8 Winning Affiliate Marketing Strategies for E-commerce

The popularity of affiliate marketing has been soaring in recent years. And for a good reason. It’s proven incredibly effective for spreading the word around the Internet - and beyond - about any products or services that businesses may offer.

However, precisely because it’s so popular, affiliate marketing is becoming increasingly complicated by the day. It’s not easy to find good affiliates to promote your services, nor is it easy to establish a good program with each one.

To ensure that you have a good grasp of your affiliate marketing campaign, you would need to implement a carefully chosen strategy. Keep reading our guide to affiliate marketing to find out which are the eight best eCommerce strategies to ensure your affiliate marketing success!

Use Affiliate Marketing Software

In affiliate marketing, the best way to ensure that you’ll have an easy, clean, and functional view of all of your affiliates and affiliate programs is to use an affiliate marketing software.

This type of software will provide an affiliate tracking platform for a certain monthly fee, allowing you to scout for new affiliates. You can also have an instant view of all your current affiliates and the deals you’ve struck with them.

Your website will be integrated with them, and you’ll be able to oversee each of their individual contributions through a single account – whether you’re in front of your desktop computer or on your mobile device. Overall, this will save you a lot of trouble and work by organizing and managing all important information in one place.

Build Your Own Affiliate Program

On the other hand, if you’re adamant about establishing and working with an affiliate program tailored to suit your business’s particular needs, the right solution would be to create your very own affiliate program.

The main perk of this strategy is that you’ll be fully in control of all your current and future affiliate deals, transactions, and everything else. Implementing borrowed affiliate programs may be easier and quicker, but often not all of the terms of the deals will suit you optimally.

However, your affiliate program will be designed to benefit you the most. What’s more, all of your affiliates will know exactly what they’ll be getting from collaborating with you, so they’ll be no misunderstandings down the line.

Leverage Click and Collect Affiliate Commissions

Assuming that you’ve already managed to employ the services of multiple affiliates, in time, you’ll notice that not all of them are equally as effective in generating revenue for your business. From here, it doesn’t suit you to pay all of them equally.

The best way to deal with this so that you don’t waste precious business capital but at the same time reward the heavy lifters is to implement affiliate commissions by leveraging clicks.

In other words, use affiliate tracking for eCommerce to see when an affiliate has caused a customer to click on your service. Base the affiliate’s commission on the number of clicks they’ve managed to generate. This way, the affiliates that bring you in more revenue will be paid more than the less effective ones.

Implement Location Specific Affiliate Programs or Offers

Another smart thing to do is to be more specific. Consider the state you’re based in, your city, and the particular facilities geographically close to your product or service. If you’re providing a location-specific service, rely on location-specific affiliate marketing to attract more customers.

Hire affiliates who operate in the same area as you and have a following of people who also live there. This way, you won’t be advertising your product or service to customers who’re too far away or have no way to benefit from it. By focusing more on a target audience, you’ll maximize the effectiveness of both your affiliates and your very own affiliate marketing strategy.

Select the Right Affiliates

As perfect as your affiliate marketing strategy may be, everything will be in vain if your affiliates themselves aren’t the best ones you can find. This can mean many things. For example, affiliates with a strong social media following, a popular blog, or an influential online presence are much better suited for any business today than anonymous internet personas.

However, even in these cases, you need to keep your eyes open. Affiliates that have nothing to do with your particular business niche, even if they’re the most famous influencers, will not be of any use either. After all, you’re trying to attract clients who would be interested in your product or service through your affiliates.

This means there should be something in common between what you offer and what your affiliates are known for. Plan smart and choose wisely – having the right affiliates is key.

Branding Your eCommerce Site is Essential

Spreading the name of your business is vital; however, if you don’t deliver what you promise, it will all be useless. Simply put, your affiliates may be top-notch, but if your business lacks quality and attractiveness, all marketing will be pointless.

Branding your eCommerce site is the first step to creating a successful internet business, and everything else - affiliate marketing included - will come afterward. Start by finding your niche and perfecting the content that you offer. From here, combine other marketing campaigns with your affiliate marketing strategy to promote your product or service even further.

Try Co-Branding

Another similar strategy is to try entering into a branding partnership. According to a survey by Visual Objects, 71% of consumers like co-branded products more than the rest. Essentially, people believe in the product more when two companies back it up.

So, all you need to do is find a brand with the same goals and ideas as yours and negotiate a partnership. This will help you reach a new audience and grow your affiliate group.

Automate Your Affiliate Marketing for Speedy Results

Different automation processes may help save you a lot of precious time and energy, akin to what affiliate marketing software may do. There are many ways for you to automate your affiliate marketing, such as:

• Use an automated program to shorten affiliate commission payments;
• Use an automated program to simplify link transfer between you and your affiliates;
• Use a chatbot to incite new affiliates into your affiliate program.

There are many other ways to automate the entire experience. Still, they all boil down to you employing AI services in the interaction with your affiliates for any task that doesn’t warrant your personal interference in matters. This will save you a lot of time and energy that you can devote to other aspects of your business.

Enjoy Your Affiliate Marketing Success

Finally, enjoy the benefits that you reap from your effort. The best affiliate marketing strategy is to follow the natural flow of your business and go wherever your productive results lead you. Planning ahead is necessary, but the best plans always arise as a response to a particular situation.

For this reason, employ any or all of our affiliate marketing strategies mentioned above. Once you’ve managed to amass a faithful audience and a well-developed affiliate program, start to play things by ear.

In all cases, no matter what new strategy or solution you come up with, ensure that it is per your needs and brings the most benefits to your business.