Marketing is a huge concept. According to some marketers, marketing is all about knowing your customers and giving them exactly what they’re looking for. Even if you don’t have what they want, you need to develop a marketing strategy that can convince them to come to you and buy your product. There are different types of marketing and one of them is Affiliate Marketing.
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Affiliate marketing is slightly different from the other marketing techniques because it is a performance-based marketing technique. A business that uses affiliate marketing technique rewards its employees on the basis of customers, visitors, or clients that he or she manages to bring to the company. The greater the number of customers brought, the greater would be the reward.
Affiliate marketing normally consists of four main players. The four key players are the merchant, the network, the publisher, and finally, the customer. All of them play a very important role in this marketing technique and each one of them has his or her role to play. The absence of a single one of them alters the entire marketing process. This is why their value cannot be undermined.
The thing with affiliate marketing is that it uses third parties to bring customers, and thus, sales, to the business. That is why it is also confused with referral marketing. However, the two of them are entirely different when it comes to the rewards that the company is paying to the affiliates. (In order to incorporate this kind of marketing, Chicago SEO companies can be of great help.)
Why use affiliate marketing?
After knowing all about affiliate marketing, the question that arises is why use it? Why not use the other marketing techniques? How is this type of marketing technique better than the rest? The answer to all such questions is given below.
- Performance-related pay: This is something that is best about this type of marketing because you don’t have to pay for any kind of useless efforts. The company only has to pay when they get a customer and a sale is made. This type of pay system motives the affiliates to work well. This helps save costs and boost up efficiency.
- Ease of pay: Another benefit of this type of marketing is the flexibility that the businesses have when it comes to paying their affiliates. This is something that can help a business in a great way because one isn’t bound to pay the affiliates and the flexibility factor makes it very easy for the company.
- No need for sales associates: The company, in this type of marketing, does not need any kind of sales associates because the same task is performed by the affiliates so what the company would otherwise pay the sales associates, is covered by paying the affiliates only.
- Automation: The aspect of automation is another plus point for the company considering the fact that everything is done via the internet or the computer. Things and operations tend to be more speedy and quick in this type of marketing which helps save time as well.
- Low start-up costs: This is something that really motivates the owner of the company because normally what matters to the owner is the start-up costs of anything that he or she plans to do. If the start-up costs are low, people are more attracted towards a particular deal, and it’s the opposite in the other case.
Mentioned above are some of the advantages of affiliate marketing and are the reasons why people should choose this type of marketing technique. One thing that needs to be kept in mind is that everything and every decision always has an opportunity cost, and so is the case with affiliate marketing. But its benefits are huge enough to cover the few disadvantages that it has.
Author:
Brendan Egan is the CEO of Simple SEO Group that offers e-marketing and web design services to online small businesses. Brendan can be contacted at www.SimpleSEOGroup.com.
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