Affiliate marketing done well can be a great way to get new customers at a great price, especially if you have an online store already and know your products sells well. However, it’s also a great marketing strategy to put in your business plan when you’re just learning how to start an online store.
First, What Is Affiliate Marketing?
In short, affiliate marketing is the process of giving a commission for sales generated by affiliates. Affiliates can be individuals that sign up to promote your product to their friends and family, or bloggers and social media personalities that have larger audiences.
For instance, maybe you have a product that’s $25 and you pay affiliates 10% commission for every sale.
If you’re curious how well affiliate marketing works, here are some statistics on affiliate marketing.
- $5.3 billion was spent on affiliate marketing in the US alone in 2017 and is expected to grow by 10% each year.
- 81% of US-based brands use affiliate marketing as a way to generate new sales.
- 20% of publisher’s annual revenue is generated through
- According to Google Trends, between September 2016 and September 2017 search interest in the term “affiliate marketing” has risen by 30%. As online shopping becomes more popular and brick and mortar stores decline, affiliate marketing may become more useful than ever.
- 20% Of Publisher Annual Revenue Is Generated Through Affiliate Marketing
- 16% of all online orders are made with affiliate marketing
So, as you can see, affiliate marketing is not a marketing strategy to ignore. But, if you need further convincing, here are 5 reasons to consider an affiliate program for your online store.
Money
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make commissions because you only pay for results. Compare that to pay-per-click, or even pay-per-view advertising and you’ll be surprised by how much you can save by only paying per sale. Another great thing about this is that it’s impossible for it to run in the negative since you’re monitoring traffic, sales, clicks, and refunds- after all, you’ll know the exact cost per acquisition from the beginning.
Sales
If you’ve ever set up and done targeting for any sort of marketing campaign you’ll know that it’s a long and tedious process. Affiliate programs let you bypass a lot of the campaign set-up by providing you with free traffic that you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten.
In addition to saving money and making more sales, the entire online industry is ripe for new affiliate programs right now. In fact, online spending is going up every year, and affiliate marketing efforts are also increasing. In other words, the industry is ripe for not only buying but for finding affiliates!
Brand Awareness
There’s more to advertising a business than making sales. Some companies have brand-awareness-only campaigns designed just to increase brand awareness and positivity towards the brand without regards to sales.
The amazing thing about affiliate marketing is that by default your brand will be getting promoted (for free mind you) to a whole host of people. Just think, if a few people visit your website and sign up for your email list, you’ve just gathered someone to promote your products to in the future for free!
SEO
Another great reason to consider affiliate marketing is that it can potentially provide you with high-quality backlinks.
If you don’t’ know what SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) is, it’s the process of convincing Google to rank your page higher in the search engines.
One way of getting some of that SEO juice is by getting links to your page. Affiliates who post on their own legitimate sites or on social media channels are providing you those backlinks for free.
Cookies
Another great reason to consider an affiliate program is that traffic into your site will allow you to analyze user behavior in the form of cookies. Data is a big business so being able to collect your own data (responsibly) through an affiliate program provides you with tons of insight into your customer base which will allow you to make better marketing decisions in the future.
As you can tell affiliate marketing is a great opportunity for building your audience and increasing your sales. So, hopefully, you now understand why you should at least consider affiliate marketing for your online store.
