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Launching an affiliate program is a key step to your brand's online success.

Affiliate Marketing Explained

When you host a Tupperware meeting, you may be able to earn a commission on the sales made at the meeting. This is what affiliate marketing is all about.

This form of marketing is excellent for e-commerce or online software that can reach a wider audience. It allows them to get known and sell their products while controlling costs.

For affiliates, they are rewarded for their efforts and contacts. For customers, it allows them to find products that meet their needs and that they did not know about.

Why start an affiliate program?

Brands or companies to promote their products or software to a wider audience. The affiliate program contributes to this by putting you in touch with different affiliates with websites, email databases or social networks. By distributing information or product comparisons, affiliates participate in this distribution effort by being paid a commission on sales.

By choosing the right affiliates, you will especially succeed in reaching new prospects or customers, thus increasing your turnover. It must be emphasized that the costs involved must also be evaluated and controlled. An increase in sales volume implies, depending on the case, an increase in resources, such as servers, deliveries or support costs.

What is the difference with influencers on Instagram or Tic Toc?

There are also differences between affiliates and influencers. Influencers are those who have established a relationship with a large group of people and are able to talk to them regularly. Unlike affiliates, influencers are more focused on conveying the tangible benefits of a product than on making money from it. In addition, influencers are compensated based on campaign results rather than commissions. In addition, influencers are often given products to test and display on screen during videos or live.

6 steps to launch your affiliate program

step 1: define your program's goals and strategy

As with any marketing initiative, it's a good idea to start by setting goals for your affiliate program. To begin, decide who you hope to reach with your message.

Is your affiliate program designed to attract a specific demographic?
What type of affiliates can you use to achieve this goal?

Next, identify quantifiable goals for your program and strive to achieve them. This will tell you if your program is working.

The main goal is to have affiliates bring in a certain amount of money each month, quarter or year.
Set a conversion rate goal. If someone clicks on an affiliate link, how often do you want them to make a purchase as a result of that click?
Consider setting a goal of total value added generated by affiliates.
The number of unique sales made by affiliates in a given period should be considered as a goal.
If you want affiliates to bring in a certain number of impressions, clicks and leads in a given time period, you can do that too.

Of course, sales are the most important metric to track, but there are a number of additional metrics you can use to evaluate the effectiveness of your affiliate program.

step 2: analyze your competitors' programs

Your company's strengths and weaknesses have probably been compared to those of your rivals in a study you've done before. Now it's time to study your competitors' affiliate programs.

An evaluation of existing affiliate programs will give you a good idea of where you stand and how your program will compare to the competition. Consider your competition and you're fighting for the same affiliates as new customers.

step 3: set the right affiliate commission

See how your competitors' affiliate programs are structured and use that information to help you design yours. The structure of your commissions, that is, how you will pay your affiliates, is one of the most important decisions you will have to make for your program.

While other programs may have different compensation policies, you should only pay an affiliate when their affiliate link results in a sale. Don't pay for impressions or clicks!

To begin with, determine whether you will pay a flat fee or a portion of each transaction made by the affiliates. You will also need to decide on the payment method and terms.

The next step is to determine the exact percentage of sales you will pay to affiliates. Remember that outbidding your rivals is not always the best plan, even if you want to be competitive.

step 4: set up your program

Cookie duration, or nowadays click expiration, (for cookieless software) consists of paying for affiliate sales only if they take place within the specified time after the click. That is, if you set 7 days for the click time, a sale takes place within 7 days after the click, it will be taken into account for the affiliate.

Some programs like Amazon set 24 hours while others set 30 days or more. This can become a deciding factor for some affiliates, especially for low volume sales or conversions.

Graphic elements

Use your rivals' banner ads as a reference to help you design your own. For most of your affiliates, banner ad sizes are standard and we discuss this on our banner formats and sizes page.

The text ad should cover all your key product categories and include a few that offer powerful coupon-based content to entice customers to click and read.

Policy and Terms

The terms and conditions and policy of your program are also important. This includes information such as acceptance of Adwords campaigns, Facebook, appearance in cashback type sites, cookie duration (see previous point) etc...

step 5: recruit your affiliates

The next step is to recruit affiliates after setting up the structure of your own program. You will have to make a choice between working with an established affiliate network or creating your own.

Contact the affiliates that are most suitable for you and see if they are interested in joining your affiliate team. To ensure that you are only working with reputable affiliates and not falling victim to a scam, it is imperative that you thoroughly vet all of your candidates, both manually and through business intelligence technologies.

Decide how many affiliates you want to recruit, based on the reach you want and how exclusive you want your affiliate to be.

step 6: monitor your program

After launching your affiliate program, you need to monitor its progress regularly. You can either use your affiliate program software or the affiliate network you signed up with to track your commissions.

Keep track of which affiliates are making the most sales. Evaluate the success of the affiliate program in terms of revenue, conversion rate, unique sales and average order value (AOV), all of which should have been part of the planning process. You can re-evaluate your affiliate network or commission structure if your program is not meeting these goals.