Affiliate marketing provides full control and predictable profit margins

You decide who gets to market your brand

Unlike telemarketing, affiliate marketing is a safe bet when it comes to the representation of your brand and your business. When you choose to become an advertiser on an affiliate network, you can personally contact people who have websites or social media channels that feel right, in order to propose collaborations.

In addition, you may be contacted by people who believe they have perfect channels for your product or service. But regardless of how this is done, you are always in control. Your brand will only appear where you want it to appear!

How do you choose the right channels and collaborations?

The obvious question is, of course, how to know if a website or video channel on Youtube will be an asset to your brand. How can you determine if a certain website, blog or video channel will increase your sales?

It is important to understand that there are never any guarantees that a website or influencer will increase your sales. But there are some steps you can take to investigate the likelihood of this.

Take a look at:

• Readers and Followers. Who will see the links to your store or the presentations of your products? If this is a target group for you, the chance of a sale increases.
• Commitment. Take a look at how interactive a channel is. If it's social media or a YouTube channel, you can take a look at comments and shares. When it is shared and commented on extensively, it shows that it is a popular channel. When followers and readers are interested, the chance that they will take the recommendations for your products seriously also increases.
• Reputation. When it comes to an influencer, it is not that difficult to find out about the reputation and how the person is perceived. If this resonates well with your brand, it could be a great fit. Websites and blogs also have rumors. Here you can also judge by the commitment and number of readers or followers. When many people return to read more and also ask questions or comment, it is likely that the influencer or blog has credibility. It's a key word for affiliate sales success!
• Traffic. If you are going to collaborate with a website that may market your products, then it is important that this site has traffic. There are tools for this such as SimilarWeb, Alexa Traffic Rank, Ahrefs and SEMrush.

You can also ask to receive a report that shows current traffic and for which keywords the channel ranks. If many people come to the site to find out more about fashion and beauty, then it is a good fit for you who sell products in this area.

When you find an influencer or a website that feels right for your brand, communication between you is very important. It is important that the person who will work as an affiliate for you understands the message and appearance of your business.

If you have special requirements on how your products can be described and displayed, you can explain this to your new affiliate partner. But, sometimes, it can be wise not to control this too much. Spontaneous posts that are not governed by a certain type of language or form rules can be more effective in actually reaching out to your target audience.

It is important to set clear goals with affiliate marketing

Before you start a collaboration with an influencer or website, it is important that you have created a plan for this. You should have calculated how much commission to give for sales and whether you might want to pay more for richer type of reviews and tests of your products.

When you set goals for the collaboration, you get full control over costs now and in the future. By keeping an eye on how the collaboration is going, you can decide to expand it or, on the contrary, to close it down because it doesn't bring as much as you thought.

The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you can adjust the levels yourself. With some channels, you may have a more passive collaboration in the form of affiliate links that provide sales opportunities from time to time. With others, you invest more in sponsored content and visibility because it turns out to be most effective.

Give it all some time to judge the results

It may seem that affiliate marketing is a quick thing where you can immediately decide if it pays off or not. But it's not really that simple. It may take some time before your investment in a certain influencer or website yields a return.

Sometimes your brand needs to be seen several times and in several posts and videos before you start getting inquiries from people who noticed it. Sometimes a collaboration with a certain affiliate can be something that grows from occasional sales opportunities to one of your most important sources of new customers.

Goodwill is something that is noticed and spread

It is good that you get full control over your profit margins through collaborations where you set the commission and only pay when something is sold. But it is also important to understand the included benefit of goodwill.

When you are generous and let new partners test your products, chances are good that they will create very positive content about your brand. Once you have found a really good website or an influencer that matches your brand and company profile perfectly, it can be worthwhile to send several products and also offer a high commission. That behaviour creates goodwill with affiliates and can be a key to unlock the potential with affiliate marketing.