Affiliate marketing is a form of performance-based advertising. It involves one business rewarding another business for every visitor that they have successfully directed to their website. A popular example of affiliate marketing is a review website receiving commission for sending customers to their business partner’s webpage. Affiliate marketing has proven itself to be a highly effective form of advertising – one that every brand should try out for themselves. If you still need convincing of its value, then you should continue reading. Here are 5 different reasons why you should consider running an affiliate marketing campaign for your business:
1.) Improved Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is more important than ever before. Though the advent of the internet has mostly been beneficial for businesses, it has also resulted in the competition being much fiercer. Without a strong presence on the internet, your business could be drowned out by the clamour. Affiliate marketing is a fantastic way to improve brand awareness. For one, it introduces new customers to your business who might previously have been unaware of its existence. As a result, you can access a larger audience. In addition to this, having your business endorsed by another brand can help to improve your reputation. If your affiliate is well-respected within the community, then people are more likely to trust their opinion. So, receiving their support reflects well on your brand and increases its overall presence.
2.) Targeted Traffic
Affiliate marketing is incredibly effective when it comes to generating targeted traffic. By targeted traffic, we mean customers that are genuinely seeking out the product and/or service that your company provides. You are much more likely to convert visits into sales when you have targeted traffic coming to your website as opposed to untargeted traffic. Affiliate marketing helps to generate high-quality traffic to your business because affiliates are usually complementary companies to your own. For example, they might be a review website, referral company, or voucher distributor. So, if a customer were then to search ‘carpet cleaning discounts’, they would probably be led to your affiliate’s discount website. From here, there is a good chance that they will follow your affiliate’s link to your carpet cleaning business. As such, an incredibly valuable customer will have been directed to your website. So, you can see why affiliate marketing is such a hit.
3.) Search Engine Optimisation
Every business that operates within the digital landscape should know what search engine optimisation (SEO) is. This is a permission-based form of marketing that improves your website’s rankings on search engine results pages (also known as SERPs). Not only does SEO increase your online presence, but it also helps to direct organic traffic to your business and build trust among customers. Link building is a vital part of search engine optimisation. This is all about creating more backlinks to your website to generate more traffic, increase its authority, and help it climb the ranks. Affiliate marketing can really help with link-building campaigns. Your partners should be able to naturally integrate links to your company within their content. In turn, this helps to boost your website’s authority on the internet and drive more organic traffic to your business. It’s a win-win situation.
4.) Low-Risk and Cost-Effective
Marketing isn’t one hundred per cent effective. The results we yield from an advertising campaign don’t always match up to how much money we pour into it. Except for when it comes to affiliate marketing. This is an incredibly low-risk strategy. Instead of paying affiliates up front, most businesses pay their partners on commission. So, if your affiliate doesn’t generate any leads to your website, then you haven’t wasted any money. Resultantly, affiliate marketing is highly cost-effective. The majority of businesses gain more profit from these schemes than they lose. Your affiliates can also really benefit; they don’t have to put much effort in to start generating money for themselves.
5.) Helpful Data Analytics
Data analytics have become an important part of marketing. They help businesses to track where their traffic is coming from; to identify where their marketing strategies are underperforming and how they could engage customers more. Affiliate marketing can provide brands with some helpful data insights. You can see exactly how successful each partner has been at generating leads to your business. It can also highlight which media channels your customers are most likely to come from. As the success of affiliate marketing is so easy to track, you can make more informed decisions on whether to cut your losses or expand your affiliate network.
These are some of the main reasons why every brand should try affiliate marketing. As this advertising strategy is low risk, there really is nothing to lose by getting involved. Also, you can improve your website’s SEO and brand awareness at the same time!
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