Should Your Brand Join an Affiliate Network?
Whether you're a total newbie or you're already somewhat familiar with affiliate marketing, here's a quick refresher: affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing tactic, where you, the brand, join an affiliate program (like Share a Sale, Impact, and others) and reward affiliate partners (media, influencers, couponing sites, etc.) with a small commission for action/lead that the affiliate partner drives to your website. An action is most commonly a sale, but can be anything tailored to achieve your brand's specific goals–an email collected, a subscription sign-up, etc.
Why does this matter for my brand?
Affiliate marketing can be a great way to supercharge your PR results while also scaling your brand's e-comm revenue. Since commissions are only paid on sales or other leads generated, hosting your brand on an affiliate program can drive direct, measurable ROI for your business.
In some ways, affiliate partnerships are the new print advertising for publishers–a way to generate revenue through readership. For brands, however, affiliate programs are quickly becoming an essential tactic for raising awareness of your brand and product and a tool for garnering earned media coverage on digital platforms.
Gift guides, product round-ups, trend stories, and even feature coverage can often now require an affiliate relationship to warrant coverage. The good news: since you only pay commission on sales driven by the affiliate, there's a direct and measurable ROI for these efforts.
Beyond earned media, affiliate marketing can also be applied to influencer campaigns. Whether gifted or paid, youR affiliate program can incentivize influencer relationships in a similar way to media, and allow you to directly track ROI from actions that result from these partnerships.
How can I determine if affiliate marketing makes sense for my brand?
To make this determination, it's important to think about your goals for the brand–what are your growth goals? What channels are you targeting for that growth? What role does earned media play in your growth strategy?
Affiliate marketing is a great fit for brands that want to:
Track direct ROI from their earned media efforts
Scale their direct-to-consumer revenue
Boost their SEO
Build authority against competitors via earned media placements
Invest in gifted or paid influencer campaigns
Increase the quantity and quality, and reach of earned media placements
Interested in discussing affiliate marketing services for your brand? Reach out and let's chat!