8 Reasons why your e-commerce store needs an affiliate program

Affiliate marketing has made businesses millions and ordinary people millionaires

– Bo Bennet

Ask an expert what is the best way to reach a wide audience for your brick-and-mortar store.

A vast majority of them would shout – “TAKE IT ONLINE”

They are right. In this digital world, going online is definitely the easiest way to increase your customer base. After all, your store will be location agnostic in an e-commerce setup.

But does your job end with taking this route? Definitely not. Is it easy to find customers online? Again a resounding no.

You need to market your brand continuously through different channels. The most prominent one being an affiliate program.

What is an affiliate program?

It is a marketing channel where you reward partners and influencers for every sale, lead or subscription they send you. 81% of today’s brands use some form of affiliate marketing to generate more sales. So if you haven’t embraced affiliate marketing yet, you know that the time is already ripe.

And here are the 6 steps to getting started with an affiliate program –

1. Your business and the affiliate (the influencer or another website owner) get into a relationship either via an affiliate network or directly.
2. Your affiliate will post your product on their websites with a link to redirect to your website
3. The affiliate will promote their website in different channels which will serve as an indirect marketing for your products and improve their visibility.
4. A prospect to the affiliate website will engage with the link and land on your product page
5. The prospect makes a purchase and transforms into your customer
6. You get the revenue and share a commission with the affiliate marketer

Pro tip – If you are unable to find the right partner for your business, follow the below simple steps –

1. Figure out which influencers and partners your competition is using.
2. Offer a competitive commission so that the influencers are tempted to form a partnership with you.

Now that we have established what an affiliate program is, let us dive into the different reasons why it should be a focal part of your digital marketing strategy –

Confirmed returns

The only cost you incur in affiliate marketing is when the customers actually use the partner links to make a purchase. You pay for marketing your product after you actually get a customer. In other words, you are guaranteed a return. Also, the commission that you pay to the affiliate partners is often a small fraction of the actual sale you make.

Easy to scale

Affiliate marketing is very easy to adopt as there are no upfront fees. As a result, you can partner with as many influencers and websites as you want. Remember – millions of blogs and websites are already present on the internet, many of whom will welcome you with open arms for promoting your products.

Saves time

The best part about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to take care of direct marketing. Your affiliate partners will do that for you. If an affiliate partner isn’t sending you leads who make purchases, they don’t get paid. So they are always incentivized to give you better leads and hence work harder in promoting your brand.

Offers social proof

Affiliate marketing programs revolve around social proof. Since a 3rd party (sometimes a popular influencer) has agreed to promote your product on their website, it automatically qualifies as social proof. This in turn will elevate your brand value; people will start trusting your brand more and start purchasing from you.

It widens your network

When you work with multiple affiliates, your network automatically widens as these are the people who are very relevant to your industry. They can introduce you to more people who can then be your potential customers in the future.

You have complete control over the channel

As a business owner, you have all the power to dictate the commission of an affiliate program. Since there are thousands of partner websites already available, you can negotiate the best possible deal with them based on their popularity. Also, you can define the clauses in such a way that you can stop the program whenever you want.

SEO Benefits

Affiliate marketing connects you with bloggers, high-traffic media sites, influencers, and other digital partners, all of whom have varying levels of Domain Authority. You can contact these partners and get backlinks or mentions from them. This exercise will boost your search engine rank tremendously and propel you to the top of search results.

Access to prospects who were never under your radar

This is a given. Every website has a different target audience and a customer base. When you partner with multiple affiliates, you can access their website visitors, some of whom would have never fit into your Ideal Customer Profile in the first place.

Conclusion

As we have seen in this post, affiliate marketing is a lot easier than many other marketing channels of today. On top of it, the benefits of indulging in affiliate marketing are tremendous and it can be an invaluable tool to bolster your sales. When used in tandem with other digital marketing channels, you will undoubtedly be at the top of your marketing game.

Now if you are just laying the foundation of your e-commerce store, then a native app is the first thing you need. This is where Vajro can help. We offer a no-code app builder designed to help e-commerce brands like you set up their store in less than a day and maintain them with no prior coding experience.

Also, Vajro can be easily integrated with Post Affiliate Pro to kick start your affiliate marketing program right away.

Want to know more about what else Vajro can do for you? Talk to us now!