Followings are rarely grown organically these days. With so many pre-existing communities and online followings, why bother with the painful practice of building your own from scratch? Easier to simply find a foothold in the digital matrix, or ten, promote yourself there and let the numbers roll in. Influencer marketing follows this approach, relying on individual personalities that have attracted substantial followings on social media. Affiliate marketing is an older strategy, one used by over 80% of brands, and one that will spare you from having to manage and maintain relationships with delicate influencers. All you need is a partner website or blog to promote your products and services. Once you’ve found them, they will include a link to your website or Amazon listing (usually in a review-style blog post), directing consumer traffic your way while you do nothing. The greatest advantage is that you’re not just spilling money down the sink — you only pay the promoter when customers following the affiliate link make a purchase.
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Agency or individual?
This is the main question facing affiliate marketers. Do you partner up with an established network with many clients, or do you scope out blogs run by specialists in your industry? Given that affiliate marketing is already about leveraging pre-existing networks, it’s not unwise to sign up with an agency boasting its own internal affiliate network. Niche blogs, on the other hand, will cost less and could grant access to more devoted customers.
Agency
The decisions don’t end here — there are various kinds of affiliate arrangements. The first is a recruitment-based arrangement, in which an agency helps pair you up with bloggers, website owners and content creators to promote your products. These cost less than the second option, as they only handle the recruiting and partner-pairing side of affiliate marketing. Grovia (based in the US) specialises in these kinds of arrangements, but there are countless alternatives. Many agencies, such as Commission Junction, offer multiple packages, allowing you to customise how much of your affiliate marketing programme you outsource and how much you handle yourself. You may, on the other hand, opt for a full-on affiliate marketing arrangement, in which the agency (or agencies) you choose will be reaching their hands deeper into your pockets, handling most or all of your affiliate marketing programme. Notable agencies include Shareasale, Commission Junction and Rakuten, but there is no shortage of options to choose from. Unless the pandemic has been particularly generous to you, it may be wise to try out a recruitment arrangement first to see if this less costly package can work for you.
Individual blogs and websites
Alternatively, if you have the time and motivation, consider doing the networking legwork yourself. This will be easier for some than others – if you have a somewhat obscure product/service, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a niche blog reviewing and commenting on your type of product. For more generic businesses, more digging will be required to find suitable partners. The good news is that there’s a hundred blogs for every conceivable topic in existence, so you’ll simply have to venture into the wilderness of internet that exists past page 4 of Google results. Look up the blog on SEMRush to make sure it’s getting some kind of traffic (and check comments/reads to determine content engagement – the more the better), then contact the owner with your exciting proposal.
You will have to contact many potential candidates, of course. For this, you’ll need a well-oiled outreach plan, listing bloggers or website owners by email, LinkedIn account or Instagram page, to name a few options. Email marketing tools like Mailchimp or HubSpot could come in handy by automating parts of this process.
If networking isn’t your strongest skill, you picked the wrong era to live in. While some can certainly develop their business with minimal marketing, using only pre-made connections and successful products or content, most will have a hard time going down this route. Affiliate marketing is growing in popularity for this very reason – although digital networks are more important than ever, developing your own is also more difficult and complex than it has ever been before. Alan Jenkins of exhibition contractor Quadrant2Design comments, ‘Having been in business for decades, we benefit from long-standing relationships with clients developed over the course of years. I certainly do not envy startups and business owners beginning this process today – while the world is at your fingertips, it’s also at everyone else’s, and getting through to consumers in this busy world is extremely challenging.’ Despite this tall hurdle facing business owners, there is an increasing number of online services available to take part of the marketing burden off your shoulders. Affiliate marketing networks are one such service, and could cut out a substantial chunk of your marketing woes.
