Affilitate Marketing FAQs

Affiliate marketing is a digital channel. It involves you working with a number of third party traffic providers for referring new business to your website. When a customer that is referred makes a sale, the affiliate is paid a commission on that sale. Affiliate marketing is performance-based, which means affiliates only get paid when their promotional efforts actually result in a paying transaction at your website.

No it is not. It’s a form of sales that is paid by performance and on delivery of a new customer (Commission only). You only get paid every time you drive a new customer sale to a business.

There are a number of ways that affiliates can drive traffic to your shop, or portal. They acquire leads online , in apps, via video streaming channels and email databases and chat groups, even social media. Affiliates are also adept at search and PPC marketing so they are very good partners to have as they can leverage their traffic to reduce your paid media spend and increase your brand awareness to niche pockets of customers your advertising budget wouldn’t normally reach.

An affiliate program is platform that houses all your affiliate marketing partnerships keeps track of sales and commission incentives and provides all your data and payment management. A program allows you to create campaigns and marketing materials for your partners to promote.

There are a number of ways to find new affiliates online. Using Google searches, and keywords to search for sites that rank on value key words you are trying to target is one way of finding them but you can also go to industry events, reach out on social media and through email outreach when you see a site you like and want to work with. Affiliate recruitment is a specialist skill and can be outsourced to an agency who manages affiliate programs on behalf of their clients leaning you to manage the creative and budgets of your campaigns instead.

There are a number of platform providers and networks. The key thing is to understand what your strategy is going to be then find a tool that matches your budget and your data and program management needs. Ask an expert to assist you with this, as the technology you use is the foundation of your program's success. If you need help get in touch with us as we can help direct you on the best platforms to use based on your budgets and your objectives too. Some example platforms are: CAKE, AWIN, Egass, IncomeAccess , My Affiliates, Netrefer, Impact Radius, and there are many more.

There are many affiliate networks to choose from and each of them have their own unique opportunities for you to explore. If you have decided not to manage your program in house and want to run on a 3rd party publisher platform make sure you choose the right platform  based on your affiliate requirements (types) , data and reporting (infrastructure) and budget (price). These are the key factors that can impact your affiliate program strategy and scale of your program in the early days of launch.

The truth is - not much. Performance marketing might encompass a wider variety of partnerships but essentially it is paid for performance just like affiliate marketing is. It is the payment of a sale once the transaction is made at your site.

Affiliate Marketing uses tracking cookies and pixels placed on your site to track and measure your affiliate partner performance. This is housed in the affiliate tracking solution you use. This will tell you how to remunerate your affiliates for their commissionable earnings. There are a number of ways affiliates can be paid for their performance. I have listed a few of the common metrics to consider as commission metrics in your affiliate program

• Registrations, email sign-ups, giveaway entries
• Cost per click
• Cost per Dowload
• Cost per acquisition (CPA)
• Cost per Lead (CPL)
• % of Sales, orders, subscriptions (Rev Share)
• Fixed Fee & Hybrid deals

There are many more metrics you can consider and seeking advice on this is advisable.

This is the function of supporting affiliates to send more traffic and sales to your platform and offers. There are 3 types of program management modelling:

In-House program management tends to work best for:

• Companies that run a small programs working with just a few select affiliate partners. Generally they manage this type of affiliate program without much difficulty and on a simple account management basis using third party tracking tools directly implemented in their marketing platform.
• Generally if there is no intention to scale and grow the offering a company would keep this in house as partnering with an affiliate agency is an investment for longer term gains and access to specialist expertise

Agency program management tends to work best for:

• Companies (typically on a growth path and who lack the in-house resources and expertise to scale)  or manage their affiliate program effectively. Using an expert can help you scale , grow and launch a lot faster than trying to do this on your own.

Hybrid program management (in-house + agency) tends to work best for:

• Enterprise brands who need a substantial team to run their program.
• Brands who want to use an agency for particular purposes , project, training or to strategically expand their geographic footprint with new partnerships whilst leaving their own marketing team available to manage strategy and planning.

When managed well, affiliate marketing is undeniably still one of the most efficient and cost-effective online marketing models for driving new revenue, new customers, high-value leads and sales.