Competition in e-commerce has become, globally, increasingly fierce. Every day new ideas are being launched, designed to enhance both business and sales. From start-ups to big e-commerce companies, they’re all discovering the benefits of affiliate marketing.
However, not every company that is preparing to launch an affiliate program follows the same action plans. Depending on resources, level of experience and the size of marketing departments, the online environment provides a variety of methods which support you in choosing the best strategy.
One way is to focus on turning your customers into successful affiliates.
What if each client who bought a product shared that buy on Facebook? Or what if they would each write about that product to a friend? Or what if they would write about that product bought from YOU in their personal blog? Those actions would:
- grow your brand awareness;
- grow product and category awareness;
- grow your brand reliability and trust.
How many clients do this actions now and how many would do them if they knew that they could win commissions based on those actions?
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could succeed in motivating your customers to recommend your products or services to others?
Your customers are those people who not only appreciate your products, but they also recommend them to their friends. These are the people you can build this type of affiliate marketing model.
How it Works
If you want to go down this road, you should know that your products or services are the core of any good affiliate program. If you have products that impress your customers, they will be motivated to recommend them to others. When one of your clients buys a product, you can take advantage of his/her enthusiasm. They will always be excited with their new purchase, thus, surely they will want to boast to their friends, too. In this manner, you will be able to provide them an easy way to give advice and product recommendations to their friends, but also to earn some extra money in the same time.
Thereby, you need to implement a dedicated affiliate page into your own site, with information about how does affiliate marketing work, such as:
- How to register to your program;
- Commissions’ value;
- Available promoting tools;
- Terms of Services;
- Attractive offers and promotions;
- Average value of a shopping cart;
- Steps to join your program, etc.
After you provided you customers all the necessary information about your affiliate program, the next thing to do is to explain them a little how does this mechanism work. If you want to encourage customers to recommend your products, you need to make available a way to register into an account, but also, most important, affiliate links.
How can you do this?
Implement on your website a banner that redirects clients to your affiliate program page in 2Performant and encourage them to make an affiliate account, so that they will be able to use affiliate links and/or other promotional tools available.
A very good example, that follows this road, is the affiliate program for the online clothing store holachica.ro. The site has displayed a footer with a banner that sends users to the affiliate program page in 2Performant. In this way, potential affiliates are encouraged to create an account and start affiliation.
Why go down this road?
- More awareness and exposure to your affiliate program
The more visible and exposed your program is, the more chances you have to win affiliates on your side. By choosing this affiliate model, you have more control over your marketing strategy. You decide who you want as your partner, the commission amount, and last but not least, how your affiliates fit with your business model or the path you want to follow. The success or failure or your affiliate program also contributes to valuable insights about your customers. Specifically, you will have a more detailed view about the products/services that resonate best with your customers.
- Direct relationship with your customers
We all know that is somewhat difficult to establish direct relationships with your customers and affiliates – it’s an ongoing work. Since this is a network, where many people can apply to your program, communication with affiliates is harder to maintain.
We advise you to have a dedicated person, affiliate manager, to handle you affiliate program and keep in touch with affiliates and help them with any issue they encounter. In this way, you will be able to eliminate a gap in communication and affiliates will always appreciate your involvement.
- Save time and resources
If your time and resources are limited, most definitely you will not have enough time to give to your affiliate program. Having a dedicated web page in site, you avoid an overcrowding in managing affiliates and commissions. Saving time and resources, you will also have the opportunity to provide incentive and performance bonuses for the strongest affiliates, and, in this way, they will be more and more inclined to recommend and share your products.
The most important thing is to have a good action plan in place so that the messages will get to as many customers as possible. In this way, you are more likely to recruit affiliates from among customers base. Once your customers have turned into affiliates and are captivated by your program, it is essential to constantly communicate with them. Send them from the beginning all important messages about your products, services, promotional offers, anything that might help them in promoting and don’t forget to always encourage their performances.