Affiliate marketing is one of the most efficient forms of brand promotion known in the business world. After the initial stage of proving yourself to your core customer group, you can reward them, all while turning them into promoters and brand ambassadors themselves.
This method relies on the notion of the customer being the best possible form of advertising. When people hear rave reviews about your brand, they will be intrigued due to human impressions having the top credibility level.
According to data from Pew Research Center, a single affiliate partner can open up your product to 338 new people on average. This is only a starting point, as various factors might alter the equation in the process. To highlight the importance of affiliate marketing, we’ve decided to elaborate on the phenomenon mentioned above and analyze a few useful hacks.
We’ve asked Michael Draper from aussiewritings.com for advice, given the fact that he’s been involved in several affiliate marketing programs with various startup companies. Let’s find out more.
How do customers become affiliates?
To convert a previous customer into an affiliate, you need to have a stable business model that functions on reliability. While running a reliable brand, people will want to be a part of your vision. Through excellent customer service and a decent enough offer, you can motivate your customers to promote you for a small cut that is juxtaposed to the effort they’ve invested.
What is the affiliates’ job, exactly?
Affiliates are like a special squadron of your brand that is tasked with creating a good online presence. They hold an advantage over organic marketing simply because they are living testaments of the quality of your brand.
With testimony videos, aggressive social media marketing, and showing proof, they will attract more people. They are the mediator between your vision and your expansion.
How exactly can you make the conversion?
The conversion from a customer to an affiliate is not a complicated process, but it’s best not to rush it. Coming forth with an offer too early would make it seem like you’re desperate and trying to hide the shortcomings through a good online presence.
It’s best to let the business relationship develop and only propose an offer once you’ve established a communicational channel. In the next section, we’ll explore all the necessary hacks that can help you to gain more trustworthy affiliates.
Provide an excellent customer experience
When establishing an affiliate-brand manager relationship, it’s best not to force anything. Having to pay someone to promote a brand they don’t like is a financial black hole. Although some companies do stoop to this kind of business model, it never yields any result in the long term.
Customer dissatisfaction is visible from a mile away, as well as customer satisfaction. Since you are the starting point of your brand’s success, you have to make sure your customers are satisfied with their experience.
Don’t even say a word about an offer in the first period of collaborating with a customer. Be polite, efficient and help them with any problems. Once you see them praising you, propose a potential affiliation idea, and also ask them how would they do it.
This precise practice makes your customers feel like they’re your colleagues, not employees or hired guns that have to do the promotion.
Be aggressive
Even though someone loves your brand and uses your services on an almost daily basis, they still have to be motivated to invest effort and mental power into promoting your brand.
A large number of marketers prefers to use a low to medium amount of money to drive their customers. This can be good, but only for customers who aren’t that well-off. And, unfortunately, the most lucrative target group is people in the age bracket of 27-40. You don’t want to get a lousy return.
So, you’ve understood that people who are financially struggling aren’t that good of an investment, but also that financially stable people don’t need the money. How do we solve this? It’s simple – offer aggressive incentives.
The key here is to break the so-called “customer-affiliate differentiation point.” What does this mean? The customer-affiliate differentiation point is a fictional moment in time where the customer realizes that, through affiliating with you, he or she will have much better benefits than any customer.
The best aggressive incentives to entice people into affiliation are:
- Product previews
- Invites to test unreleased products
- Gifts
- Promo codes
- Gift cards
- VIP membership cards
- Prospects for further collaboration
Give them hope
We’ve asked people with affiliate experience about what is the most common reason they’ve abandoned their previously held affiliate position.
Although some of them gave multiple answers, a single reason was said almost in unison – a lack of future prospects. Since many affiliates are young people, they only want to commit to brands and ideas that offer them hope of participation in the grand scheme. Since most affiliates are tasked with little promotion, they don’t see any chance for advancement and quit after a short period of time.
To make the best possible transition from customer to affiliate, you have to be honest right away. Motivate your affiliates into giving you their reviews, ideas, and comments.
That way, they will not only feel like they’re a part of the team, but you’ll also see if someone is worthy of a future business relationship. If they are, you will be able to promote them into better positions and see your band thrive.
Make the process simple
Affiliate marketing is a simple job, and this factor helps you in the long run. Because you aren’t inclined to pay people much money doesn’t mean you can make them do whatever you want to.
Even affiliate-related promotion is a job that can be done both efficiently and horrendously. To make sure your affiliates are up to the task at all times, be a good brand manager. Offer them incentives, communicate with them, but most importantly – simplify everything.
Give them your marketing plans, instruct them on what to do and be there for them if something goes wrong. The notion of simplification is directly correlated to the aforementioned hope-giving hack.
When they don’t have to invest much effort into manual promotion, they will be free to ponder about better solutions and propose them to you. That concept alone will be enough to take your brand to the next level. Always ask what you can do for your affiliates, not the other way around.
Be patient
An affiliation proposal that comes too early is a sign that you’re desperate. Some companies make this mistake over and over. Even during the registration process, they start mentioning friend invites, bonuses and things like that. Just because someone will gain from affiliation with you, it doesn’t mean they will jump to it right away.
In the first period of collaborating with someone, you should focus on providing the best possible experience to them. Empirical knowledge is the single most powerful driver behind deciding to become an affiliate or not.
The good idea is to offer something first, without proposing any future business relationship. Send out emails with discount codes, unannounced gifts and other types of perks that people will love to experience.
In addition to this, you will get free promotion from them, as they will be ecstatic due to the fantastic experience they had. Afterward, you should approach them like your equals and close the deal.
Never put a cap on the earnings
Hope and future prospects are the priority of every employed person. Just like you wouldn’t spend time in a relationship you don’t want to be a part of, your customers won’t want to be obliged to do a job in which they can’t advance.
Even some big companies explicitly say how much money can you earn. For cheap marketers, saying things like “earn up to $1000/month by becoming our affiliate” is actually positive. Sure, an affiliate might want to try out the program for a month or two, but they will surely abandon the relationship afterward.
Therefore, you should never put a cap on how much money your affiliates can earn. As the business grows, their earnings will too. This won’t negatively impact your total ROI. It’s crucial to have long-time, reliable and stable affiliates to operate on a bigger scale. A revolving door of the different and unsatisfied affiliate will hinder your brand’s progression in so many ways.
Discuss the payment terms
Every affiliate is different. Some will work at a different tempo than others, while still providing the same results. As a result of this situation, you should give your affiliates the freedom of creating their own custom plans for the payment schedule. This way, being able to choose the payment time will be yet another incentive that will motivate them to work hard and promote your brand.
In addition to this benefit, unique payment terms will also allow you and your team members to allocate your financial resources better. While most companies adopt a two-week/monthly payment plan, a different plan with more freedom will allow you to be perceived differently than your competitors.
Have a simple referral program
Uber, Lyft, Airbnb and many other companies have different business strategies and become successful due to simple business tactics that involve, amongst other things – simple referrals. Perhaps the best thing is to use a custom code generator that gives each affiliate their own code that will be recognized when their friends or family use it. The generation process takes a few seconds, and you will get new customers (and potential affiliates) in return.
Complicating things is always a negative sign, no matter how much money you’re paying to your collaborators. To make use of the affiliate-brand manager relationship, make things simple for everyone and don’t worry about other things. Simplicity, right incentives, and a prosperous future are everything an affiliate needs.
The bottom line
Be efficient and honest. Making your affiliates feel like they’re a part of the team will cause a boost in revenue and production. What many brand managers and marketers fail to realize is that affiliates are potential future employees. With good incentives being offered to them, you can expect more success in the future and more complex projects.
About author:
Olivia Ryan is a passionate blogger who writes on topics of digital marketing, career, and self-development. She constantly tries to learn something new and share this experience on various websites. Connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.
