Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Patrick Austin, freelance writer.
Affiliate marketing is one the simplest, and popular, techniques available that can boost sales considerably with the added bonus of also growing your revenue.
Based on the kind of business, you have different affiliate marketing platforms available – to ensure a perfect fit for your activities. Contrary to traditional advertising where payment is based on clicks or impressions, affiliates are paid based on an action being completed, like a purchase. Now let’s dive deeper so can use affiliate marketing to grow your sales.
Diving into any marketing campaign without a concrete strategy is as good as throwing away your time and money. Many businesses start with an affiliate network with no proper planning, and usually it results in low conversions and even lower ROI. This affects your sales as you are not efficiently driving traffic to your products, traffic that should result in sales.
Start of by asking yourself a number of questions:
Most affiliate programs provide affiliates with a percentage on each sale completed, but take some time to evaluate what will be right for you.
Weigh the pros and cons before starting, and be prepared to invest some time and effort in getting your affiliate offering off the ground.
If you are generating a substantial sales figure through your affiliate marketing, then you can make use of different tools that will make the process smoother and far more efficient. If your website is run on WordPress, then you can install a plugin like Affiliate Link Manager or any of the other plugins available such as: ThirstyAffiliates, Optinmonster, or OutreachPlus..
While carrying out your campaign don’t just assume that everything will go well and wait for your visitors. You need to have an appropriate setup, to make that happen. If you believe that visitors will click on the affiliate links you’ve provided and buy your products just because you’ve now got scores of affiliate links leading to your website, then that might be a mistake. Make sure that you are clearly explaining what you are offering visitors and that your site is at peak performance for the best user experience.
You’d be amazed at how many organizations carry out their affiliate process without really checking the metrics to determine performance. The plus side of affiliate marketing is that you can use coupon codes and tracked links to decipher every little aspect of the process. So pay close attention to your KPIs and modify your strategy accordingly based on the results, make sure to check and evaluate at least once a month.
By checking your metrics, you can determine if you should be paying out a higher commission during certain times of the year or to certain affiliate partners. If the numbers for ROI highlights that you can boost the commissions during the summer months, this simple modification could encourage your reps to bring in great numbers that you otherwise would have missed out on.
You can encourage your reps to share their opinions on their favorite products. In this case, ensure that they know to make each review insightful with a clear description of the product. Defining the advantages, along with the defects and issues is generally considered beneficial for reviews which can be used in a great affiliate marketing campaigns. Providing detailed and honest product reviews helps reps establish authority, makingit easier to persuade their audience, and in turn, help you fulfill your sales goals.
Micro-influencers are the latest sensation and getting in touch with them for collaborations can be a huge boost to your sales. Now, if you’ve endless resources to bank on, then you can easily go for the big social influencers of the world (like celebrities or influential bloggers), but for most businesses, partnering with smaller yet driven influencers with a substantial following can produce great results.
Not only do these people bring in traffic, but they add credibility to your brand with their endorsement. When your business has a strong affiliate marketing program with a growing network of reps, you can consider making collaborations with these micro-influencers such as certain limited time offers and bigger commissions when reaching a sales quota.
Keep all of these in mind when you embark you journey for implementing an affiliate program for your business. Make sure to know what you want and who will help you get there, and always measure and evaluate if your current activities are supporting your goal.