2015

Namrata Choudhary

SitesSimply PTY LTD

www.sitessimply.com

Contact- 011-41085900

29-Sep-15

All About Affiliate Marketing

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What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing can be understood better as a marketing that is performance-based. Each time, the business rewards the affiliates for each visitor brought by them. The affiliate makes their own efforts to get visitors.

To understand it better, let’s divide the process into four.

• The retailer (merchant)

• The affiliate (publisher)

• The network, and

• The customer

Businesses are following the trend of affiliate marketing to make it easy for them to get visitors without making many efforts. The efforts are made by the affiliates themselves.

How the process of affiliate marketing actually works?

Once your brand or business is associated with an affiliate, they can advertise your products and services via a link. The link will also contain a code that will track the purchases made through the affiliate’s website. The payment of the affiliate depends upon the mode of payment chosen by the customer. A certain percentage per sale is given to the affiliate.

Affiliate Marketing Strategies

1. By using discount coupons You might have seen coupons of brands and businesses online. Just like couponmom.com. The site offers coupons of so many grocery websites along

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with the tips on how to use them. This is the most common way of affiliate marketing. The logic behind this strategy is to attract the customers. The website couponmom.com states that “cut your grocery bill in half”, which itself attracts customer to make a sale and help the merchant in accomplishing the goals.

2. By using product review There are a lot of online review sites available on the web today. These sites also act as a sales driving element from where the customer can get information about the product. The information is written in the form of a real life experience with the service or the product, which makes people trust on the review. The features, addresses, and concerns are highlighted in the review along with t link to make a purchase in case customer wants to.

3. By using banner Ads Sometimes, affiliate links are presented in a way that it looks like a banner advertisement. These ads are placed in the form of an image with no text. Not every user can make the difference between a banner ad and an affiliate link. This strategy helps the affiliates as well as merchants in reaching the goal.

4. By using product Feed / aggregation There are also some websites that collects the information about so many products and then show it on their website. The way of presenting the price is very simple, which adds value to the site. Also, the model of revenue depends upon the interested shoppers that are completing the cycle of purchase as per the information provided on the website.

5. By using offline model It can be better understood as word-of-mouth marketing. There is no website used to do affiliate marketing. The strategy may not get high-value proposition, but it can prove to be very effective. In this case, the affiliates just ask the listeners to spend some time and log on to the web to see the products and services via his affiliate link.

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Common mistakes affiliate marketers should avoid

Every affiliate marketer wants to make an effective strategy including the above-mentioned strategies and other available resources. They keep on doing this without realizing the mistakes made by them. Here are some of the most common mistakes that can be avoided for the long-term growth of a business.

1. Making selling a primary objective Marketing is always a part of the affiliate marketing process, but it should not overcome the main objective, i.e. selling. Without selling, there will be no revenue. Please note that it doesn’t mean you to write “but this now” all over the webs page. At first, tell the readers why should they buy the product and then where can they buy the product from. Product reviews are always very helpful for affiliate marketers because the customers always want to hear the real-time product experience. The takeaway While writing a review, make sure you don’t sound like a sales person. Give the audience advice to purchase the products via an affiliate link.

2. Never go for too much As there are so many strategies of affiliate marketing, don’t rush towards all of them. It can out of hand to manage all the strategies. You can, however, try a few strategies together, but do not confuse your mind. The takeaway Choose a strategy that can help you without overloading the burden. It is also not bad to try a few strategies and then choose the best one.

3. Overlooking testing While promoting an affiliate advertisement, think of you as a potential and then test the follow-up sequence of the vendor. Testing for every task be it marketing or any is always recommended. The takeaway Testing is the only takeaway in this case.

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4. Not monitoring frequently By not regularly monitoring the sales, you may be committing a very big mistake. Frequently monitor the sales, channel of lead generation, and geo-targeting for better affiliate marketing results. The Takeaway Regularly monitoring the sales makes you a better marketer.

Conclusion

With the emergence of e-commerce, affiliate marketing also evolved. By creating valuable content, the affiliate marketers can easily earn a good return on investment. Affiliate marketing requires focus and self-motivation. Once you are aware of your mistakes, you can learn from them and grow the business and hence making it profitable for a long period of time.

With the evolution of digital marketing, there are certain trends in affiliate marketing which could help in developing successful marketing strategies for businesses. If you’re looking for an affiliate marketing program or strategy for the same, then gets a consultation from Affiliate marketing consultants at Sites Simply.