You’ve built a blog, a Youtube channel, a Facebook page, or a strong digital presence on any social media platform. Now you’re getting good traffic, but what’s the point if it doesn’t convert?
Why not monetize your digital presence?
This is where affiliate marketing agencies come in. They develop blogs, monetize traffic, and sell products and services of other businesses. In return, they get a commission for each sale.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Before moving forward, let’s understand exactly what affiliate marketing is and why it is an amazing source of income for agencies.
Affiliate marketing, the process of promoting someone else’s products/services, is a lucrative digital marketing technique to earn handsome commissions and make a sound financial career. Instead of producing something on your own, when an affiliate marketing agency markets/advertises another business, it gets a share of sales every time a customer makes a purchase using the affiliate link.
It helps businesses to track down the exact number of sales the online affiliate marketing company generated using its special link. In 2023, this will be a win-win situation.
How Do Affiliate Marketing Companies Work?
Affiliate marketing companies work with affiliate networks like Clickbank, and Amazon Associates to earn commissions. But you can promote anything you want. For example, you can become an affiliate member of a website hosting company and earn your fair share of revenue every time a customer purchases a hosting plan.
Beware though, as many agencies and individuals claim it to be a super easy passive source of income, the truth is far away from it. It takes months, if not years, of hard work to drive consistent, targeted traffic to a blog and generate sales revenue.
In this blog, let’s shed some light on 10 different ways in which affiliate marketing for small businesses can unlock higher revenues.
10 Ways to Unlock Higher Revenues using Affiliate Marketing Services
Now that you have an established online presence that you can monetize, it is time to implement 10 strategies to take affiliate marketing income to a whole new level:
Don’t Spread the Word until the Content is Live
Building a brand-new website and expecting commissions to roll in overnight isn’t going to happen. Write that content and/or make videos in advance, ready to publish before your site goes live. One video/article is not enough to generate targeted traffic.
For example, if you’re selling gardening equipment, it is imperative to have multiple reviews of a number of gardening tools. Moreover, you can also have content on gardening tips.
This step of advanced planning ensures you have content in place ready to get traffic for your blog. Once you have enough content, create a calendar and schedule it to go live every few days. Now that your website is populated, it is time to share links with your friends/family, perform SEO, and/or run paid ads.
Promote products tailored to your audience’s needs
Riches are in the niches.
An affiliate blog focused only on automotive-related products will perform better than one trying to appeal to everyone.
Channel your energy in the right direction from the start. Do your due diligence, conduct thorough research, pick a niche, and stick to it. Zero in your efforts from day one in understanding your audience and their psychology.
Remember:
The more you educate, the more you sell
People HATE being sold to. The more you educate them with tips and tricks, the more they will take interest in the product your affiliate marketing agency is selling.
3. Honesty is the Best Policy
Nobody is stopping you from making money online. But do it the right way. Let your readers know whenever you are using an affiliate link to promote a product. Always mention that you will earn a commission on every sale. This ensures you are honest and remain compliant with international laws. Don’t hide it from your readers.
Informing your readers that, despite earning a commission, your reviews will remain unbiased, is the best thing to implement. You will not be seen as a pushy sales agent. You also need to avoid severe penalties from Google.
A disclaimer policy, privacy policy, and EULA End-User agreement are vital to remain compliant and honest.
Infographics
- According to statistics, the global affiliate marketing industry will be worth an estimated $13.8 billion by 2022
- Affiliate marketing has a market value of $17 billion as of 2022.
- 80% of brands have an affiliate program.
- Affiliate marketing is used by 83% of marketers to raise brand recognition.
Source 70+ Affiliate Marketing Statistics 2022 (UPDATED) (demandsage.com
4. Never put all your Eggs in one Basket
We’ve all heard the famous saying: “Never put all your eggs in one basket.” Always diversify your risk. Any affiliate program can shut down, or slash its commission rates without any notice, meaning you can go from hero to zero in no time.
Shopify suggests not having one affiliate partner make up more than 50% of your income. We can’t agree on this anymore!
Amazon Associates in 2020, cut commission rates for affiliates in a week’s notice, from 5% to 1% in the Grocery’s category. Imagine the B2B affiliate marketing agency’s revenue going from $1,000 (based on $20,000 in monthly sales) to $200 in an instant.
Unfortunately, as an affiliate, you are at the total mercy of the business you’re promoting, and its policies, which can change without your consent. This external reliance is risky unless you have diversified your earnings from multiple affiliate networks.
5. Insert Links in the Most Visited Pages of your Site
Creating a new piece of content requires time, effort, and dedication. What if you could just insert affiliate links and optimize an existing webpage that is already getting good traffic? Using Google Analytics, see the most high-performing pages. Once identified, insert links to them.
6. Thoroughly Review before Promoting
As mentioned earlier, affiliate marketing isn’t and shouldn’t be considered an “overnight get rich quick money-making scheme!” E-commerce affiliate marketing agencies fail as fast as they aim to make quick bucks.
Your aim should be to help your audience.
Don’t worry about the money. It will roll in as a successful by-product of honest reviews, evaluations, and criticism.
Market Pro can’t even recall the number of times people have been scammed out of their hard-earned money just because influencers recommended a “revolutionary product” such as quick weight loss, amazing smartphone, etc.”
7. Use Social Media Platforms to Promote Affiliate Products
While it’s true that most affiliate marketing begins with a simple blog, 2023 is different. According to Hubspot research, more than 50% of consumers prefer watching videos of the business/brand/product they are following online.
How much does it cost to start a new Facebook page or YouTube channel?
$0!
You heard that right. Why not put it to your advantage? Create short-form vertical content for FB Reels, TikTok, and Youtube Shorts around the business you’re promoting.
Moreover, Instagram Affiliate Shops and TikTok’s partnership with Shopify can help affiliate marketing agencies take their clients’ businesses to a whole new level.
8. Compare Products Thoroughly
Many people prefer to save time by reading a blog or watching a video that has an unbiased, thorough comparison with another product.
For example, one of the most common comparisons is the type of hosting plan offered by two competitors. An honest comparison helps the shopper determine the best product that fits their requirements in terms of budget and features.
A page like Wix vs. Squarespace is what you get as a result of this thought process.
9. Go local with Global
Amazon is not available in many countries. What if someone from a country clicks the affiliate link only to find the product isn’t available in their region or the fees and delivery charges are much higher than the price?
This person is likely not going to follow you anymore as you redirect them to an irrelevant product page. As long as your vendor ships to the location that your readers are coming from, go ahead and link to the localized version of their product pages. For example, if you’re targeting a UK audience, do not send them to the US version of the product page.
People want to pay in their local currency, avoid extra shipping charges, and save on currency conversion charges. This is only possible if you link your shoppers to the localized product pages for their region.
10. Run Targeted Ads
The reason for immense success among tech behemoths like Google and Facebook, is in their unique ability to allow marketers to run targeted ads based on gender, demographics, interests, location and shopping habits.
Run targeted ads before and during the holiday season to push your affiliate marketing campaign and get the best possible sales. Don’t shy away from running A/B split tests to find out which product pages work best.
Some seasons when you can run ads are:
- Mother’s Day
- Father’s Day
- Christmas
- 4th of July
- Thanksgiving
- New Year
- Black Friday
- Cyber Monday
- Valentine’s Day
Wrapping it Up
Let’s not forget that, just like any other business, setting up an affiliate marketing campaign from the ground up takes a lot of time, planning, patience, and strategy. However, at the end of the day, it is always worth it.
Learn what you can from these 10 key takeaways and see your online affiliate marketing agency’s revenue shoot up by a huge margin.