What Is Affiliate Marketing

 

Affiliate marketing is like owning a supermarket. Supermarket owners don’t need to produce any product, on the contrary, these products came from various companies. Supermarkets promote those products on the shelves and resell them. Customers buy them at a higher price than the supermarket owner paid to companies. It’s the same principle.

 

The difference is affiliates don’t have to buy the products, they just promote them instantly. And also in affiliate marketing, affiliates promote products for commissions and the final price of the product remains the same. The companies sacrifice a percentage of the profit, but they manage to sell more products without paying for advertising costs.

 

Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting another company’s product and service as well. It allows brands to partner with individuals or companies to do some work instead of them. These individuals or companies are known as affiliates. 

 

An affiliate marketer sells products on behalf of clients and gets to keep an agreed percentage of the profits. Affiliates introduce products to the audience from other companies. In return, they get a commission from any purchases people from the audience make. 

 

It is a kind of revenue sharing. People who have products, but not an audience, can increase their market by working with people who have an audience, but not a product. 

The idea behind it is that you promote other people’s products, often through an affiliate network and earning a commission. In affiliate marketing, promotion of products and services set in on the Internet.

 

Affiliate Marketing Looks Like A Triangle

The company – who wants to advertise its products/services  via the affiliate marketing model.

The affiliate –  who promote the products in on the Internet.

The affiliate network – is an intermediary between a company and an affiliate. These networks usually offer a wide variety of products from companies and there are thousands of affiliates who can promote these products.  

In the network, there are affiliate managers who are a bridge between brands and affiliates, usually responsible for recruiting affiliates to increase conversions for brands and to help affiliates on their promotions.

 

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

The company has to pay affiliates only for customers who will visit their website and take action, and this is a very profitable deal. If potential customers visit the company’s website or purchase its products, then the company pays affiliates the agreed percentage of profits.

 

It means that the company is sacrificing a small percentage of its profits but it is still advantageous than traditional advertising and its promotional costs. In this way, the company pays only when a sale or other action is taken, in other words, when the company reaches the desired result. (the desired result is not always selling products or services). 

 

Affiliates place special links on their social media profiles or websites and blogs. When someone clicks those links they get redirected to a company’s website. By the use of a special cookie when a visitor clicks an affiliate link, it tells the company that the visitor comes through this special link. 

 

Customer service, delivery, or support does not concern affiliates. The only concern might be cookie expiration. For instance, Amazon uses 24-hour cookies. It means that they will pay their affiliates commissions during those 24 hours.

 

Advantages Of Affiliate Marketing

As you understand, this system has tremendous benefits for all sides – for the companies, for affiliates, for affiliate networks.

The company pays in cases of final sales and does not sell without any tangible results. The result is absolutely measurable. With this system, affiliates promote products without the company being forced to pay in advance. This leads to affiliates doing their job more responsible.

For affiliates, the system is overly flexible and lucrative. Affiliates find a product, promote it to others, and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make even if you sleep. They also manage to promote dozens of different products from multiple companies without being in their workplace in a very short space of time. They can make money from a single campaign for years. 

On the other hand, affiliate networks undertake campaign management, offer affiliates, and management tools for monitoring promotions for companies.

 

Affiliate Marketing VS Influencer Marketing

With the integration of social media into our lives, affiliate and influencer marketing have become a major campaign of marketing plans. While these concepts are pretty similar, they also vary when you deep down.

 

Let’s check out the differences which help marketers to discover which option is best for campaigns.

 

Marketers can get good results using both forms of marketing. The biggest feature of influencer marketing is delivering a message across to a relevant target audience. However, affiliate marketing ensures a risk-free investment, it means that marketers only pay for actual results.

 

Influencer marketing is mostly used to increase brand awareness while affiliate marketing for driving sales. 

 

Also one of the main differences is the payment. Influencers usually paid beforehand, but affiliates’ payments based on commission.

 

Influencer and affiliate marketing have different ways to measure success. Influencer marketing mostly focuses on new followers gained, number of shares, and engagement. Affiliate marketing takes a more tangible approach to ROI calculations through sales, orders, conversion rates, new customers.

Selecting the right influencer is the most important step in influencer marketing. But this does not apply to affiliates. Companies can share a unique discount code or coupon code with affiliates, which they can include in their posts.

 

Understand The Power Of Affiliate Marketing With Keepface

Keepface helps brands who want to use the power of affiliate influencer marketing and affiliates who want to promote the brand’s products or services by providing technical support, consulting services, monitoring the quality of affiliates’ work, and offering analytical and other tools.

The conditions of brands vary depending on the product they offer, their marketing strategy, and budget.

Keepface learns all the conditions of brands, find right influencers/affiliates who have a similar culture to brands campaigns. Discuss all the terms with affiliates, such as what they will do, which product they will advertise on which platform, what the content consists of, and, of course, the earning of affiliates.

So, sign in now to take advantage and get the most out of your affiliate marketing.