4 Affiliate Marketing Methods for Businesses

Most of the affiliate marketing methods involve a mutual agreement between a business and another business or an influencer. Under this agreement, a business pays other businesses or influencers a certain amount in commission for their marketing efforts. The ‘other businesses’ or ‘influencers’ mentioned here are called the affiliates, while the paying business is called a merchant.

The affiliates receive commissions from the merchant for sending traffic or generating sales through an affiliate link. The visitors to the websites of the affiliates click the affiliate link, which takes them to the merchant’s product page. If they end up making the purchase, the affilate gets a certain amount in commission from the merchant.

Clicks and purchases from the affiliate link are tracked with the help of cookies. There’s a specific ‘length’ or ‘cookie life’, which determines how long the cookie will track the user’s online activity. Now, let’s go through the different affiliate marketing methods that a business or merchant can benefit from.

1. Search affiliates

Under this affiliate marketing method, the entrepreneurs or freelancers pay their own money to promote the offers of businesses. Online advertising platforms like Facebook Advertising are some of the places for promoting such offers. This would be effective for a business if the affiliate or partner has an SEO background.

2. Bloggers and influencers

There are many popular social media influencers and bloggers who have a large number of followers. These individuals engage regularly with their followers. Many of these followers are the ideal buyer persona for certain businesses. Upon partnering with such bloggers and social media influencers, a business can potentially increase its sales.

For example, if a business sells kitchen appliances, it can partner with a YouTube influencer who posts recipes. The influencer would then recommend a kitchen appliance of the business in his or her next recipe video. This might result in the target audience visiting the website of the business.

If they like the kitchen appliances, they might purchase their desired items. So, this would bring additional revenues for the business as well as the influencer.

3. Review posts and videos

There are certain blogs, YouTube channels, and Instagram accounts dedicated to product reviews. Some of them have a large number of followers or subscribers. They can be great avenues for businesses to increase the sales of their products or services.

A business can reach out to the owner of such blogs, YouTube channels, or Instagram accounts. It can collaborate with him or her to promote its products. Then the blogger, owner of the YouTube channel or the Instagram account owner can promote its products or services.

These influencers achieve this by mentioning the products or services in their posts or videos. They then encourages their followers to buy them by clicking the affiliate link.

4. Coupons

If a business offers a product or service that’s not yet popular, a coupon site would be extremely useful. Partnering with a coupon website for a limited amount of time is something that a business can try. No business likes to give away its product or service at a discount.

However, this can be quite effective in getting some first-time customers to visit its website. If these customers like the product or service, they’ll surely become brand advocates of the business.