Affiliate marketing is when an affiliate (you, in other words) earns commission on sales.
Sales are generated through their referral of possible customers to a brand that is not their own. Usually, a brand will provide an affiliate with a personalised code that they can share with their audience.
To incentivise people to use these codes, there is a relatively small discount applied to customers' orders when they input the code at checkout. This helps the brand keep track of the sales generated by the affiliate's marketing efforts.
Applying to be an affiliate marketer is not the difficult part; neither is choosing a brand you like and believe in. The difficult — yet most rewarding — part of this journey, will be executing your affiliate marketing strategy in a sustainably successful way.
media update's Joreke Kleynhans guides you through the most important aspects of getting into affiliate marketing.
Building an Active Social Media Presence
A strong social media presence is imperative for generating a significant amount of sales for your chosen brand. For the benefit of your social media presence, be intentional about the following decisions:
Determining a target market
No, your target market will probably not be the same as that of the brand you are marketing for! An easy way to find a target audience for affiliate marketing is to further zoom in on a portion of the brand's target market.
For example, if the brand's target market consists of mothers of babies and toddlers in South Africa, your market may be mothers of babies in Gauteng. Now you have zoomed in a little further on the age of your consumer's children and their location.
Choosing the platforms you market on
Based on the market you have chosen to target, you need to choose the social media platform that will give you the highest ROI for your effort. Different social media platforms will be effective for reaching different consumers.
For example, reaching teenagers will be much easier on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram than on Facebook.
Building your audience
In any marketing strategy, growing your audience is a large part of the initial mission. It is any marketer's choice to either make the pond deeper or to make it wider.
Allow me to explain: if you narrow down your target audience and work intensely on a small portion of the market, you are making the pond deeper. In other words, you have a small audience with whom you build much more personal relationships.
If you distribute more generic content to reach a more diverse audience, you are making the pond wider.
No rule determines whether a deeper or a wider pond is more effective. Each option has an appropriate context to apply it to.
For example, if the brand you are marketing provides once-off products or services with a short sales cycle, a wider pond might be beneficial. On the other hand, a brand with a longer sales cycle and long-term product or service provision benefits from a deeper pond.
Garnering Trust and Credibility
Because you are endorsing a brand, service, or product, your credibility is at stake every time someone purchases from the brand because of your referral. It works the other way around too, though.
To ensure that your audience follows through on the interest your content may peak, you need a good foundation of credibility.
You can bolster your credibility in the following ways:
Education
Being educated on the industry in which you are marketing a brand is crucial to building credibility as an affiliate. Not only can this help you discern whether the brand is credible, but it can also help you find the USP of your chosen brand.
Having educated opinions on the type of products or services you are marketing makes your audience much more likely to turn into customers.
Meticulousness
Any credible affiliate will be meticulous in choosing the brands they promote. In other words, be picky! If you don't take the necessary care in deciding whether a brand meets the expectations your audience has of you, the partnership may end up being a misfire.
When something like that happens, your audience will lose some of the respect they had for your knowledge and opinions. Even if the mistake is small, it will have a lasting impact on the success of your affiliate marketing.
Creating Engaging Content
To keep your audience invested in your profile, you should always aim to keep them engaged through the content you create. In your posts online, you can encourage engagement by:
- asking questions
- including a call to action
- responding to questions, comments and posts that are relevant to you, and
- tagging relevant accounts.
Commonly engaging types of content include:
- product reviews
- unboxing videos
- hauls, and
- before and after or results videos.
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*Image courtesy of Canva