What is Affiliate Marketing?

After all, it’s vital to have a solid understanding of any media strategy before implementing it into your brand marketing plan. Lucky for you, we’re pros in this space. Here is our guide to ‘what is affiliate marketing’ — and how to make it work for your brand.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a practice where third parties (called affiliates) help market your brand. These affiliates promote your brand or product on their own platforms and are compensated when business or traffic is created as a result of their efforts.

To get involved with affiliate marketing as a business owner, you would sign up your brand for an affiliate program and decide what commission you want to offer to affiliates when they feature your company on their platform.

In media, affiliates are becoming a necessary component of being featured in digital magazines, newspapers and websites. There are many big players in this field — Amazon, Skimlinks, ShareASale — and each publication has various requirements to be considered for inclusion. Without being part of an affiliate marketing program, it’s unlikely a brand will win a coveted spot in a gift guide or product round-up.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

Now that you know the answer to the question of ‘what is affiliate marketing,’ you may be wondering about the benefits. Affiliate marketing can help your brand grow in several ways.

Here are just a few of the aspects of affiliate marketing that could be beneficial for your brand:

• Audience Growth
• Cost- and Time-Effective
• Low Risk
• Easy to Start
• Increase Brand Exposure

Grow Your Audience

Reaching new potential customers is one of the most significant benefits of affiliate marketing for brands. When an affiliate advertises your brand on their platform, they can connect your products or services to a new group of people. Affiliates are usually chosen because they have an established platform and audience that they have already worked to build up.

Being part of an affiliate program allows freelance journalists and editors to consider your product for features. Since all affiliate programs have requirements — like having a solid website, a certain number of reviews, and so on — it covers some of the research a reporter needs to do for their work.

A Cost- and Time-Effective Solution

Any brand marketing tactic that can help save time and money is helpful to consider. Luckily, affiliate marketing is both cost- and time-effective. Other traditional marketing strategies can be very costly, but in comparison, affiliate marketing is more affordable and can help you save money while still making a sizable brand marketing impact. Commission fees can be relatively low, and just being part of an affiliate program increases the chance that media outlets will feature your brand.

Low-Risk Brand Marketing Strategy

Once you consider the answer to ‘what is affiliate marketing’, you might begin to realize that it is a great low-risk brand marketing strategy. The risk to your brand is especially low if you choose only to pay affiliates when a sale is made through the link or advertisement they post on their platform. This way, you are only paying a commission to an affiliate if they actually drive business to your site or brand.

Easy to Start

If you’ve ever wondered about the topic of ‘what is affiliate marketing’, one of your concerns may have been how difficult it would be to not only get started with but to maintain over time. Many affiliate marketing programs and services are available today, making getting started with affiliate marketing simple. We can make the process even easier by helping you figure out how to sign up for affiliate marketing programs and see your return.

Increase Brand Exposure

Participating in affiliate marketing can help increase awareness of your brand and target a wider audience. If you are a part of the affiliate programs that publications and media sites seek out when looking for brands to include in gift guides and stories, your brand will have a better chance at being featured in top media outlets. As a result, your brand will have more opportunities to get valuable media exposure and reach the audience of different top publications.

Essential Affiliate Marketing Tips

Here are some valuable tips to keep in mind when getting started with affiliate marketing to help maximize the impact it can make on your brand:

• Choose the Right Affiliate Program(s)
• Utilize Seasonal Marketing
• Partner with LaRue PR

Choose the Right Affiliate Program(s)

At the end of the day, affiliate marketing should help your brand. You can afford to be selective about which affiliate programs you make a part of your brand marketing strategy. Consider the top affiliate programs out there like Amazon, Skimlinks and ShareASale, and do your research to find out which ones would be most useful for your brand. You can also join more than one affiliate program to better your chances of being featured in top publications. We can help you identify the affiliate programs that are right for your brand and get started with them.

Utilize Seasonal Marketing

Affiliate marketing can be an even more effective strategy considering seasonal marketing techniques. For example, you might consider putting more focus on affiliate partnerships in the lead-up to busy times of the year, such as in the months before the winter holiday shopping season. This will maximize the effectiveness of the affiliate marketing partner for both your brand and the publication that features you.