It is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. You can tailor campaigns to meet your specific goals, whether that’s pushing unsold stock or driving new customers. Whatever the affiliate does – drive sales, leads, etc. – you only pay them after they’ve delivered on that desired action.
Let’s say you are a brand that sells Payments software. You would start building your affiliate program by sourcing and collaborating with relevant affiliates that can showcase or advertise your Payments solutions. These affiliates could be: Fintech bloggers and influencers or service-based businesses offering fintech solutions. Key benefits of affiliate marketing include: Cost Effective, Low Risk, Increase Brand Awareness, Data Driven, Flexible, and Grow Globally.
Advisers– Companies or brands who sell their products and/or services through the affiliate marketing channel. (Also known as brands and merchant)
Affiliates – A website that promotes an advertisers’ offering and is paid on a performance basis for driving a predefined desired action, such as a sale or a lead. (Also known as publishers and partners).
Affiliate Marketing Agencies – An affiliate marketing agency offers affiliate marketing services to advertisers, with specialized teams and experience to deliver this. They work directly with affiliates and with the affiliate network or SaaS platform that services the technological needs of the programme.
Affiliate Networks – An affiliate network acts as an intermediary between affiliates and advertisers. They typically track, report and pay affiliates and can either provide full-service management or self-service management of a programme.
Media Agencies – A media agency will typically be a full-service digital agency who have an affiliate department. They could run all elements of an Advertiser’s digital strategy or just the affiliate marketing channel.
SaaS Platforms (Software as a Service) – SaaS platforms provide advertisers with tracking, reporting, and payment, however, they do not generally offer an account managed service, which differentiates them from affiliate networks.