What Is Affiliate Marketing And Why Does Your eCommerce Business Need It?

As an eCommerce entrepreneur, scaling the business is always your number one priority. You adopt various strategies to attract more customers to your store. One such technique to bring more customers to your store is – affiliate marketing! Let’s read further to see what affiliate marketing is and how it can be an intelligent move for your business. 

What Is Affiliate Marketing & How Does It Work?

Affiliate marketing refers to the practice of associating with companies and individuals to promote your products and paying them a commission on every sale made through their platform or referral. 

Let’s take the hypothetical case of two parties, A & B. 

A is an eCommerce company, and they want to expand their reach to B’s audience and followers. B could be any company, individual, or even an influencer. 

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

B can use this link whenever they promote A’s website or product to their followers. B can earn a commission on every sale that happens from his platform. The conversion parameter could vary for deciding the commission amount and specifications. 

Therefore, in more straightforward terms, affiliate marketing is the promotion of your products through somebody and then paying them for every sale that happens through their reference. 

How Is Affiliate Marketing A Boon For Your eCommerce Business?

Easily Scalable

Every affiliate comes with a large number of followers. Hence, you can always include more affiliates and target different segments of your audience through them. The flexibility in deciding the commissions and the parameters that govern it makes affiliate marketing a natural choice for your business. 

Improve Credibility

Once a third party recommends your product amongst their followers, you slowly build trust among a large crowd. This indirect marketing tactic helps you establish your brand name without actually promoting your product. When somebody who is not obligated to remark on your products does so, it leaves an impact on the buyer’s mind, and they are convinced to purchase more. 

Higher ROI

Affiliate marketing is comparatively cheaper than running Google or Facebook ads. Also, it gives you exposure to a broader audience. The KPIs that you decide for setting up commissions can vary. You can pay affiliates based on every sale or even the number of people they onboard. Thus, after reducing your overheads, fulfillment costs, and the commission, you still spare a large margin for profits as compared to running ads on sophisticated platforms. 

Sorted Target Audience

Affiliate marketing comes with the certainty that the audience you want to target is becoming aware of your brand. With other means of eCommerce marketing like google ads and emails, there is a comparatively lower 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 you are sure will convert. 

Improved Customer Retention

The customers who onboard after learning about your store or products from influencers or sister companies tend to be more loyal to your brand. Since they back their judgment with facts and reviews by a personality they follow, their faith in your brand is much stronger. So, when an influencer gives a thumbs-up to your product, it is easier to retain the audience they bring along.

Social Validation

With an affiliate referring your brand to their followers, they also open the gates for discussion about your brand. These could be on their website forums and social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. This dialogue promotes your brand to other individuals and also offers social proof or validation that gives you a distinct standing amongst followers. 

Faster Results

This one is a no brainer. Since one affiliate has many followers, they can bring you 100 customers in one go. This is so because they have a human connection, and people prefer the opinions of individuals over that of algorithms and advertisements. The ad scenario is disrupting, and content is what drives current sales. Hence, affiliates can leverage the power of content and provide a more actionable solution to buyers, thereby benefiting your business. 

Prominent Examples of Affiliate marketing

Amazon Associates

Amazon runs a popular affiliate program that goes by the name “Amazon Associates”. 

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

You can use their SiteStripe toolbar to add links to any page. You can choose from their variety of banners and strips for advertising.

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

Flipkart 

Flipkart also has their affiliate program wherein you can promote their links on your website or app, drive website traffic to Flipkart, and earn commissions for successful purchases.

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

For example, Flipkart pays 6 to 12% commissions 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 the brands and products on Nykaa on your website and earn money. 

You will have to attach an affiliate link provided by Naykaa, and if there are successful purchases from that link, you will earn a commission for every purchase.

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

They have taken advantage of several small bloggers and influencers who run their websites. Most of their sales are generated from these efforts. 

You can refer to their website for more information.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is a progressive technique to help you acquire more followers or simply improve your brand’s awareness. Do give affiliate marketing a shot if you are working to improve your reach among buyers.