposure across Instagram posts and stories. This is a great recruitment tactic to build up your affiliate partner base, and drive exposure across niche, and engaged audiences. 

Leveraging Affiliates to drive SERP Exposure

SEO means being discovered consistently across every space your leads look, learn, and buy. Ever have a dream keyword you’ve been looking to rank for but has been virtually impossible due to the competition on page 1 of Google? Take a look at those who are ranking- oftentimes, you’ll find highly-trafficked content sites ranking above you. That’s where affiliate marketing comes into play. 

• When looking at Google- they are known to favor relevancy above all when choosing what sites get to appear on page 1, with the goal of providing users with credible information so they continue to use Google. You’ll often see product round-ups and best-of lists ranking high on page 1. 
• By working closely with key affiliate partners with high domain authority and strong organic traffic, there’s a high likelihood your brand can be included in these round-ups and best-of-lists, and have a key presence in the SERP, while your site may not be present. 
• The key to success here is identifying highly searched keywords and the affiliate publishers ranking in tandem. Developing a strong relationship with these publishers and being strategic and competitive around your commission offering will increase the chances of being featured on these pressworthy features. 

Amplifying Affiliate Placements through PPC Ads

Lastly, don’t discount the opportunity to utilize affiliate placements within your pay-per-click advertising. Affiliate placements drive long-term brand value and recurring revenue when secured across the right sites, so take that to the next step by using paid ads to get the word out and target users with high intent. 

• Custom-intent audiences allow you to build cold traffic audiences based on search intent. Google Display Network and Youtube, now also allows you to input URLs to retarget users who have visited specific landing pages- including affiliate partner feature stories. 
• Targeting top tier media sites and placement coverage should be a key part of your affiliate strategy, as media partners use affiliate marketing to monetize their editorial content and are always looking for hot, new brands to feature in their stories. When securing a top placement, utilize this link in your paid campaigns by implementing custom-intent URL targeting. 
• This is simple and effective. Retarget those who already have read up on your brand, products, and unique story through a display ad or Youtube ad campaign, maximizing the likelihood of converting users who are already familiar with you. The results are notable, and worth including in your paid advertising strategy. 

While affiliate marketing is a cost-effective way to drive results, don’t limit yourself there. Consider these strategies as complimentary to your wider digital marketing mix, only improving the results you see in your holistic marketing campaigns and taking your affiliate program to the next level.

The post Integrating Affiliate Marketing Into Your Holistic Digital Strategy appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

Getting a return on investment could not be more important than a time like now—the solution? Affiliate marketing—a channel that provides a guaranteed return at scale. 

According to Forbes, the adoption of affiliate marketing today is widespread, with 81% of brands and 84% of publishers leveraging affiliate marketing, with spend expected to increase by 10% a year. Affiliate marketing is no longer your traditional last-click attribution model with the scammy, coupon site ordeal. The affiliate model exists to create mutually beneficial partnerships where brands only pay based on results driven: often a commission when a desired action is completed such as a sale or a lead. It’s relatively low-risk, with high-reward. 

Leveraging Affiliate to Lower Customer Acquisition Costs

As a performance-based marketing channel, affiliate is guaranteed to drive down customer acquisition costs and lower your CPAs. Every day, there’s a new brand trying to break through the marketing noise and become the next big thing, like the Nike of running shoes or the Sony of TVs. Winning customers has become increasingly competitive and thus, the cost of acquiring qualified consumers with long customer lifetime value and brand loyalty is more expensive by the minute. While investing in a variety of paid channels is important to maintain a diverse online revenue stream, the Return on Ad Spend, or ROAS, is increasingly difficult to break even, let alone drive incremental revenue and profit. 

With the right strategy in place, the affiliate channel has the proven ability to reach customers at every stage in their shopping journey, serving as a full-funnel digital channel if partnering with qualified affiliate publishers. 

Introducing Qualified Affiliates to your Marketing Mix

Now, say goodbye to the times of fraudulent coupon sites that affiliate marketing had been infamously known for in the earlier days of the industry and hello to a lucrative performance channel. Brands are now able to reach consumers at every stage of the marketing funnel, from top-of-funnel acquisition efforts through high traffic media publishers, all the way to establishing lucrative partnerships with lower-funnel, high-converting coupon affiliates. Bonnie D’Amico, Senior Affiliate Manager at Shopify, says, “Affiliate marketing is no longer the stuff of black hat methods and scams,” so long as your affiliate program consists of a variety of publishers that are diverse and drive quality traffic. For example, partnerships that were previously reliant on sponsored content and native ad buys, are now achievable through a performance-payment model- making it possible to achieve the high ROAS you’re likely looking for. 

Take Buzzfeed for example- a high traffic media publisher known to share DIY hacks and trend worthy news. Tapafiliate reports that Buzzfeed drove more than $425M in directly attributable affiliate transactions. This means that even publishers themselves are turning to affiliate marketing to establish a trustworthy revenue outlet. Unlike the times where expensive direct buys and sponsored content were prominent, Buzzfeed has nailed commerce marketing and brands are able to benefit without the tens of thousands of dollars in costs to guarantee a spot only to hope for a positive return. 

How to Start Scaling ROAS

Through affiliate marketing, brands are only paying when a desired outcome occurs, such as that qualified lead or sale. The Return on Ad Spend potential is limitless, with many brands often seeing a 8-15X return when the right commission structures, affiliate partners, and strategy are in place. 

While affiliate tracking technology is largely evolving, platform setup and identifying the right partners for your brand can be difficult, but the key is to get the platform off the ground and add as many well-vetted partners as possible.

The post How to Scale Your Digital Marketing ROAS with Affiliate Marketing appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

First and foremost, affiliate marketing is best known for its ability to drive conversions, cheap clicks, and affordable traffic to the website through networking, the use of custom links, and a competitive commission structure. With the rise of the blogger and influencer, the affiliate marketing channel has taken a particular liking to these types of affiliates.

So the question is, why wouldn’t you merge your two strategies? 

To do so, however, we have to go back to the basics. 

What are the Key Components of Affiliate Marketing?

When you give individuals and companies an incentive to help sell your products or services, they can take on a substantial share of the responsibility for creating effective marketing. This lowers your risks and your advertising costs. At the same time, it’s a boon to publishers who are seeking to monetize their audience. 

There’s a reason why affiliate marketing spending is forecasted to hit 6.8 billion this year: it’s a cost-effective model for improving your brand’s visibility, and when done effectively, boosts your sales and your profits. Let’s take a look at the benefits and structure of affiliate marketing: 

• Revenue Driving – since 2016, affiliate marketing has grown 10% each year, and now, affiliate links produce as many sales as email promotions. Some estimates suggest that affiliate marketing also generates three times the leads as traditional advertising. In addition, working with affiliates may be significantly more than running a traditional campaign.
• Commission Structure – When you partner with affiliates, it is possible to structure payment such that they receive a commission only when they make a sale. This means that you’re not spending money on ineffective marketing: every dollar spent is associated with a positive CVR value. Depending on your industry, your affiliates might receive between 10% and 40% of a given sale. However, the lifetime value of new customers may well exceed the cost of any single affiliate payout.
• Multiple Affiliate Partners – With traditional advertising, you’re often limited to one campaign strategy. After investing in its creation, you’re locked in until it succeeds—or fails. However, you can partner with more than one affiliate, and different affiliates may have very different audiences, strategies, and results. Using data analytics, you can easily see which partners generate the most value over time. Tiered commissions can reward the most effective partners, giving them a greater incentive to promote your brand and products.
• Low-Cost Platforms – There are a number of affiliate marketing platforms that make it easy to find publishers, track sales, and pay affiliates. Costs for affiliate services can begin at just $29 a month (plus affiliate payouts), and you may be able to use some software without a subscription simply by meeting the minimum advertising budget. 
• Affordable Traffic + Clicks – When it comes to affiliate marketing, many commission structures will only pay for sales, not for leads. This means that you’ll rarely pay anything for traffic, clicks, and brand awareness. That’s just one reason why affiliate marketing is so affordable. However, if your main goal is to increase visibility, you can further incentive affiliates by paying a flat fee for posts, or basing your commission structure on traffic rather than sales.

As you can see, affiliate marketing is a powerful way to tap into publishers’ networks and the deep trust they’ve created with their audiences in order to drive traffic, sell goods and services, and save money, too.

Next, we’ll compare influencer marketing to affiliate marketing.

What are the key components of Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is similar to affiliate marketing, although you’re more often partnering with an independent blogger, vlogger, or social media personality. Like affiliate marketing, influencer marketing allows you to tap into someone else’s network with minimal risk to your bottom line.

 The main components of influencer marketing include:

• Brand Awareness – when you work with influencers, you’re on the lookout for individuals whose brands align with your own. Selling a new organic cosmetic line? You’re looking for vloggers with a focus on clean beauty. Offering accounting services for creative professionals? You’re looking for up-and-coming artists and musicians who regularly post about the tools that make it possible to make a living off their work. When you partner with the right individual, you tap into their network of followers, creating awareness of your brand among the audience you’re targeting. 
• Content Creation – like affiliates, influencers are responsible for promoting your company and product. Their methods can vary, and may include product reviews, tutorials, or simply images featuring your brand. The responsibility and the cost of content creation is in the influencer’s hands. 
• Multiple Influencer partners – as with affiliate marketing, partnering with multiple influencers will enable the creation of content as unique as the individuals you partner with. Different influencers might create content with a different tone and style, and for different audiences.
• Messaging and CTAs – When you work with an influencer, you can, of course, specify what you’d like to see in their content to make sure it aligns with your messaging and includes a clear CTA. Providing influencers with unique referral links allows you to track the effectiveness of an influencer’s incorporation of a CTA, deciding whether it is cost-effective to partner with that individual in the future.

How Are They Similar? 

Maybe you already see some of the similarities between these two distinct ways of partnering with other individuals and brands to generate clicks and sales. However, let’s lay out some of the additional similarities that make it enticing to merge your two strategies:

• Top of funnel channels – both influencer and affiliate marketing have the potential to create a positive CVR value. However, one of their main benefits is generating visibility for your brand and getting eyes on your solutions. 
• PR Value – effective influencer and affiliate partnerships associate your brand with publishers, websites, and individuals that your target audience already trusts and likes. Your brand and solutions can be strengthened, bolstered, and even further specified through the partnerships you choose. When you find the right partners, your audience grows.
• Process + Networking – the process of working with influences and affiliates is similar: you begin by looking for partners who align with your brand and connect with your audience. This can involve networking within your industry, as well as researching your audience’s other interests and passions. Once you’ve found the right people to work with, you work out a payment structure, as well as incentives. Next, you brief your partner on any specifics, and finally, you let them create the content.
• Similar KPIs – not only is the process of working with influences and affiliates similar, but so are the measurables that you can use to determine whether or not a given partnership is effective. With each group, you can measure effectiveness through:
  • Sessions – the number of clicks on the website
  • New Users to Website 
  • CVR – the numbers of leads that become sales
  • Revenue generated through your partnership

As you can see, there are so many similarities in the processes of working with influencers and affiliates that it makes sense to merge your two strategies.

Now that We Covered the Basics, How Can We Marry the Two? 

If you already have separate influencer and affiliate strategies in place, you might notice many dissimilarities in the way you recruit and interact with these two groups. 

Perhaps you let affiliates find you, while you scout out influencers. Perhaps you pay them differently. And perhaps you evaluate them differently, expecting different results from the two platforms, which can make it difficult to track their effectiveness and develop appropriate incentives.

But it doesn’t have to be that way: it is possible—even easy—to merge your two strategies.  

Here’s how:

• Hybrid partnerships – when working with both influencers and affiliates, adopt the same payment structure. Offer a discounted flat rate for posts and content as well as an affiliate commission based on your targeted outcome.
• Increase product trade and offers to affiliates  – you may already give influencers free products and/or discounts in exchange for promotions. When working with affiliates, try adopting the same strategy in addition to offering commissions. You’ll still get the traffic and clicks, as well as create further incentives for effective content.
• Increase outreach to micro-influencers to onboard for affiliate  – the best partner isn’t always someone with a huge readership or following. As you seek out micro-influencers with follower counts in the thousands rather than hundred-thousands or millions, you create the potential to promote their career, create a long term partnership, and grow as they grow. Look for micro-influencers whose voice and audience align with your brand’s, even if their follower count is low. An added benefit is the lower cost of working with these individuals.
• Increased commission structure and product trade monthly to incentivize – reward influencers and affiliates who promote your company month after month. For them to best promote your product, they need a true familiarity with it, and a true connection to your company. Rather than thinking of a partnership as a one-time transaction, incentivize your longest-lasting and most-effective partnerships with increases to commission and product trade. 

As you can see, merging your affiliate and influencer strategy solves several problems: it simplifies your business, promotes and strengthens your brand, creates clear incentives for affiliates and influencers, and allows you to experience the best that both marketing worlds have to offer. 

Sources: 

• Business insider. The Affiliate Marketing Report. https://www.businessinsider.com/the-affiliate-marketing-report-how-mainstream-publishers-are-turning-performance-based-marketing-into-a-fine-art-2015-11
• eMarketer. U.S. Affiliate Market Spending, 2015-2020. https://www.emarketer.com/chart/198481/us-affiliate-marketing-spending-2015-2020-billions
• Finances Online. 20 Best Affiliate Marketing Software Solutions of 2020. https://financesonline.com/top-20-affiliate-marketing-software-solutions/

The post Merging Your Affiliate and Influencer Strategy appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

However, running an affiliate program is not a one-and-done campaign strike. It takes agility, cultivation, and strategic promotion to work. 

Curious what this looks like? Read on. 

Bringing on an Affiliate Manager

In principle, affiliate publishing isn’t complicated. You partner with another affiliate and reap the rewards of their reach. The upfront cost is far less than a banner ad, and, unlike a static advert, you gain the flexibility to tweak and edit your copy, visuals, and messaging throughout the campaign. There are many trends in affiliate marketing, and that is why affiliate marketing remains one of the most trusted marketing tactics for any business. It is a vast industry, anticipated to drive revenue of 8.2 Billion dollars by 2022.

However, for you to run the most lucrative and successful affiliate program possible, it’s vital that your position your product accordingly. Positioning through an affiliate (or publisher) is a nuanced game full of subtle details. It takes due diligence, time, and experience to master. 

For this reason, it’s highly recommended to bring on an affiliate manager whose sole task is to ensure that your affiliate programs are optimal, efficient, and creative. 

Whether you’re hiring affiliate marketers internally or partnering with an agency that will run your affiliate partnerships for you, you’ll reap the benefit of bringing on a specialist to advise on this facet of your marketing campaign—it takes skillful navigation; let the affiliate manager be your Sherpa. 

The Importance of Targeting

As with any facet of a campaign, ensuring that you are directly targeting your consumer demographic is essential. Regardless of whether you are using affiliate marketers for social media, sales, content blog post, or other marketing strategies, knowing your audience is key. It is important that your affiliate program understands this as well. That is one of the affiliate marketing pros and cons. The issue with an affiliate program is that, in essence, you hand over your targeting prowess to the affiliate (or publisher) with whom you partner. 

This puts even more onus on the need to research and fully understand your partnered affiliate. You need to ensure that the marketing affiliate’s consumer targets match your own. 

Is the core demographic of this affiliate aligned with our brand? Additionally, some other questions you should be asking are: 

• Where are they located regionally?
• What is their median age range?
• Do they sway male or female?
• What is the median income of their average customer?
• What are the spending habits of their buyers?
• What are the interests and hobbies of their clientele?
• What are the behavior patterns of their online consumers?
• What does their audience rapport look like?
• How do they fare in terms of site ranking, views, engagement, and reviews?

This information is essentially what’s going to tell you if this partnership will prove to be fruitful and promote to your rightful audience. You need to cultivate this data and then think critically on the way you’re going to position your brand alongside your marketing affiliate. Additionally, if their core demographics match your target audience, this information will allow you to shape your delivery—from your messaging, offerings, branding, to the narrative you weave into your copy, this is how you’re going to drive conversions.  

Running an Effective Promotional Campaign

While running an affiliate campaign lacks the controlled and specific targeting methods of an email campaign or banner ad, promotions are their secret weapon. Customers love a deal. Studies from The Blackhawk Network showed that no matter the threshold of household income, 56% of online consumers are likely to choose an item due to a promotional deal rather than due to a specific brand. 

Enlist your affiliate manager to strategize, plan, and schedule a series of promotional campaigns that directly target specific customer pools. Doing so will allow you to gain clearer visibility on the right audience for your brand, further improving the efficacy of your future campaigns.  

Promote Directly to New Customers

Exposure is paramount. While your long-term goal is to establish customer loyalty, obviously, you want to generate new conversions. What’s a company without new customers? Static. 

One way you can achieve this is by commissioning your affiliate manager to structure a promotion that specifically appeals to first-time buyers. You essentially want to steal them away from their “usual” brand and direct them to your platform. 

Consider the following to incentivize potential customer:

• 10% off for first-time buyers! 
• 10% discount for first-time customers!
• Take 10% off your first purchase!
• New customers receive a 10% discount on all items! 

You want this copy to allure your potential customers and appeal both to their curiosity and wallets. It’s not just about saying “hey, we’re a superior product,” it’s about saying, “the first time you shop here is—without a doubt—going to be cheaper.” 

Promote to boost your AOV

Your Average Order Value (AOV) should be one of your primary focuses and key performance metrics when it comes to affiliate promotional campaigns. This metric should increase quarter by quarter—it’s one of the marks of a great affiliate campaign.  

Take an AOV inventory and identify your growth line over the previous 3-month periods. Do you notice any seasonal patterns in buyer behavior? Analyze your consumer patterns: What is the order value of your average consumer? Use this to curate a promotional campaign that specifically aims to increase the average order value by incentivizing above-average spending thresholds. 

For example, if your typical customer spends an average of $60 dollars on your product, incentivize them with the following promotional language: “15% off orders over $60.” The aim is to create a deal that incites greater spending where your consumer benefits from bulk purchases. This example shows how a campaign can easily bump up the conversion rate. This is not the only way you can do this as there are plenty of campaigns that you and your marketing affiliate can come up to bump up sales, whether they are new or returning customers.

Establishing various promotions at different price thresholds enables you to specifically target different kinds of consumers based on their income and spending patterns.

Limited-Time Offers

Limited-time offers can improve conversion rates since they spike curiosity and are likelier to guarantee an impulse click-through. Perceived scarcity, whether through limited–time offers or through limited stock discounts, is psychologically proven to provoke consumer decisions. 

Consider eye-catching copy such as:

• “Get it now before it ends!”
• “One time only!”
• “Hurry while offer lasts”
• “For a limited-time-only”
• “Act fast!”
• “This limited-time offer…”

Your language should evoke a sense of urgency and produce what the kids these days are calling FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). You’re battling their procrastination. This means your messaging needs to be sharp, pointed, and lack any sense of hesitation. You need them to know that there’s a deal at their feet, and if they don’t immediately take a step, it’s going to vanish!

Your punctuation should be snappy and enticing. Lean into exclamation points and capital letters. Copy experts recommend leading your call to action (CTA) with a verb—in order to push a crystal-clear instructional message. Personalizing the message with the word ‘your’ is also proven to boost click-throughs. Don’t hold back from writing copy that speaks directly to your consumer.  

If you want your company’s products to truly attract the attention of your consumers, promoting limited-time offers is the strategy to stick with. However, understand the phrase, “too much of a good thing.” Limited-time offers should be a strategy that you and your affiliate team use from time to time, and not on a consistent basis. 

Promote Around Specific Stock Keeping Units (SKU)

Empowering your affiliate manager to tally all stock keeping units will grant you the ability to analyze your sales stock-by-stock. From here you can garner which units are selling well and what areas of your inventory are slower to move. Once identified, work with your affiliate manager to build a specific promotional campaign that aims to target these slower items. 

Essentially—where are there chinks in the armor? And how do you patch them? 

Referral Promotions

Content customers are fantastic marketers. Funny, right?

Word of mouth marketing from happy customers is the most invaluable (and affordable!) marketing weapon your brand can merit. If you have a ton of loyal and happy customers, incentivize them to share their experiences—and your brand—with their friends. For many companies, this specific type of marketing is what can truly skyrocket the platform. 

Take it Away

Affiliate partnerships can be a fantastic way to market your brand and product. The goal is to truly understand your demographic—as you must first understand yours to ensure that the partner you’re bringing in has a following that’s aligned. One does not exist without the other. 

Additionally, there is a wide array of different promotional activities you can utilize to drive forward your campaign. Our advice? Bring on an affiliate manager, bring in an agency, and start testing multiple different avenues. Sometimes, the biggest reward that comes from an affiliate campaign is landing a partner whose audience loves what you’re selling… and you never even knew those customers existed.

Sources

Statista, Affiliate marketing spending in the United States from 2010 to 2022 in billion U.S. dollars, https://www.statista.com/statistics/693438/affiliate-marketing-spending/

The Blackhawk Network, The Recession Might be Over, But Deal Seeking Isn’t, https://www.multivu.com/players/English/8181551-hawk-incentives-deal-seeking-shoppers/

The University of Nebraska, The Psychological Effect of Perceived Breakthrough on Consumer Behavior, 

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1045&context=businessdiss

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Retail sales between November and January are estimated to exceed $1.1T in 2019, and of that, e-commerce numbers are expected to perform 16% better than they did in 2018. For companies to earn their slice of that pie, their Q4 strategy must include all that digital marketing allows for: social, search, and content marketing, and of course, affiliate marketing.

In this article, the focus will be on the latter. For everything you need to understand about affiliate marketing in Q4, read ahead.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

First thing’s first, let’s get on the same page. Affiliate marketing consists of third-party entities performing advertising for you in exchange for a cut of the sales they generate. The two common types of affiliate marketing that you’ll encounter are:

Native advertising 

This is when a promotional article is posted to a community-driven site with the intended purpose of driving traffic to the promoted company (whether that’s to a specific product page or to their homepage). The article aligns itself with the site’s overall goals and themes and is both informational and commercial.

For example: A supplement company runs an article about overall health (one part being about supplementation) on a workout-focused blog.

Affiliate links 

As bloggers write posts, they can add a direct link to a product or service of a company. When readers click on this affiliate link and purchase the product, the company offers the blogger a piece of the sale. This is how bloggers use their viewership to create passive income.

For example: When a fashion blogger talks about the equipment they use to create their clothes, they might include affiliate links to the products in the post.

Affiliate Marketing in Q4

The holiday season provides an opportunity for companies. One correct move and the perfect marketing strategy, and companies can experience a massive spike in sales and enter the new year with a cash cushion.

Choosing the right relationships with affiliate marketers can be that one correct move. This type of marketing can be a massive source of views, impressions, clicks, and ultimately sales. The key is that every company around you is also preparing for this fourth quarter—which means the competition is fierce.

Businesses that are planning for affiliate marketing in Q4 need:

• Time
• Deployment strategy
• Secure placements
• Promotional plan
• Advertising assets

Timing of Affiliate Marketing

By November 1st, you can be sure that the biggest affiliate blogs and websites are filled up through January. The time to plan for Q4 is in Q3, maybe even in the later weeks of Q2. This is because affiliate marketing is based on relationships. It’s not something you can plug and play and expect good results.

Bloggers need to create the content, place the links, and allow for the content to sit on the website uncontested. This takes time.

Deployment Strategy

If you haven’t started yet, it doesn’t mean affiliate marketing is out of the question. However, it does mean you should start NOW. 

Here’s how to create a strong deployment strategy.

• Know which blogs to focus on – Align yourself with blogs that have similar themes and messages. If you plan on rolling out new products and tapping into different markets, find blogs that match that part of your brand.
  • For example: If you currently sell secondhand textbooks but want to expand your selection to secondhand fiction, this will require a different market. Whereas you may have started targeting student-focused blogs, now you’ll want to reach out to blogs geared toward general readers. Simple enough, right?
• Payment for affiliates – You must decide beforehand how you are going to pay the affiliate for their marketing abilities. The two most common ways are pay per click (PPC) and pay per performance (PPP).
  • Pay per click – Every time the affiliate link on the blogger’s site is clicked, they earn a certain amount of money (usually in the cents range). Bloggers prefer PPC because it guarantees them money if they have viewership, and some will solely operate on PPC. For businesses, this should be utilized when the blog has a proven track record.
  • Pay per performance – When a reader clicks on the affiliate link and purchases a product, the blogger earns a certain amount of money (usually a small percentage of the product’s price). Companies prefer PPP because it guarantees results before paying.

Note: Establish the payment options upfront with each affiliate to avoid future hassle. 

• How many different affiliates – This is a difficult question to answer: What is the right number of affiliates to have in your program? The problem is if the answer was 20, would you want to stop at 20 when finding more would increase your sales? Of course not. The number of affiliates will balance out to the amount of communication it takes to handle each one. The only answer, then, is: the more affiliates generating sales, the better.

Once these parameters are set up, the next step is to begin the communication. 

Securing Placements

Securing placements on blogs is the most important factor. It’s why you need to allow yourself time to perform affiliate marketing properly, and why many marketers begin their conversations as early as Q2. 

There are plenty of reasons why targeted blogs won’t work out.

• They prefer PPC when your company is only working with PPP advertising.
• Their cut or percentage of the sale is too high, and they won’t agree to less.
• Their blogging schedule could already be full (full of your competitors).
• They require too much communication.
• They offer too little communication.

The list could run on and on. Not all relationships are ideal, and the same holds for affiliate marketers.

Promotional Plan

Once the deployment strategy is prepped and you’ve secured placement in blogs, begin understanding your promotional plan. Review what your competitors offered last year during Q4 to gain insight into what types of aggressive promotion you’re competing with.

Next, consider all the types of promotions that you can offer.

• Sitewide discounts – When in the holiday spirit, it can be attractive to create store-wide discounts. With everything on sale, it makes shopping fun. For those with a large customer base, sitewide discounts are a great way to reward your audience for being loyal to your brand.
• Category discounts – Instead of discounting your entire catalog, you can create a seasonal display. Some companies prefer to associate the sales with the different holidays and add timers for when the discounted items will be swapped out. This increases the pressure to purchase certain items, and it means you’re not losing revenue on the majority of your inventory.
• Percentage off vs BOGO – Regardless of whether you choose to discount your entire collection or only put specific holiday products on sale, you must also decide between “percentage off” or “buy one get one free” (BOGO).
  • Many companies prefer BOGO-type sales. You can create the same discount incentives, but with BOGO, you’re selling multiple products at once.

Ideally, you’ve offered these types of promotions throughout the year and recorded their performance. Understanding the most optimal promotions for your brand will allow you to capitalize on the time when it counts: the holiday season.

Advertising Assets

Now, all that’s left is to prepare for showtime. You need to have everything sales-related that the bloggers need before they post the article.

That means planning your assets:

• High-Quality Photos – For customers, seeing is believing. Nobody is going to buy a product without seeing it. Similarly, if the image is blurry and glazed in harsh yellow light, most people will steer clear from both the product and the seller. According to 67% of consumers, the photo quality is more important than both the product reviews and the description.
• Call to Action – Your call to action (CTA) must be clear and prominent on the affiliate site and the landing product page. Your CTA should include action words and evoke a sense of enthusiasm about your product.
• Banners, Infographics, and Shareable Content – Shareable content that you can offer the affiliates that directly align with your product will help boost the quality of the blog post and cause more readers to click on the affiliate link. 

The Importance of Q4 Affiliate Marketing

One of the biggest reasons people read blogs is to learn about a certain product or service. In a blog, the writer sounds like an ordinary person who happened to buy a set of knives or used a home-cleaning service, and now they’re writing about their experience. It’s why 61% of people use online reviews before making a purchase. When done correctly, the voice of a blog feels like your friend or neighbor telling you about what product they use.

Affiliate marketing is a way to capitalize on customer trust. And when people are scrambling around during the holiday season, trying to determine that perfect gift for their friend or loved one, they’re going to read customer reviews about it. Which means, they’re going to check out blogs.

To be the product on those blogs, be sure your Q4 affiliate marketing strategy is ready sooner than later. And if you haven’t started yet, know that tomorrow is too late.

Sources:

Inc. Retail Sales Are Expected to Top $1.1 Trillion This Holiday Season. https://www.inc.com/anna-meyer/retail-holiday-sales-season-growth-2019-christmas.html

Entrepreneur. 6 Ways Irresistible Product Images Enrapture Customers and Boost Conversions. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/293150

Forbes. Building Trust: How Blogging Can Improve Customer Relationships. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ajagrawal/2016/03/28/building-trust-how-blogging-can-improve-customer-relationships/#5e144d014eeb

The post Planning For Q4 In Affiliate Marketing appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

Both methods work well because it’s third parties that are recommending a brand. As long as consumers trust the source, they’re likely to trust the brand. Plus, having someone else push your product is much easier to accept for the consumer.

There’s a lot of overlap between influencer and affiliate strategies. While one is geared toward social traffic, the other toward organic online traffic, both seek to build awareness and drive conversions. But which one should your brand use? The answer may be a combination of the two. Read on to find out how.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Before hammering out the details, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. Influencer marketing is the use of social media influencers to bring awareness to your brand or product. Typically, companies will pay a single fee per post (or a larger sum for a series of posts). The influencer will then make an original post, tag your brand, and mention a few key points about why they prefer your company.

The idea behind influencer marketing is to make the post look as natural and fluid as possible. This often involves allowing the influencer control over the content they share instead of trying to determine how or what they say

It’s a powerful way of communicating, and 89% of companies claim equal or better ROI than with other forms of marketing. Most brands are jumping on this bandwagon with 17% of companies spending half or more of their marketing budgets on social influencers alone.

How to Use Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing takes advantage of social media marketing. This type of marketing is best suited for building awareness. This isn’t to say social media marketing doesn’t drive sales, because it does, but it places consumers at a different point in the sales funnel. When deciding on what type of posts you want influencers to create, think about the audience that follows the influencer. 

Are you interested in the audience…

• Learning about your product and buying it?
• Discovering your brand for the first time and thinking of you as a future option when your product is desired?
• Clicking on your website link to learn more about your brand?

While yes, every company would love to see their marketing result in direct sales, it’s not that simple. Customers have the power of infinite choice. Whatever your product is, they could buy it from twenty different brands with one quick Google search. The real question is, why would they choose your brand over everybody else?

This is what influencers can help answer. By providing a brand influencer with keywords and company ambitions to include in their post, you can create a positive brand image. 

For example, Ten Tree is a clothing company that plants ten trees for every product purchased. For them, using influencer marketing is incredibly beneficial. They have a great message and campaign behind their products that make them stand out among the thousands of clothing companies bombarding social media platforms through influencers.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Instead of going through influencers on social media, brands can also build awareness and drive traffic through other websites. Blogs, reviews sites, coupon sites, and partnerships are different affiliate marketing sites you can use to push your brand or product in front of consumers. For each conversion or traffic one of these sites sends your way, they receive a cut of the sale.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

While social media and influencer marketing are great for awareness, affiliate marketing emphasizes conversions. Four out of every five brands are using affiliate marketing because of its ability to drive traffic to their website. And these click-through rates are only one of the many benefits:

• Performance-based marketing – Brands only pay based on how much traffic or sales are generated. This is different from influencer marketing where you pay the lump sum upfront and aren’t guaranteed a return on investment.
• Reputation boosters – Most sites, to urge their customers to click, will champion your brand and present it in the best possible light. For example, affiliate marketers will place your brand as one of the top spots in their opinion lists. Think “Top 5 ____ To Fit Your Busy Lifestyle.”
• Broadens audience – Often affiliate sites will have a diverse range of customers accessing their information. This can help target audiences to which you would have otherwise been blind.

How to Combine Influencer and Affiliate Strategies?

To make each marketing dollar go further, brands can combine the best of both marketing strategies. Mainly, merging the conversion-driven results of affiliate sites with the influencer’s depth and reach.

Most influencer placements will be a one-off, either in exchange for your product or a flat fee. Instead, attempt to re-engage those partners, allowing them to sign up for your affiliate software and continue posting for commissions. This will change the incentive behind each post. If they successfully drive traffic toward your brand, they’ll be compensated beyond a single payment.

Offering Influencers a Slice of the Pie

The last thing you want to do is reveal what’s behind the curtain. If an influencer suddenly turns into an advertising machine, churning out posts for your brand, people will look at them less as a person and more as a marketing tool. 

Instead, create goals and objectives that are meaningful to your influencers and develop custom contracts within your affiliate software to support those goals. 

Ideally, you’d like to find influencers whose lifestyle fits neatly with your brand. That way, they can tag your brand nonchalantly. But if the influencer thinks it’s best to be upfront about their relationship with the brand, be open and receptive to this. Audiences want to engage with brands who are supporting the same people they support. They just don’t want to be tricked into doing it.

How Influencers Boost Affiliate Marketing?

The reason brands should consider combining these two marketing strategies is due to the nature of influencers themselves. They’re a particular type of “celebrity.” Maybe they live an exciting life, or they produce compelling content. Whatever it is, people are drawn to them. Although, because they haven’t quite reached the status of untouchable, the way a movie star feels foreign to most people, they’re still seen as personable.

By setting up an affiliate strategy with influencers, you’re offering them skin in the game. Plus, by leveraging their celebrity, they can provide many benefits.

• Bond with their followers – The trust between influencer and follower can be incredibly deep. Because influencers (especially micro-influencers) create a rolling dialogue about their life, followers are able to contribute and continue conversations with the influencer. This encourages repeat engagement and a true bond to form.
• Multiplying your social media presence – Imagine having fifteen influencers on an affiliate deal. If each contributor posts twice a month, you’ll have a social media presence hitting a targeted, engaged audience every single day. Combine this with your own social media, and the effects multiply.
• Niche audiences – Why does somebody follow an influencer? There’s any number of reasons that would answer this question. Maybe some people think they’re funny, others like the way they dress, others think their content is aesthetically pleasing. What brings the audience together isn’t necessarily the same thing that would bring people to your brand’s site. This is ideal; you want to reach audiences outside your normal scope.
• Creative posts – Every influencer is different. They each have their unique viewpoint of the world and their own way of speaking, which comes out through their content. By allowing influencers the freedom to share on their schedule, they’ll be able to come up with creative, imaginative posts that drive traffic toward your brand.

Rise of Micro-influencers

Perhaps one of the biggest game-changers in the influencer scene is the rise of micro-influencers. Micro-influencers exaggerate the benefits of being a social media influencer by leveraging their position.

• Fewer followers, more engagement – With follower counts between 1,000 and 100,000, micro-influencers are better equipped to create those engaging, personal conversations. They may receive as few as thirty to fifty comments per post, which they can then respond to and create that rolling dialogue.
• Cheaper per post – Because micro-influencers have fewer followers, their posts are cheaper per follower than bigger influencers. Instead of investing in one or two macro-influencers, smaller brands can fund 10 to 15 micro-influencers to reach unique audiences and spread awareness.
• Paid less, more trust – Because micro-influencers aren’t getting life-changing amounts of money per post like a celebrity influencer typically does (and users know this), they’re likely to pair with types of brands that matter to them personally. This natural bond between influencer and brand comes across in the posts, making consumers eager to engage with the brand as well.

Best of Both Worlds

Utilizing a multi-platform marketing strategy is key to competing in today’s climate. With the rapid expansion of digital marketing strategies and various social media, brands have countless channels from which to drive traffic. By using affiliate sites, social media, SEO, and other content marketing strategies, you can reach massive audiences and control the messaging around your brand.

Influencers are a powerful way to do this. They are trusted individuals on social media who have sway over which companies are worth doing business with. By offering social influencers skin in the game—the way brands do with affiliate marketing sites—they’re likelier to produce quality content to meet your brands’ goals.

Sources:

Big Commerce. The State of Influencer Marketing: 10 Influencer Marketing Statistics to Inform Where You Invest. https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/influencer-marketing-statistics/#10-most-important-influencer-marketing-statistics-for-2019

Media Kix. 8 Affiliate Marketing Statistics Every Marketer Must Know.  https://mediakix.com/blog/affiliate-marketing-statistics/

The post Integrating your Influencer and Affiliate Strategies appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.

When crafting your affiliate marketing strategy, defining your affiliate commission structure can set the tone for inbound application, partner recruiting, and even overall channel performance, all of which benefits merchants and affiliates alike. Unfortunately, too many marketers use arbitrary commission structures that lack intentionality, which can result in harm to affiliate partnerships and overall success. Learn more about optimizing your affiliate commission structure through intentionality below.

The Problems with Singular Commission Rates

Although overcomplicating commission structures can lead to alienation and resentment among your affiliates, too many merchants and marketers take a one-size-fits-all approach to outlining commission structures, while others forget to implement different rates entirely once program baselines go live.

Offering a singular commission rate comes with some high risks, including:

• Overpaying certain affiliate partners who do not require an increased commission and can function effectively at a lower rate.
• Low-balling certain affiliate partners who will provide increased levels of promotion at attractive rates.
• Limiting cashback strategy by failing to offer an incentivizing kickback to users.

In other words, using a singular commission rate can ultimately harm affiliates, merchants, and end-users all at once.

Building Intentional Affiliate Commission Structures

Instead of creating oversimplified, singular commission structures, be highly intentional with your affiliate strategy for the commission rates that you offer and create payout diversity at both the singular publisher and category level. This creates greater flexibility for affiliates at all levels and ensures that you don’t lose money in the process.

Some recommendations include:

• Implement an attractive baseline commission by analyzing what competitors in the space are offering and provide a rate above the average.
• Offer a lower commission rate to coupon partners. As these partners will drive the majority of revenue volume on your program, this will help protect profit margins.
• If you have a limited product offering and high-cost variance between SKUs (ex. tech products), consider implementing a flat payout per SKU.
• Offer a higher commission to marquee publishers and request additional placements for limited time increased commissions.

The goal is to outline commission rates that are meaningful to each partner category and layer on additional performance incentivizes to support volume.

Common Affiliate Commission Structures

Some common commission structures include:

Fixed Margin

Fixed margin payments use a set percentage for commissions regardless of the actual sale amount. This structure is common for being easy to track and easy to understand for both affiliates and marketers while leaving little room for discrepancy. As mentioned, however, these types of structures come with plenty of problems that can result in lost funds and lost affiliates.

Time Decay

Time decay structures are designed to reward affiliates that execute conversions closer to the event. Where one affiliate may have piqued a user’s interest, another affiliate may reach the consumer right before the point of purchase. The latter affiliate would receive a larger portion of the commission. This mainly works for popular brands whose campaigns have become over-saturated, as well as companies looking to partner with multiple affiliates to run campaigns across several different platforms.

Position-Based

Position-based commission structures reward affiliates that first make contact with the consumer and those that influence the final purchase. This structure takes into account the potential buying practices of the consumer. For instance, many consumers will visit a site multiple times and browse and compare several different items before finally making a purchase.

Coupon Codes

One of the most common tools for commissions, this structure rewards affiliates for any transaction that involves using the coupon code, regardless of whether the user got that coupon code from a podcast, email, or print flyer. Coupon codes are easy to track and allow merchants to work with a larger pool of affiliates, both on and offline.

Shopping Cart Disqualification

Shopping cart disqualification allows merchants to only reward affiliates that influence a buying decision instead of paying them after a customer has already decided. The situation has happened to plenty of us: you go to your favorite e-commerce site, put something in your shopping cart, and then search the Internet for a coupon code. Normally, that coupon code would be attached to the affiliate, and they would receive a commission for that purchase. Shopping cart disqualification would invalidate that commission if the buyer paused their transaction or navigated away from the page to find the discount before purchase. Essentially, merchants want to know that their marketing budgets are working and that affiliates are getting the word out.

Cross-Platform Tracking

Cross-platform tracking is becoming the norm considering the evolution of both technology and consumer behaviors. Gone are the days of buying something online from just your home desktop computer. With the growth of smartphones, tablets, and laptops, consumers often own multiple devices through which they can make orders, leave reviews, and research purchases. Cross-platform commission structures reward affiliates even if buyers switch between devices before actually making the final purchase.

These are just a handful of the most common affiliate commission structures, and they are by no means the only structures available. More importantly, there is no single commission structure that will work for every marketer-affiliate partnership, and while creating a custom commission program may take some time, it will ultimately be invaluable to your company and your affiliates. By defining an agile commission structure, you can set the program up for long-term success and continue building upon strong performance. This also ensures the satisfaction of your affiliates to maintain long-term partnerships that benefit everyone.

The post Being Intentional About Your Affiliate Commission Structure appeared first on Power Digital Marketing.