6 Ways To Grow Your Small Business with Affiliate Marketing

As a small business, you need recurring sales to thrive. Loyal customers ensure repeat business is a must; however, an influx of new clients can help scale your sales and ultimately grow your business. 

This is why every business invests in several marketing strategies. Implementing an affiliate marketing program is one of the most effective ways to market your business, get more brand reach, and boost sales. 

This article will look closely at affiliate marketing and how it benefits your business. We’ll also share strategies and tips on how to use affiliate marketing to grow your small business.

Affiliate Marketing: What Is It?

Affiliate marketing is a marketing process in which a business compensates third-party publishers to generate traffic or leads to the business’s website, products, and services. These third-party publishers are called ‘affiliates.’ The commission fee incentivizes affiliates to find ways to promote and market the company. 

Affiliates can be publishers, content creators like vloggers, bloggers, social media influencers, or well-known personalities with an established base of engaged and loyal followers. That said, anyone with a good community or following can become an affiliate for your small business. 

In general, these affiliates are part of affiliate programs like Legendary Marketer. These programs can help affiliates learn the basic principles of becoming affiliate marketers and provide the necessary resources. 

Click here to learn more about the Legendary Marketer program.

How Does It Work?

Affiliates publish or post links to the business on their websites, blogs, social media accounts, or other digital channels. In most cases, an affiliate may also create promotional content for your company. 

For instance, they may shoot a video or write a blog post, including links for the viewer or reader to get further information or buy your product or service. 

The affiliate will get a commission every time a user purchases through the affiliate link. 

Benefits Of Affiliate Marketing

Thanks to its numerous benefits, affiliate marketing is a powerful strategy for small businesses. For one, affiliates help you create brand awareness among a bigger audience. When your affiliate puts your business in front of their followers, you reach multiple potential customers, allowing you to grow your prospect list by leaps and bounds. 

Also, affiliate programs can harness the power of social proof and help establish trust with prospects. When affiliates share reviews and recommendations for your business and its products and services, followers are more likely to believe them. This, in turn, can influence a customer’s purchasing behavior. 

In addition, affiliate marketing is generally cost-effective. The only real cost you need to worry about is the commissions you pay your affiliate every time they make a sale. As a type of performance marketing, you don’t have to pay anything unless you generate a sale. Put another way, you only have to pay when you see the results. 

Given these benefits, it’s not surprising that more small businesses invest more in affiliate programs. In addition, businesses are investing more in affiliate training programs like the one mentioned above in order to help their affiliates become more effective marketers. You can check and visit the website for the Legendary Marketer program review to learn more. 

6 Affiliate Marketing Strategies And Tips To Grow Your Small Business

By now, you should know how affiliate marketing can bring your small business wonderful benefits. Next, we’re sharing key strategies and tips to boost your company’s growth effectively. 

1. Determine If You Need To Create An Affiliate Program

To start with your affiliate marketing strategy, you first need an affiliate program to monitor and pay your affiliates. Generally, you have two options–establish an affiliate program or join an affiliate network. 

Each option has its pros and cons. If you have the technical know-how, creating an affiliate program is a more cost-effective choice. It allows you to track, manage and pay your affiliates directly. This means you don’t have to worry about middleman fees. That said, unless you’re already an established business with a strong brand presence, you may have trouble attracting reputable affiliates. 

Joining an affiliate network is a better option for small businesses and startups that want to incorporate affiliate marketing. An affiliate network is a company that serves as a go-between for businesses and affiliates. They have a large network of reputable publishers to help market your business. Take note, however, that they may charge a high initial cost. 

Choosing between the two will depend on your business goals and budget. For small businesses, it’s recommended to join an affiliate network to help scale their audience. As they grow, businesses can create an in-house program to get full control of their affiliates. 

2. Be Meticulous In Choosing Your Affiliates

Affiliate marketing allows you to harness the influence of publishers to spread the word about your business and get people to buy your service or product. 

That said, if you want to influence your consumers’ buying decisions effectively, you need to be meticulous with the affiliates you hire. In general, working with someone related to your industry is recommended and has a good number of engaged audiences. 

You also want to ensure that your affiliates have good authority and relationships with your target audience to build trust. Also, they should be knowledgeable about the latest marketing trends and have the necessary experience to market your products and services. 

All these are critical to ensure that your efforts are not in vain. When you choose the right affiliates, you can get the most conversions with the least effort. 

3. Establish A Competitive Commission Structure

Your affiliate program’s commission rates should be worthwhile and attractive for your affiliates but should also be reasonable for your business. 

To develop your commission structure, you must first analyze how much of your profit can be allocated toward an affiliate’s commission. You should also consider researching your competitors’ affiliate marketing programs or the industry as a whole to determine the average commission rate. 

To give you an idea, the commission rates for physical products range from 5% to 15%. Commission rates tend to be higher for software products. 

4. Reward Your Top-Performing Affiliates

As part of establishing a competitive commission structure, you should also think of rewarding your top-performing affiliates. Affiliate marketers seek out top-paying affiliate marketing programs when looking for businesses to partner with and promote. 

That said, affiliates won’t stick around for long if no compounding benefits exist. For instance, if you have a top-performing affiliate generating hundreds of sales a month, they’re going to be upset if they have the same commission percentage as those bringing you less than 50 sales a month. 

Effective affiliates are hard to come by. So, you don’t want to lose them to other programs. While you don’t need to pay them outrageous commissions, you can gradually increase their earning potential to keep them motivated. 

For instance, aside from the set commission rate, you can also implement performance tiers, where your top-performing affiliates can get bigger rewards with bonuses or larger commissions. 

Do the math on your current business earnings to see what your top performers can earn and develop a structure that allows for an increased rate as they perform better. 

5. Give Bigger Percentages On Less Popular Goods And Services

Every small business has a product or service that doesn’t sell as well as others. In most cases, it’s not a bad product or service. Instead, it only caters to a limited or selective audience, making it more difficult to sell. Or perhaps the service or product is just expensive, so sales are rare. 

If your small business has products or services like this, then consider offering your affiliates bigger incentives for these products or services. For instance, if your standard commission rate is 10%, you can increase it to 15% to drive more action. After all, the higher the commission, the more aggressive your affiliates will be in marketing it. That said, before increasing your rate margin for less popular goods and services, make sure to do thorough research and ensure that you’re still getting a good profit margin. 

6. Leverage Coupon Deals

Offering coupon deals is one of the best strategies to increase affiliate marketing sales. People love discounts, even if they’re just saving a dollar or two. This is why coupon sites are growing in popularity. These types of sites can help consumers find good deals online by organizing coupons from various businesses and brands.

You can attract new customers and encourage returning customers by leveraging coupon sites and providing promo codes for your products and services.  Also, offering time-sensitive promotions can effectively bring in more first-time purchases to your small business. 

To make the most out of this affiliate marketing strategy, make sure to look for high-quality sites. Check where their visitors are coming from. Do they have their own user base, or do they rely on search traffic? You also need to verify the authenticity of the website. You can try using the coupon codes they offer. 

Takeaway

You can employ various marketing methods to help your business thrive and become successful. But affiliate marketing is one of the most effective strategies you should include in your overall digital marketing plan. 

By partnering with reputable publishers in your industry, you can drive targeted traffic, build trust in your brand, and ultimately increase your sales and bottom line.

This article has been published in accordance with Socialnomics’ disclosure policy.