A Quick Guide to
Affiliate marketing

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a performance marketing channel used by the most savvy, strategic, and successful e-commerce-enabled businesses.

In short, it rewards third-party publishers for driving high-converting website traffic in an effort to motivate consumers to purchase a brand’s products or services. These third-party publishers, commonly referred to as ‘affiliates,’ are incentivized with lucrative commission payouts in exchange for publishing links, running digital banners, or creating other customized (social) content to promote a brand’s marketing offers, increase brand awareness with new audiences, fuel new customer acquisition, boost conversion, and drive incremental and profitable sales growth.
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How the affiliate marketing ecosystem works

The affiliate marketing ecosystem consists of a few key players:

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Advertisers

Advertisers are e-commerce-enabled businesses that pay commissions to publishers in exchange for promoting their marketing offers on their sites or via shared social content. They value their affiliate partners as a rapid and cost-effective way to reach more diverse audiences, all in an effort to land new customers, grow customer lifetime value (LTV), increase AOV, boost conversion, and generate meaningful, ROI-positive revenue growth.

Publishers

Publishers (aka, affiliates) can be any type of business or individual willing to promote a brand’s products, services, and other marketing offers in exchange for commission payouts. Publishers come in all shapes and sizes: 

  • Coupon and Deals publishers
  • Loyalty publishers (cash-back or points-back)
  • Content publishers (including Bloggers)
  • Social Media Influencers and Content Creators
  • CVR Optimization and Retargeting providers.
Networks

Affiliate networks are the tech platforms that facilitate and track the relationship between Advertisers and Publishers. As the “enablers” of high-performing affiliate marketing programs, Networks capture the real-time data used by Advertisers and Agencies to build real-time optimization strategies. Some well-established names in the industry are Rakuten Advertising, Impact, Pepperjam, Commission Junction, ShareASale, Partnerize, and Avantlink.

Agencies

Affiliate marketing agencies are an e-commerce-enabled business’s greatest ally for navigating all the moving parts involved with launching, managing, and steadily growing high-performance affiliate marketing programs. As the affiliate marketing ecosystem’s true subject-matter experts, agencies are well-positioned to leverage their deep channel expertise and long-standing publisher relationships to ensure a program’s long-term success.

THE benefits

01
Boost Awareness
Expand your brand’s visibility and reach.
Harnessing the entire affiliate marketing ecosystem allows you to tap into new audiences, create buzz, and put your products and services in front of consumers who are ready to buy.
02
Increase Traffic
Build a solid network of high-value traffic drivers.
Leveraging affiliates as trusted ‘marketing megaphones’ for your brand will spark new streams of high intent inbound traffic that can quickly convert into paying customers.
03
Optimize ROI
Align performance to your growth goals.
Investing in a profitable pay-for-performance advertising model means you’ll only pay when affiliates drive real results, at highly customizable commissions that target ROI
with precision.
04
Measure Success
Track real-time metrics to glean valuable insights.
Keeping a perennial pulse on performance is the key to pinpointing attribution, boosting conversion, optimizing budgets, targeting ROI, and refining campaign and
partnership strategies.
01
Boost Awareness
Expand your brand’s visibility and reach.
Harnessing the entire affiliate marketing ecosystem allows you to tap into new audiences, create buzz, and put your products and services in front of consumers who are ready to buy.
02
Increase Traffic
Build a solid network of high-value traffic drivers.
Leveraging affiliates as trusted ‘marketing megaphones’ for your brand will spark new streams of high intent inbound traffic that can quickly convert into paying customers.
03
Optimize ROI
Align performance to your growth goals.
Investing in a profitable pay-for-performance advertising model means you’ll only pay when affiliates drive real results, at highly customizable commissions that target ROI
with precision.
04
Measure Success
Track real-time metrics to glean valuable insights.
Keeping a perennial pulse on performance is the key to pinpointing attribution, boosting conversion, optimizing budgets, targeting ROI, and refining campaign and
partnership strategies.

How to launch a successful affiliate marketing program

While there's no one-size-fits-all for a brand's affiliate marketing program, some best practices apply across the board. Here's a simple step-by-step outlining the basics of affiliate program management.

01

Program Setup

Register and set up your account with a leading affiliate marketing networks to ensure the greatest publisher reach and access to powerful tools for running your program like
a well-oiled machine.
02

Affiliate Recruitment

Although affiliate recruitment should be an ongoing activity as you build and grow your affiliate marketing program, identify your 'foundational' publishers in the initial recruitment push.
03

Commission Planning

Finding your ROI sweet spot means striking the right balance around commission incentives. Not all publishers are created equal (or operate in the same way); the commissions offered should
reflect this.
04

Publisher Communications

Keeping your brand top-of-mind with your network of publishers requires communicating with them frequently. This is key for fueling trust and fostering collaboration around a brand's success.
05

Promo Sharing

Share everything, from big sales to product launches and major marketing campaigns to shoppable content (and everything in between). Give publishers everything they need to promote your brand.
06

Performance Measurement

Whatever your performance goals may be, from revenue growth to new customer acquisition to ROI targeting, use the tools provided by your affiliate network to keep tabs on performance in real-time.
07

Publisher Payments

When shoppers makes purchases after clicking on an affiliate link, publishers earn commissions. Just be sure to reconcile your commission invoices promptly to ensure publishers get paid in a timely manner.
08

Program Optimization

Affiliate marketing is not 'autopilot' marketing. The strategies you use to scale your program and extract greater value from the affiliate channel over time will need constant refinement. It's not one and done!
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Who Should Do Affiliate Marketing?

This is an easy answer. All e-commerce-enabled brands and businesses should consider making affiliate marketing a core part of their broader performance marketing strategy in one way, shape, or form. 

Thanks to affiliate marketing’s low-risk CPA-based compensation model, the channel has earned a well-deserved reputation for being a scalable and cost-effective way to make a brand’s marketing dollars work harder while filling the gaps that other—often more costly—paid marketing channels simply miss. And since there’s no “cookie cutter” approach to affiliate marketing, the possibilities for tailoring an affiliate marketing program to address a brand’s specific growth goals are virtually endless. 

That is, only if your program is set up for success right from the very start. So, if you’re ready to launch a new affiliate marketing program or take your current program to the next level, AMDX can help. 

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