Affiliate marketing is one of the new types of marketing which has only come into its own after social media has enabled it to reach wider audiences. It has been around for long time in various forms but we’re going to focus on the modern online version.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is where affiliates, affiliates can be individuals or companies, promote a product or organisation and receive a fee every time a lead is generated, a sale made, a webpage visited, or some similar measurement.

The benefits for the marketer can be excellent. For example:

• Low risk – You don’t need to pay a vast sum of money up front in the hope that it’ll work. In fact, you only pay when it works!
• Trackable – There is no ambiguity about the effectiveness of this method – the results can be measured in real time and there is the potential therefore to refine and enhance your offering based on the results.
• Minimal effort – As the affiliate is only getting paid for their success, it is incumbent on them to make sure that they are doing everything they can to promote the company, charity or product.

There are three types of affiliate marketing because otherwise it’d be too simple.

• Unattached affiliate marketing – This is where the product is promoted by a person or company not directly related to it. A foodie blog might promote a holiday tour company. While there is no obvious crossover, the tour company might have identified a target audience that may overlap with theirs. For example: food lovers might enjoy a Mediterranean tour given all the cuisines that come from the region. Unaffiliated marketing would allow them to test the market potential in a low risk way.
• Related affiliate marketing – Here is where we expect most affiliate marketing to fall. Take our foodie blog again, the affiliate could offer a discount code from a meal kit company. Clearly the target audiences align here so the marketer can be confident of strong interest but the affiliate is not necessarily familiar with the product.
• Involved affiliate marketing – Now the affiliate is personally invested in the marketed product. Going back to the example of the foodie blog, the affiliated author might be marketing an air-fryer they use themselves and swear by. This is great news for the marketer as the endorsements will be convicted and authentic. This is where we begin to stray into influencer marketing which we looked at last week.

Is affiliate marketing the same as influencer marketing?

The two forms of marketing do share similarities, mainly in the fact that they rely on partnerships. However, the level of partnership is different. Affiliate marketing doesn’t require the embedded relationships Influencer marketing does. This allows marketers to work with more affiliates and test different markets without demanding high levels of synergy.

Another difference is the level of trust the affiliate has developed with their audience. An influencer will have a strong relationship with their audience which will bring them back to their content time after time. An affiliate can rely on a more transitory audience, drawing people in through effective search engine optimisation amongst other strategies.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing offers significant benefits, especially for the smaller business or charity. The low-risk and high-return potential can offer the perfect starting point to investigate new markets and potentially develop influencer marketing organically.

If you would like to explore the opportunities that affiliate marketing can offer your business or charity, get in touch with Aubrey for a chat.