Affiliate Marketing

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a completely ROI orientated marketing stream. As a merchant, you pay a percentage commission on any sales that an affiliate sends you. You set the percentage so you can control the ROI you receive from this marketing stream. The biggest advantage? If managed properly, there is no risk to you whatsoever.

Sounds great – but what is an affiliate and how do they make sales for me?

Think of affiliates as your virtual sales force. Basically, anyone who:

• Runs a website
• Has an email marketing list
• Runs Pay-Per-Click campaigns
• Writes content that can be affiliated with yours

Here’s a simple example: You sell ‘Blue Widgets’ and have an affiliate program. Mr Smith owns ‘BlueWidgetReviews.com’, a website that receives 500 visitors a day. He may choose to promote your products on his site. If any of the traffic he generates makes a purchase, you reward Mr Smith with a percentage of the sale.

I like the idea so far – tell me more about your affiliate marketing services

The theory behind affiliate marketing is simple. Having a successful affiliate marketing program is more difficult. A successful affiliate marketing program takes time to build, but can increase your internet sales noticeably. Strategy’s affiliate marketing services team can guide you through the entire process, ensuring success for your businesses campaign.

Some of the ways our affiliate marketing services team can help you:

1. Develop compelling creative material. We provide affiliates with creative and promotional material to make the job of marketing your products or services easy. The less work an affiliate has to do and the more conversions they see, the more likely they are to promote your products or services. We update this material constantly, letting your affiliates know you take your business and affiliate program seriously.
2. Affiliate recruitment. Some affiliates will find your program naturally. However, we pro-actively recruit new, quality affiliates to your program. We already have good relationships with some of the leading affiliates in the UK and USA. We’re adding new relationships to our portfolio daily. We’ll promote your program to the affiliates that will bring the most benefit to your bottom line!
3. Affiliate management and communication. While Affiliate Marketing is an internet business, its success is determined by interpersonal relationships. We communicate with our affiliates constantly. Our team learn about affiliates and match them sensibly to your business. We invite feedback and work closely with our affiliates to understand what they need to make your program a success.

Different Types of Affiliate Marketing

1. SEO Affiliates. This type of affiliate will build bespoke sites and/or pages to promote your goods and services, making them rank highly in search engines. You then pay them a commission if the generated traffic converts.
2. PPC Affiliates. These affiliates run their own paid search campaigns to drive traffic to their site. Then they refer relevant traffic to your site to make sales. This generates good quality traffic resulting in high conversion rates for you.
3. Email Affiliates. Some affiliates specialise in collecting email data. They then segment their database and target a specific segment with your product or service. Generally, this style of affiliate works to a set target and/or Cost Per Acquisition deal. Some of the largest email affiliates are now big corporations, capable of pushing 1000′s of sales to any merchant.
4. Voucher Code Affiliates. Voucher code sites are currently the biggest traffic provider in affiliate marketing. If you’re an ecommerce site and you’re able to offer voucher codes, then this is definitely an area you should be exploring. Massive conversion rates and large volumes of traffic are vital. These sites deliver both.

There are other types of affiliates such as PR affiliates, social media affiliates and domain affiliates. We work with every type and know the advantages and pitfalls of each one.

Quote by Kath Dawson, Client Services Director

“Affiliate marketing programmes do take time to build. But with absolutely no risk to you, and the added bonus of others taking care of your marketing, they are definitely worth the effort.”

Get in Touch

If you would like to know more about our website design and build services contact us today on 0845 838 0936 or email us.