Brands are starting to take affiliate marketing seriously. An often overlooked marketing tactic, affiliate marketing can help to increase brand awareness & exposure, and even contribute to incremental revenues & sales through engaging with the target audience via the right products & services, tactics, and Affiliate Partners.
How to get started with affiliate marketing? This guide provides:
- Overview of Affiliate Marketing
- Types of Affiliate Partners
- Setting up an affiliate marketing program.
Affiliate marketing is where affiliate marketers (known as Partners) promote your products and services to target audiences online through a unique link. It is one of the most common ways to drive traffic & sales to your platform.
You will pay affiliate commissions to Partners each time the following actions the audience made through their unique links:
- Purchase at your e-commerce store
- Unique click on the affiliate link
- Successful sign-up or app download
Learn more about the difference between affiliate marketing and influencer marketing that impact brand awareness and online sales.
(Image by tirachardz on Freepik)
Involve Asia connects your brand with influential Affiliate Partners with trustworthy and credible relationships with their audience.
This is all done through one convenient dashboard with Involve’s attribution technology that helps you manage & track your partnerships and campaigns. The platform allows you to:
- Create partnerships with over 580,000 Partners.
- Evaluate top-performing Partners you would like to collaborate with based on our data & insights.
- Manage campaigns by setting up your commission scheme, list down the mechanics, and control your budget.
- Understand your returns by measuring your Return on Investment (ROI) and Return on Ads Spend (ROAS).
- Monitor how your campaigns are performing across any channels (including social media, website, and mobile app)
- Manage your payments to your affiliate Partners easily via centralised payments
Find out more about how Involve Asia helps drive your business growth.
At Involve, we have more than 580,000 Partners you can discover & connect with based on your criteria, which can be filtered through the Involve Dashboard.
By referring to your needs & strategies, our Account Managers for Advertisers also recommend potential affiliate Partners to collaborate with.
Here are various types of Affiliate Partners you could reach out to, who will help promote your products & services.
We also have a wide range of vertical Partners specialised in niche categories.
Let’s say you are looking for Affiliate Partners to promote exclusive hotel deals. Travel affiliate Partners at Involve will pick up your campaign displayed on the Involve Dashboard and promote these deals to their audience.
Now you know how Involve Asia could potentially boost your growth through collaborations with affiliate Partners. Let’s look at how to create an affiliate program at Involve Asia.
1. Set your goals for the affiliate program
Think about the goals your brand wants to achieve on the short-term and long-term journey in affiliate marketing.
Two important factors to consider when setting your affiliate program goals:
- Increase in sales, traffic, and brand awareness
- Increase brand trust and loyalty by building connections with your target audience and potential affiliate partners
It would help if you also considered the KPIs for your affiliate program, such as conversion rates based on the affiliate links shared on affiliate partners’ platforms or total revenue made through affiliate links.
Your KPIs need to be SMART – smart, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
Setting these goals will establish the effectiveness of your affiliate program. Depending on the results, you can adjust your strategies at specific points in time to align with your goals.
2. Select higher average order value (AOV) products to promote
Recommend attractive products that Affiliate Partners would want to feature on their platforms. Higher average order value (AOV) products drive increased return on investment (ROI) for getting affiliate partners to promote your products.
You should also include tips & tricks on how affiliate Partners can promote your products with attractive deals. For example:
- Let Affiliate Partners know that getting a 10% commission on an RM50 product is more attractive than getting a 10% commission on an RM25 product.
- Suggest a list of top-converting products to promote and these tempting deals.
- Offer free shipping for a minimum order of RM150
- Give first-time buyer discounts for new customers through personalised emails
- Buy more, save more discounts by giving exclusive promo codes for new & existing customers to increase conversion rates and average order value
Modify your top-converting products and promotional deals based on your audience’s online shopping preferences and engagement with affiliate Partners’ promotions, including credible feedback.
3. Choose affiliate pricing and commission structure
The next step is to set how much payout you would like to give based on two types of commission rates:
Most brands prefer to give percentage commissions based on the available products affiliate partners recommended to their target audience.
At Involve, similar to affiliate networks, we provided the following commission structure which entices affiliate partners to promote your brand:
An average commission payout given to affiliate Partners should be given between 5% – 25%, based on the industry average and the type of products & services you are selling.
Also, you should consider these factors:
- Market demand
- Product & service cost
- Customer lifetime value
- Customer acquisition cost
- Retention rate
Set the affiliate pricing and commission structure to align with your goals and optimise your affiliate program based on overall performance.
You can research other competitors’ commission rates given to affiliate Partners to either increase or decrease your commissions that significantly impact your business.
4. Evaluate potential affiliate partners and collaborate with them
Identify which affiliate Partners you would like to connect with based on the following criteria:
- Type of audience
- Type of promotions (e.g. coupon website, loyalty program, content website, social media posts)
- Engagement rate
- Relevancy to your brand based on similar values
- Frequency of promotions
- Content quality
- Authenticity and reliability that impact audience loyalty and trust
Reach out to affiliate Partners to further clarify how they can help build your brand’s online presence and drive sales on your e-commerce stores.
You can discuss the rates if you consider doing product sponsorship or digital ad spend campaigns with potential affiliate Partners.
5. Keep track of affiliate partners’ promotions
Share detailed information for affiliate Partners so they can fully understand your brand and its affiliate program, especially the promotional methods they can use when promoting your products and services.
Provide supporting material such as lists of recommended products, detailed commission structure, creative banners, and terms & conditions to ensure affiliate Partners are doing promotions based on your requirements.
Monitor, compare & contrast promotions that impact the effectiveness of your affiliate program and goals, including total sales & revenue, conversion rates, and average order value.
You can adjust ongoing & upcoming campaigns and affiliate program structure based on the overall promotions’ performance and affiliate Partners’ suggestions.
Communication is essential to maintain long-term relationships with affiliate Partners and target audience.
Ready to set up your affiliate program and connect with affiliate Partners at Involve? Sign up as an Advertiser for exciting opportunities at Involve.
