Affiliate Marketing San Diego, CA
We have been asked this question before and have a very standard answer. You should only use affiliate marketing if it is appropriate for the products that you’re selling, you would use affiliate marketing because it will increase your sales. When you think about affiliate marketing, you should think about acquisition costs. If as an example you sell a product that costs $1,500, think about how much you will pay Google Ads to advertise your product before you sell one unit at $1,500? If you’re willing to spend $100 on Google Ads to sell an item that retails for $1,500, in most cases this would be a fair acquisition cost. However, when you sell products on Google your costs are variable which can increase or decrease making your $100 acquisition cost a goal and not a certainty.
However, when you use affiliate marketing to sell the same $1,500 item and offer $100 to the affiliate who is responsible for a sale, your acquisition cost is fixed. You might be asking yourself a very logical question, why not just use affiliate marketing for all your sales and keep your acquisition costs fixed? Unfortunately, its not that easy because affiliate marketing takes time to grow and for businesses that want to significantly increase sales, they will need a more well-rounded marketing strategy. Think of affiliate marketing as a single leg of your sales and marketing strategy, it won’t reach your sales goals alone but will certainly lift sales and be part of the full strategy that helps merchants meet their sales goals more consistently.
There are many affiliate marketing platforms, and you may already have a campaign running in one or more of them. Affordable Marketing uses Share-A-Sale as our affiliate platform and recommends that our customers do the same.
The type of affiliate marketing we promote at Affordable Marketing is known as “unattached affiliate marketing”, which simply means our affiliate marketers have no attachment or have never specifically used the products that they market. We believe this is the best type of affiliate marketing because it gives affiliates the freedom they want when they market your products. Most affiliates prefer this type of program since they can easily add your products into the marketing without any intimate involvement such as would be the case with influencer marketing.
When you investigate affiliate programs the first thing you will notice is the startup cost and technical complexity for getting started with many of them. Some platforms such as Commission Junction (CJ) start at $5,000 to get started with a $500 per month service fee, and Impact starts at $5,000 to get started with a $500 to $2,500 per month service fee. As you can see, these top affiliate programs are not cheap, and the technical complexity of getting their code integrated into your website is usually steep.
While we don’t want to steer merchants away from these programs, we do believe that a better choice for your affiliate platform is Share-A-Sale. The startup cost is $650, with a $35 recurring platform (or service) fee. We also want to mention that they have an app for Shopify and BigCommerce, and a plugin for WooCommerce. So, the technical complexity is almost zero. Here is a little industry insider secret, there are only so many affiliates who produce significant sales and most of the higher earners (the ones you want in your program) are generally found on every affiliate platform.
When you choose the Share-A-Sale Agency Managed by Affordable Marketing affiliate marketing program, you only need to answer a few easy questions and we’ll do the rest. Once your account is setup and ready to start using, your account manager will schedule a ZOOM meeting with you and your team to give you a full tour of your affiliate account.
The affiliate marketing account setup includes:
1.) Setup Tracking: Share-A-Sale offers standard and advanced tracking for mobile, app and web. Our integration with the Awin MasterTag offers a durable, futureproof solution for your business.
2.) Build Program: Build your creative inventory, recruit affiliates, and utilize our tools to enhance your network presence. Lay the groundwork for a successful affiliate program on our trusted platform by using the Share-A-Sale comprehensive training resources.
3.) Generate Sales: Reward partners for referred sales or leads. Because each publisher is unique, assign value as you see fit by fine-tuning your affiliate payouts with our advanced attribution tools.
Proper management of your affiliate marketing account is almost as important as the original setup. Keeping your marketing campaigns in front of your affiliates and keeping them motivated can be a fulltime job. Also, the affiliate registration process never ends, your program will constantly have new affiliates wanting to join. But you cannot accept just any affiliate, each affiliate that requests to join your affiliate program must be verified in several ways, letting in the wrong affiliates can do more damage to your brand than good.
Keeping your affiliates motivated means ensuring that they have a fresh supply of content, keeping in mind that most content has an expiration date. So, making sure your affiliates have plenty of new content and researching their sites to make sure they are not using outdated content can take hours of tedious work. Especially with hundreds of affiliates to keep up with.
Also, affiliates don’t join your affiliate program just because its there, you need to actively be recruiting new affiliates on multiple platforms. This generally entails a separate marketing campaign tailored towards recruiting new affiliates. The bottom line is that managing an affiliate program takes experience, time, persistence, and patience. It’s a never ending job that must be done diligently and consistently to see a payoff. Especially in your heavy selling seasons when you want all your marketing and advertising running at full speed.
To learn more about Affordable Marketing affiliate marketing management, schedule a free ZOOM consultation and we’ll give you the details and cost.
Connect with your target audience:
Millions of times every day, we connect brands with their next customer. Affiliate marketing is a form of performance-based marketing that allows publishers (affiliates) to partner with brands to promote their products and services while earning commission for every transaction they influence. Whether your product is apparel and accessories, home décor, pet supplies, or a subscription box, our network of affiliates can help drive meaningful traffic and sales to your website.
Maximize your affiliate program:
Each affiliate program is unique. Share-A-Sale offers a wide range of tools specifically designed to solve the needs of our partners. We have cutting-edge technology to optimize your affiliate partnerships. Our innovative tools give merchant partners the flexibility to have full control on how their program is set up, how to value each affiliate and what information to track. Each solution reveals data-driven insights to propel programs to success.
Identify the best partnerships for your brand:
Joining the network gives you access to a diverse range of affiliate partners, from content bloggers and influencers to mass media publishers, cashback or loyalty sites. As one of the largest networks, we are partnered with the top affiliates in the industry and give you the tools needed to connect and start driving sales.
If you’re in a service business such as air conditioning, electrical or plumbing then PPL affiliate marketing can be an amazing boost for your sales. Other service related business such as title loans, payday loans, debt relief or membership plans can also do exceedingly well with an affiliate marketing program. Basically, any service sector that requires daily leads can benefit from PPL or CPS affiliate marketing programs.
Now, there are two ways you can work your service lead generation needs into an affiliate program and its important to understand that the payout is much different for both.
The first is PPL or pay per lead, if your companies workflow depends on working leads every day, this might work your you. It probably won’t be enough leads to completely satisfy all your needs, but using affiliates to supply leads can certainly help.
The next is CPS or cost per sale, this is a far more exact outcome and as you might imagine the leads are usually better. The affiliate only gets paid when a sale is generated from their lead, which means you will need sophisticated software in place to adequately track leads and sales to the satisfaction of the affiliate.
While the PPL and CPS affiliate marketing programs do require more hands-on technical setup and management which comes at an added cost, if your company is hungry for leads and Google is not doing it for you, then looking into this option could be a worthwhile benefit.
High ticket affiliate marketing can help do the heavy lifting in a market where the customer would need to make large commitments on a purchase or service. Some of these types of products and services include precious metals, travel, title loans, medical supplies, investments, etc. While more of a niche market, the demand is high due to the cost of the service of goods. The affiliates who service these types of markets are also generally of a higher caliber, more confident in their ability to find quality traffic that would be interested in making high ticket purchases or investments.
The upside to using affiliates for high ticket affiliate marketing is the acquisition cost, as we mentioned previously you pay a set rate or percentage of the sale which allows the merchant to forecast costs in a more stable and consistent way. Using traditional marketing such as Google Ads or maybe even Facebook Ads can also work in your favor if you have high ticket items, however the costs for advertising will surely fluctuate depending on factors such as seasons or a slowing economy.
Most merchants are not even aware that they can use affiliate marketing to sell their services or goods, it may come as a complete surprise that there are affiliates in almost every conceivable niche waiting for the right products or services to come along which might fit into their current marketing strategy, Rolex watches is a perfect example, or medical supplies where customers may pay $25k or more.
As you can see, the high ticket affiliate marketing sector is real and alive, and its just waiting to help you sell your service or goods. Schedule a free ZOOM consultation with our affiliate experts to learn how we can match you with the best high ticket affiliate program.