Getting your brand seen by your target audience has never been more important. The digital world has opened the door for many smaller businesses to push their brand online, and that is the place to be for exposure. Social media, SEO and affiliate marketing are all part of a modern digital advertising campaign. This is not to say traditional advertising is no longer important as it remains so, but that the online world is where businesses need to be as visible as possible.
We’re here to talk about affiliate marketing and how important it is to push your business up the rankings on the search engines and in the eyes of your customers. Let’s start by talking about what affiliate marketing is and why you need to know about it.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
It’s easy to dismiss affiliate marketing as another buzzword, but in fact the concept is older than you might think. Before the advent of the digital age businesses relied upon traditional print and broadcast advertising. For local businesses, they also relied upon word of mouth. Say you tried a new restaurant back then and found it to your liking. You tell your friends, they tell their friends, and so on. Affiliate marketing works in a similar way, but there are benefits for the affiliate as well as for the business involved.
If you visit iAffiliate Management you’ll find plenty of information about affiliate marketing but here’s our brief explanation of how it works. Let’s say you’re the owner of a new business; a shop, perhaps, café or restaurant, or any type of business. You have a website, and social media accounts, and you want to get your name out there. You find people in a similar business or well-followed bloggers whose subject may be relevant to your business.
You come to an agreement with the blogger or online store for them to post links, comments and more about your business on their social media feeds, blogs, websites and other online media. For every order that comes through their links, they get a commission payment. It’s a simple concept, but for it to work you need to have the right affiliates with the right links and readers. Let’s talk now about how outsourcing your affiliate marketing can be the right choice.
Why Outsource Affiliate Management?
The concept of affiliate marketing is explained neatly there and we recommend you read as much about it as you can find if you’re new to the idea as it can be confusing. What we want to talk about here is the amount of time and effort it takes to get an affiliate program working correctly. The question is this: if you’re running a smaller growing business, do you have the time to put into managing your affiliates? Or does someone on your team?
It’s possible you could assign one of your team to take on the job, but it does mean that they will only be doing the best they can with the time and resources at hand. You probably cannot justify paying a full or even part-time affiliate manager so what’s the answer? The answer is to outsource your affiliate management to a specialised company such as iAffiliate Management who we mentioned above.
There are many benefits in using an affiliate management company, so let’s list some of the most important:
- The affiliate management company will allocate you a dedicated manager who will handle all your affiliates leaving you and the rest of your team to get on with the roles they excel at.
- An experienced affiliate management company will learn your business inside out to understand who the perfect affiliates for you are, and then set about bringing them on board.
- They will be able to ensure that your affiliates are talking to your ideal customer base so that you get cost-effective affiliate management results.
- They will be experienced in building social trust, handling social media and promoting businesses in the 21st
By engaging the services of an expert in this area of marketing you will be providing your sales and marketing team with an important and effective tool to add to your resources, and you’ll find it a cost-effective investment.
Conclusion
The link between marketing and social media is not new but it is essential. There is a lot to be gained from drawing on the expertise of affiliate marketing specialists who will be able to streamline your marketing and get your brand the exposure it deserves. This is the best use of your budget as you are getting genuine experience that can’t be found elsewhere. Talk to an affiliate management company now and see what else they can do to put your brand in the spotlight.