Are you looking to grow your business with a niche audience? Are you struggling to make a name for yourself within your local community? Enhance your strategy with the power of affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is one of the most creative and effective ways to expand your reach and increase your sales. With the right outreach and partnerships, you can lower your acquisition cost and increase your cost per sale over time.
Whether you work in HVAC, own a salon, or run a small local business, there are many creative ways you can use affiliate marketing to your advantage.
If you’re a small business looking to try affiliate marketing, here’s everything you need to know:
What is Affiliate Marketing?
With affiliate marketing, loyal customers, influencers, or local partners will share a specific link to drive traffic to your website. All traffic from that link that leads to sales generates commission for the affiliate. Your affiliates can share specific links for certain products, market specials, and sales, or share a promo code with their followers.
This innovative marketing tactic is a low-cost investment with a high ROI. Unlike other marketing channels, you don’t need to pay too much into the strategy. All you need is a strategy to turn affiliate marketing into a profitable channel for your small business.
How to do Affiliate Marketing: Step-by-Step Guide
Small businesses across various industries can benefit from a well-thought-out affiliate platform. Whether you’re a med spa that focuses on wellness products and services, or you own a small e-commerce site. There are many creative ways to affiliate marketing to your benefit.
To find success with a small business affiliate program, you’ll need to be strategic with your approach. Here’s how to get started with an affiliate program for small businesses:
Set Goals
The first step is to set your goals for the program. Are you looking to boost profits and revenue? Are you trying to break into a new market or improve brand visibility with a niche audience? Maybe you’re launching a new product or service and need to raise awareness. Once you have your goals for the small business affiliate program, you can create a program that aligns with your unique business needs.
Create KPIs
KPIs stand for key performance indicators. These are metrics you’ll use to track the success of your affiliate marketing program, MoM, or QoQ. Some popular KPIs you’ll want to track to maximize the ROI of your program include:
- Average order value
- Cost per sale
- Conversion rate
- Click-through-rate
You can use these KPIs to track the overall success of your affiliate marketing program and the individual success of each contributor.
Decide on a Commission Structure
The beauty of affiliate programs is that it’s a win-win for everyone involved. Before you can start your outreach, you’ll need to determine the commission structure that your affiliates will get from the program. The commission is the amount of money they will make from the sale they helped facilitate. When determining the exact amount, consider the sale price of the item and your profit margins. A good range is typically between 5% to 25%.
You can also consider building a tiered structure, where the more an affiliate sells, the better the rewards. This is an easy and effective way to incentivize promoting your brand.
Explore Affiliate Platforms
An affiliate marketing platform will help you manage affiliates and commissions. These platforms have a suite of data tools you can use to track performance and optimize your strategy. These platforms also feature marketing tools and resources you can use for outreach and promotion. Some popular affiliate platforms include:
- PartnerStack: Easy-to-use platform with built-in automation tools to help you track affiliates and send commission payments.
- LeadDyno: Integrates with most e-commerce platforms and offers a seamless onboarding experience for new affiliates.
- Post Affiliate Pro: An advanced setup with program customization tools and multi-tier commission structures.
Finalize T&Cs
Think of your terms and conditions as the legal bond between you and your affiliates. The T&Cs outline the rules of the partnership. It also ensures that both parties fully understand how the program works and how each party benefits.
Market Your Affiliate Program
Once you have your program built out, it’s time to attract new affiliates. The most effective way to do this is to use the marketing resources in your preferred affiliate platform. You can also tap into your own database and use email marketing to attract new affiliates. This is a creative way to build out your affiliate network and connect with people who are already familiar with your small business.
Townsquare Interactive is a business management platform for small businesses. Our platform has built-in email and SMS tools you can use to market your small business affiliate program to your database.
Track Your Success And Adjust Accordingly
Once you have a strategy in place, you’ll want to track performance and modify as you go. It might take some trial and error to determine what works and what doesn’t for your small brand. You’ll want to adjust regularly to find what is most profitable.
Maximize Your Efforts With Townsquare Interactive
Affiliate marketing for small businesses is a win-win scenario for you and your partners. You can boost brand awareness and reach a new target audience while generating sales, and they get to benefit from the deal, too!
While you work on fine-tuning your affiliate marketing strategy, Townsquare Interactive is here to help you grow your online presence through our business management platform and web design, social media, and SEO marketing. We specialize in helping small businesses grow and scale through strategic initiatives. Whether you own a salon, HVAC business, or a local restaurant, we can help with it all.