Testing, fine-tuning, and ensuring that your messaging motivates buyers to act accordingly while being ROI-positive are all part of eCommerce marketing.
Affiliate marketing is one of the more underutilized digital marketing channels available to you if you’re starting an e-commerce firm. Eighty-one percent of companies use affiliate marketing programs, so whether you’re just putting your toe in the water or you’re ready to go in head first and maximize your eCommerce earnings, this guide is for you.
But first, let’s review the foundations of affiliate marketing before moving on to the meat of the article, which is how to choose the finest affiliate marketing platform for your eCommerce business. We’ll also talk about how affiliate marketing aids in the expansion of e-commerce companies.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Using other companies, bloggers, or brands to advertise your items on their websites is known as affiliate marketing. When a visitor they refer to an online store makes a purchase, these affiliates receive a commission.
Benefits Of Affiliate Marketing
With affiliate marketing, you can spread your message to the largest online audience while also expanding your reach more quickly and consistently. Additionally, your e-commerce company only compensates affiliates when a transaction is made.
When you work with powerful affiliates to advertise your items on their websites and social media accounts, you can take advantage of their sizable audiences.
Other Benefits of affiliate marketing include:
In addition to more exposure and brand recognition:
- Strong ROI
- Enhanced Credibility
- Advanced Social Proof
- Increases CLTV
- Improve Brand Recognition and Awareness
Tips To Find The Perfect Affiliate Platform
Do competitor research.
Make a list of your competitors and find their affiliate programs. You can create a spreadsheet to track your affiliate network including their preferred networks, commission structures, incentives or bonuses, cost-per-action (CPA), and cost-per-lead (CPL). Joining their partner program can give you insight into the emails, incentives, and bonuses they offer affiliates.
For instance, if your competitor offers a 10% recurring commission per sale and is featured in famous review sites, think to match their commission rate or taking the same review sites to show up.
If the budget is limited, you might do some testing with affiliates representing niches, find affiliates where your competitors haven’t partnered up yet, or focus on a few, thereby maximizing ROI.
Identify Your Objectives and KPIs
To decide on the type of affiliates for your program and determine commission payouts, first establish your objectives—whether that’s increasing site traffic, revenue, average order value, or achieving high conversion rates year-over-year. Then, set metrics to measure progress toward these goals. Common KPIs include:
- Click Traffic
- Gross and net orders
- Commission earned
- Top affiliates and their share of total sales
- Performance by affiliate category (e.g., coupon sites, review sites, blogs)
- Total affiliates
- Active and productive affiliates
- ARPU (average revenue per order)
- EPC (earnings per 100 clicks)
Defined commission strategy.
Most successful affiliate programs will have a well-defined commission structure, making the payouts very attractive. Use the formula below to come up with your cost per acquisition: the cost to get a new customer. With that and average order value, you will easily develop a commission strategy accounting for acquisition costs, conversion rates, cost of goods sold, and gross margin. That way, the percentage you give the affiliates will always be sustainable.
Analytics
Analytics is an integral part of any affiliate program. Advertisers use analytics data to see what worked and what didn’t work and optimize future campaigns accordingly.
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Customization
For some, customization may not seem like an important benefit. However, there’s a huge difference in the long run.
Typically, customization consists of three levels: branding and incorporating company design, configuring the system for specific operational processes, and the ability to introduce new modules.
The best option would be a platform that allows all three levels of customization and that the platform meets your needs in the long term.
Tech Support
Technical support plays a huge role in any business and not all affiliate tools have the right level of support for your brand. Proper tech support can save you a lot of time deciding how to handle certain setup issues.
Advertising campaigns don’t have a steady eight-hour work schedule and can often be running in the evening hours so you need support to be available 24/7 to handle issues and bugs that may come up.
Integration with Third-Party Services
You’ll probably need other services for your operational workflow. Check out the existing integrations your chosen platform offers. Pay attention to the most popular ones, such as fraud prevention, billing services, CRM, BI tools, and more.
Flexible and Functional API
If you want to integrate with a specific service or tool that’s not yet connected to the platform, the integration will depend on the API terms. If the platform offers a feature-rich API, making any future integrations won’t be a problem.
Bottomline
Now that you know a bit more about some of the top affiliate programs for beginners, take some time to explore them for yourself. Discovering the best affiliate program and brand for your niche may take time, but it will be worth it. Just be sure to do your homework and avoid any potential scams.
Besides, if you have any questions or queries, feel free to contact us. We would be happy to help
