What are the components of affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is a performance based business model in which affiliates refer people to products/services online.
The affiliate doesn’t need to personally own these products and product owners are known as “vendors” or “merchants“. The “network” is the company or body providing the connection between the vendor and the affiliate. It provides a platform in which affiliates can connect to products.
When they refer a product through their affiliate link, the network credits them with the sale so they can be paid. The “publisher” is another term used for the affiliate who is the referrer of the products. Finally we have the customer. So the basic components of affiliate marketing consist of:
- The “vendor” or product owner or “merchant”
- The “network” connecting the vendor to the affiliate
- The “publisher” or “affiliate” who refers the products online via marketing strategies
- The customer who purchases the product.
Components Of Affiliate Marketing
So, the vendor, the network, the affiliate and the customer make up the main components of affiliate marketing. But there are many other components which the affiliate must understand in order to promote the products themselves. Affiliates only get paid if they successfully refer a product to a customer online. This takes some time and effort to learn and around 95% of affiliate quit. There’s several components within affiliate marketing which an affiliate needs to understand in order to give themselves the best chance of success:
- The target audience – the sub-section of the online community who are the most interested (and most likely to buy) their particular products or services.
- Marketing strategy – not all affiliates use the same methods of selling online. To be successful as an affiliate you need to learn at least one marketing strategy well enough to make consistent sales.
- The customer avatar – is also part of the target audience. The “customer avatar” is the type of person who is likely to be your “perfect customer”.
- Data and analytics – affiliates collect data when they run advertisements or create content so they know which content performs the best.
- Email marketing – is a large component of affiliate marketing strategy for many affiliates. By collecting email subscribers they can build an ever growing list of people who fit the description of their customer avatar.
Components Of Affiliate Marketing: Marketing/Advertising Methods
The marketing side of affiliate marketing is a huge topic and can be broken down into further components for simplification. Some affiliates will use paid marketing methods such as Google Adwords. Others might build content (such as this article), using SEO (search engine optimisation) to drive their traffic source. SEO can also be broken down into many components too such as link building, content creation, social media sharing etc. Here’s a few of the main marketing methods used by affiliates:
- Blogging – writing content on a website to attract the customer avatar/target audience
- Video blogging – uploading videos to YouTube or TikTok and attracting an audience (with the purpose of selling affiliate products through the affiliate link)
- PPC – pay per click (direct response) advertising allows affiliates to test adverts and collect data to improve performance.
- Social media advertising – both paid and unpaid social media marketing can be used by affiliates to attract an audience for their products.
- SEO – search engine optimisation is used to optimise content created on a blog or with video and may involve link building, content sharing and other methods to increase domain authority or reach.
Components Of Affiliate Marketing: Blogging
Blogging is a popular way to promote affiliate products and involves building content on a website like this one. Again, blogging can be broken down into many components to achieve the best results for an affiliate:
- Creating content – writing specific content which will attract the right target audience
- Content promotion – sharing that content: posting to social media, linking from other websites (guest posting), blog commenting, etc.
- Blogging automation tools – bloggers will often use automated tools which help them syndicate their content more easily. See auto post to social media from WordPress.
- SEO – search engine optimisation can be done both on-site and off site; using link building strategies and SEO plugins. See best free blog plugins for WordPress. Content creation is also a major factor for SEO.
Summary
As you can see there are many components to affiliate marketing.
The “vendor” or product owner or “merchant”
The “network” connecting the vendor to the affiliate
The “publisher” or “affiliate” who refers the products online via marketing strategies
The customer who purchases the product.
Components For Affiliates
For affiliates there are other components which they must understand to successfully sell their products:
- Targeted audience – who is your “perfect” customer
- Marketing Strategy – How will you attract them?
- Customer Avatar – Specifics of your perfect customer
- Data & Analytics – help with your optimisation
- Email marketing – collecting subscribers
Marketing Strategies
Marketing strategies can be broken down into different methods:
- Blogging
- Video blogging
- PPC – pay per click
- Social media
- SEO – search engine optimisation
Blogging Components
And even each marketing strategy can be further broken down into smaller components. For example with blogging:
- Content creation – Creating content on a website whether written on video
- Content promotion – promoting the content in whatever way appropriate
- Tools – plugins and data collection tools to help optimise your efforts
- SEO – search engine optimisation to help gain organic traffic
- Link building – to increase domain authority and Google rankings etc.
- etc