Affiliate Marketing System for eCommerce to Boost Your Sales

Editorial Team January 17, 2019 4 min read

Affiliate marketing system is a promotional model that connects merchants with independent marketers who are willing to invest money to sell a merchant’s products. It is a great way to get more traffic to your eCommerce site. Through affiliate marketing you can boost sales of your eCommerce store. In this article we’ll discuss about affiliate marketing system for eCommerce to boost your sales.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the process by which you can make partnership with more established eCommerce entrepreneur in your niche and asking them to promote your products to his or her audience. In return, you pay a piece of the profit from each sale they make.

In other ways, affiliate marketing connects a eCommerce business that has a product to sell with a marketer who can sell it. It can be a great channel for first time eCommerce entrepreneurs. It’s one of the only marketing channels where you can get a 100% return on investment each and every time. All sales are tracked via affiliate links from one website to another.

The tracking of affiliate links is handled automatically by the retailer’s affiliate platform. Any time a visitor clicks on a link, a tracking cookie is stored on the visitor’s web browser that informs the retailer which publisher sent the visitor to their site.

Those cookies are valid for a set period of time(maximum 365 days or minimum 1 hour). That means the publisher only gets payment if the visitor makes the purchase within that time period,

Besides affiliate links, publishers can get access to tracking reports, additional promotional materials like banners, copy, email templates inside the retailer’s affiliate platform. These platforms also handle commission payments so publishers can expect to get payment around the same time each month, usually by PayPal or direct deposit.

Affiliate marketing is one of the simplest ways to generate a high return of investment. That’s why we’ll show how to design an affiliate marketing system which will help you expand the reach of your products and achieve your sales targets. Following are the main steps in setting up a profitable eCommerce affiliate marketing system:

Steps 1: Choose an Strategy

To get start with an affiliate marketing system, you have two ways to implement an affiliate marketing strategy:

The first way is to create your own eCommerce affiliate program using a tracking system. There are several free and paid tracking apps you can choose.

The second way is to sign up with an affiliate network. This is consider as the best affiliate programs in marketplaces where eCommerce entrepreneurs can find affiliates to promote their products. The advantage of using these types of networks is that they already have people searching for products to promote. Some networks charge monthly fees, which might not make them as suitable for early stage entrepreneurs. Popular affiliate networks you can consider are Share-a-Sale, Tapgerine, Commission Junction, AffiliatePrograms.com, and LinkShare.

Step 2: Build the Commission Structure for Your eCommerce Affiliate Program

The most challenging setup of an affiliate marketing system is deciding on the affiliate commissions you will offer.

It takes considerable time, money and effort on the part of affiliates to promote your products. So unless you are offering a generous commission, affiliates are unlikely to promote your products.

What most eCommerce business owners fail to realize that affiliates don’t just help them sell more products, but bring new customers who you can sell their products again and again. It is easier to sell products to an existing customer. It can be worthwhile offering 50 to 60% commissions on the front end. You will ultimately make up the cost through repeat sales.

Always you need to ensure that you have considered all costs into your pricing. So, you still make a profit even after paying your affiliates.

It is also useful to consider whether your products have varying markups with your default commission rates. This is because you might want to use your affiliates to generate more sales on products that are already earning higher profits. Instead of creating a set rate you can find a percentage that takes your varying markup. Some affiliate marketers offer a tier system where different commission rates are assigned to different product categories.

Step 3: Create Successful Affiliate Partnerships

The next step is to find affiliate partner to make partnership. An affiliate partnership is an agreement between your affiliate program and either another affiliate program to jointly promote each others’ products. You will find that 20% of your affiliate partners will bring 80% of your sales.

Let’s look at three great ways to build affiliate partnerships.

Participate in Industry Event: Industry events (such as conferences, webinars, and social gatherings) can help you network and find those with similar interests. This type of events can provide you with two partnership-related benefits. Firstly, enable you to meet with influential within your industry. Secondly, you can meet program managers who are also looking to make partnership with other affiliates.
Reach out to compatible programs: Compatible programs are those that have a similar audience and goals to you. There are two main benefits working with them. First thing, you can clearly expand your reach through your partner’s audience.
Start a Brand Ambassador Program: A brand ambassador program involves recruiting social media influential and paying them to market your brand to their audience. Starting an ambassador program can have several benefits for your business.

Step 4: Creating Affiliate Marketing Resources

Once you have affiliates ready, you need to provide them with marketing resources which will make it easier to promote your products. Without resources your affiliates will struggle to sustain. This will make it difficult for you to achieve significant growth in your affiliate program system.

Here are some resources:

Marketing materials: You can create text and banner ads to coincide with what your affiliates are promoting drives customer decision-making. You can also use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to push the products your affiliates are promoting.
Product Images and Descriptions: Add appropriate product images and their proper description. Use this images and descriptions on website and other channels.
Training: Use training videos which will help affiliates boost their marketing skills so they are successful in selling your products.
Affiliate Membership Portal: Affiliate marketing program should provide with a unique portal to log in and check their sales and commissions on a daily basis.

Conclusion

You can setup your own eCommerce affiliate program which can bring high quality affiliates on board who will sell your products for you. No matter which approach you choose to take. Top results always come from the amount of effort you put in to ensure your affiliates have the resources they need to get success. Affiliate marketing is a great way to build stronger relationships with customers. From these people, you can gain valuable customer experiences surrounding your products. This is just a basic idea for how to start affiliate marketing. Now, it’s time to try it out for yourself if you have some more.