Before diving into its work, let us first understand what affiliate marketing is. Affiliate Marketing is performance-based marketing wherein a business rewards one or more affiliates for visitors brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.
Although it is growing rapidly worldwide, Affiliate Marketing India is still at a maturing stage. However, statistics reveal that the industry has recorded a growth of 500% in the past three years in terms of sales linked to affiliate marketing. Affiliates are contributing to almost 15 percent of the total sales across the retail sites in the country.
A majority of entrepreneurs face several hurdles, including budget constraints. Due to this, they are unable to adopt traditional marketing method as it is quite expensive. So affiliate marketing is a wonderful resort for them as it is economical and very effective.
Affiliate Marketing is a Boon for Entrepreneurs
Affiliate marketing is undoubtedly an affordable mode of advertising. Some of the major ways it is done are organic search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing, commonly known as pay per click (PPC), email and content marketing, and sometimes display advertising. Here are some reasons why entrepreneurs should choose affiliate marketing:
- It helps you grab a lot of attention from the customers/visitors; if you are running your affiliate campaign through a proper affiliate network, it plugs your offer into existing traffic channels, helping you get traffic faster.
- It does not require you to be a master of everything. If you lack the knowledge of SEO, Google Adwords, and social media, you can still promote your business by getting affiliates who have proficiency in these, and you are good to go.
- Affiliate marketing is profitable marketing. You are only required to pay for your results, unlike traditional advertising. You have to pay the affiliate only when a sale is made.
- You need not have a big sales team. Instead, you can hire an affiliate manager who, in turn, can recruit other affiliates. This reduces the risk and helps you save money.
- The last and most important advantage is that you get to discover new markets. It is impossible to reach out to all demographics and verticals in traditional marketing methods, irrespective of your marketing team’s size. However, with the help of affiliates, you can reach your idea’s maximum potential in the market and re-target it to new markets if required.
Now let us have a look at the case where affiliated marketing proved to be quite successful.
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David McSweeney of Top5SEO.co.uk
A UK marketer and SEO expert, David, has been working for the past 15 years in this industry. He grew his marketing site in a span of just six months, making a profit of $4000.
In the first month, he just created and set up his site, chose a product, and chucked down a plan to monetize it. He did detailed research about the chosen product and wrote deep reviews of it. In the first month, he managed to have around 800 visitors and made around $115.
In the second month, he wrote a blog that accompanied his site. In the blog, he spoke about how he created the content and how he worked on link-building. He managed to have around 2,200 visitors and earned a profit of about $391. In the third month, he just expanded his blog and managed to increase the visitors and profits.
The graph depicts how his business grew within a span of 6 months. All this required a lot of hard work. It took almost 234 hours of effort, creating content, researching about products, building a site, and earning links.
Case Study by Delhi School of Internet Marketing
Statistics speak about the success of everything, and so is the case with affiliate marketing. The Delhi School of Internet Marketing (DSIM) conducted a study on affiliate marketing and discovered astonishing facts.
As per DSIM, around 40% of the marketing professionals have quoted affiliate marketing as one the best mediums for digital marketing. Around 38-40% of entrepreneurs consider affiliate marketing as one the topmost methods for customer acquisition.
Mobile devices have been recorded as one of the best mediums for creating traffic through affiliate marketing. The records state that around 50% of the crowd is generated through mobiles. These, in turn, has helped in deriving 30% of the sales.
For example, ShareASale, a prominent affiliate network, now has more than 1,000,000 affiliate accounts registered.
Step Up Your Affiliate Marketing Game with Social Media
More than 50% of top affiliate programs fall into 4 categories: Fashion, Sports, Health and Beauty, and Travel. The infographic below clearly depicts how content marketing and social media have enhanced the sales for companies. Social media boosts the sales and visibility of companies three times higher than any other medium.
The graph clearly indicates that the social media platforms which have worked most for promoting brands online. Social media has proved to be one of the best modes of affiliate marketing. The other popular marketing tactics are videos, blogs, e-newsletters, and pay-per-click and email advertising.
With an increase in digitization, lower costs, and higher ROI, a growing craze of e-commerce companies is involved in rising affiliate marketing. It is certainly going to increase with time.
So, affiliate marketing is a boon for all startups and entrepreneurs in this age of digitization. But one needs to be patient and persistent as it takes up a lot of time and efforts to build your brand through affiliate marketing.
