What is Affiliate Marketing and Why Does Your Ecommerce Business Need? 2021

What is Affiliate Marketing and Why Does Your Ecommerce Business Need? 2021

As an eCommerce entrepreneur, scaling the business is always your number one priority. You adopt different strategies to attract more customers to your store. One such technique is to bring more customers to your store - affiliate marketing! Let us read further what affiliate marketing is and how it can be a wise move for your business. 

affiliate marketing

What is Affiliate Marketing and how does it work?

Affiliate marketing refers to the practice of engaging with companies and individuals to promote their products and pay them a commission on every sale they make through their platform or referral. 

Let us take the hypothetical case of two sides A&B. 

A is an eCommerce company , and they want to expand their reach to B's audience and followers. B can be any company, individual, or even an influential person. 

To do this, A can ask B to join their affiliate program. In the affiliate program, A will give B a unique tracking link.

Whenever they promote A's website or product to their followers, B can use this link. B can earn commission on every sale made from its platform. The conversion amount may vary to decide the commission amount and specifications. 

Therefore, in more simple terms, affiliate marketing is the promotion of their products through someone and then paying them for every sale that occurs through their context. 

How Affiliate Marketing is a Boon for your eCommerce Business?

Easily scalable

Each associate comes with a large number of followers. Therefore, you can always include more affiliates and target different segments of your audience through them. Flexibility in deciding commissions and the parameters governing it makes affiliate marketing a natural choice for your business. 

Improve reliability

Once a third party recommends placing your product among their followers, you gradually build trust among a large crowd. This indirect marketing strategy helps you establish your brand name without actually promoting your product. When someone who is not obliged to comment on your products, it leaves an impression on the buyer's mind, and they are convinced to buy more. 

High ROI

Affiliate marketing is comparatively cheaper than running Google or Facebook advertising . In addition, it gives you exposure to a wider audience. The KPIs you decide to set up commissions may vary. You can pay affiliates based on every sale or even those numbers. Thus, after reducing your overheads, fulfillment costs, and commissions, you still leave a larger margin for profits than running on sophisticated platforms. 

Sorted target audience

Affiliate marketing comes with certainty that you want to target who is becoming aware of your brand. Other means of e-commerce marketing, such as Google advertising and email with , have a relatively low degree of certainty that your audience is interacting with the content you share with them. So, with affiliate marketing, you can streamline your audience and show them the content that you are sure will convert. 

Better customer retention

Customers who are more loyal to their brand after knowing about the products of your shop or affected companies or sister companies. Since they back their judgment with facts and reviews by a personality, their confidence in your brand is very strong. So, when an influencer gives your product a thumbs up, it is easy to retain the audience they bring along.

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social recognition

With a colleague referring your brand to their followers, they also open the door for discussion about your brand. These can be on their website forums and social platforms like Facebook, Instagram , Twitter. This dialogue promotes your brand to other individuals and also provides social proof or recognition which gives you a different place among followers. 

Fast result

This is a no brainer. Since a colleague has many followers, they can bring you 100 subscribers at a time. This is because they have a human connection, and people prefer individuals' opinions on algorithms and advertisements. The advertising landscape is disrupting, and content is what drives current sales. Therefore, affiliates can take advantage of the power of content and provide more useful solutions to buyers, which will benefit your business. 

Top Examples Of Affiliate Marketing

Amazon Associates

Amazon runs a popular affiliate program known as "Amazon Associates". 

It is free and easy to use but the terms and conditions are quite strict. You can earn up to 10% in different ways. All you have to do is create links and click through money and customers and buy products from Amazon.

You can use their sitestrip toolbar to add a link to any page. You can choose from a variety of banners and strips for advertising.

This is a good example of affiliate marketing as Amazon has various vendors on its platform and with such a program they can expand their reach.

Flipkart 

Flipkart also has its own affiliate program in which you can promote their links on your website or app, drive website traffic to Flipkart and earn commission for successful purchases.

It is known as one of the highest revenue generating models and you can draw inspiration from these two commissions based on product categories.

For example, Flipkart pays 6 to 12% commission for books, 5% commission for mobiles, 6% commission for computers, 4% commission for cameras etc.

Nykaa

Nike Affiliate Program or NAP is a regular affiliate program by Nykaa where you can promote brands and products on your website at Nykaa and make money. 

You must attach an affiliate link provided by the heroine, and if a successful purchase occurs from that link, you will earn a commission for every purchase.

Nykaa is a great example of an intelligent affiliate marketing club with impressive marketing. 

He has taken advantage of many small bloggers and influencers who run his own website. Most of their sales are generated by these efforts. 

You can refer to their website for more information.

The conclusion

Affiliate marketing is a progressive technique that helps you gain more followers or simply improve your brand awareness. If you are working to improve your reach among buyers, then give affiliate marketing a shot.