Getting Started with Affiliate Marketing: Insight for Your Brand

Affiliate marketing has taken over as an effective strategy in the past couple of years, with the global affiliate marketing industry being worth over $17 billion. In fact, 8 out of 10 brands today use affiliate marketing to boost sales and/or increase their brand awareness – but some brands do it far more effectively than others. However, companies should keep in mind that leveraging affiliate marketing is not a seamless strategy that guarantees ROI, as it’s more complex than it seems. In this piece, we break down what brands need to know about getting started with affiliate marketing and share insight into some successful use cases.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy where brands use a third party to promote their product through an affiliate link in exchange for commission. This approach often involves blogs and websites where affiliates can post their link to drive traffic and sales for the company.

Companies can take this a step further and blend affiliate marketing with influencer marketing by choosing an influencer and giving them an affiliate link to post on their social media platform. This will allow for the company’s brand and product to be marketed in a more impactful way as the influencer can showcase the product through content to their followers. Affiliate marketing is a fairly easy way for companies to market products, as they simply need to find a creator or influencer who has the desired level of reach/engagement, create an agreement, and watch the sales role in. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, not quite.

To do affiliate marketing well, a fair amount of strategy and due diligence must go into each step to ensure it can and will drive sales for a given product. It’s one thing for an affiliate to post a product with a link and say how great it is, but it’s another thing entirely for the viewers to click the link and actually purchase the product.

While TikTok and Instagram have become the top platforms for affiliate marketing (combined with influencer marketing), other platforms such as Facebook and YouTube are still relevant depending on what products you want to market and what audiences you want to reach. For instance, Instagram’s audience is largely Gen Alpha and Gen Z, while Facebook has a larger audience of Millennials and Boomers. Social media makes it very easy to spread brand awareness, and when users see someone whose opinion they trust use a product and highlight its benefits, it’s often a compelling reason to buy. Frankly, we believe companies can’t afford to not invest in affiliate marketing as part of their overall eCommerce strategy, as 16% of online purchases today come from affiliate links.

Affiliate Marketing in Action

We’ve seen one industry in particular experience great success leveraging affiliate marketing: beauty.

Beauty companies are known to do well with affiliate marketing. In fact, Ulta and Sephora have their own affiliate programs. Anyone with an online platform can earn a commission when a sale is made through their affiliate link for promoted products. This is the easiest way for brands to work with marketers; however, there’s no rapport between the marketer and company, as everything is done online and automatically. Companies can take this a step further, though, if they see success and work directly with an influencer. The influencer can then promote products in a more personal way though unboxing videos or reviews of the products. This is effective, as the brand and product reach a variety of potential buyers.