Affiliate marketing is a way to make money online by promoting other companies’ products for a fee. Today we will talk about how it works and what types of affiliate programs exist.
The scheme implies the distribution of responsibilities for advertising and product creation between the parties. This symbiosis increases the effectiveness of the marketing strategy and provides profit for each link in the chain.
Advertiser, product creator (Advertiser)
This is a company or store that has an offer. The advertiser provides an object for promotion on the market, draws up a budget for promotion and bears the risks associated with the work of partners. What the creator of the product gets: more customers, brand awareness, and profit from sales.
Marketing Partner (Publisher)
This is the person (or group of people) who attracts users to buy goods or order services. It motivates visitors right here and now to take a conversion action. For each goal achieved, money is dropped into his pocket.
Client, traffic source
This is the visitor who landed on the landing page. Traffic can be both paid and free. In the first case, the audience is attracted to the offer through ads on social networks, search engines, and native advertising. The main ways of free traffic are content marketing and search engine optimization. Of course, these methods can only be conditionally considered free, because they take time and effort. But for an experienced specialist, such sacrifices are justified by a good profit. What the client receives: the product or service he needs with detailed information.
Affiliate Network
This is a platform for offers and products that companies promote. The network acts as an intermediary between partners and advertisers. Such platforms provide valuable advantages to the two mentioned parties:
- open access to thousands of offers in different directions and information about what needs to be promoted;
- appoint a manager to solve technical issues;
- accelerate cash flow;
- bear the risk of non-payment by the seller.
What the affiliate network receives: profit (in the form of the difference between the money received from the seller and payments to the partner).
The simplest example of using the tool is the mention of a brand in the publications of a media personality on a page on a social network. Celebrities go to restaurants, buy clothes, and products, use cosmetics, etc. Participation in affiliate programs is beneficial to everyone – the client, the network itself, the seller (advertiser), partner. Everyone derives some benefit for himself.
The most effective types of affiliate marketing
Views mean a form of cooperation between the advertiser and the partner. How does the former determine the effectiveness of the actions of the latter?
To answer this question, it is enough to understand the methods of payment for partner services:
- for clicks. Contextual, banner and teaser advertising works according to this model. Imagine that an advertiser’s ad is posted on a partner’s site. If it caught the user’s attention, and he went to the resource with the product, information about this goes to the seller. So he makes sure that the mission of the partner is completed successfully;
- for impressions. Not a very popular partnership model. Implies payment for every 1,000 ad impressions. This form of cooperation plays into the hands of brand distribution, but traffic is rarely targeted;
- for the action taken. The advertiser pays only for those visitors who have reached a certain goal: they downloaded a book, placed an order, signed up for a newsletter, etc. Since the actions are “clean”, this format of cooperation satisfies both parties.
