Link Building & Affiliation – Two Super Powers to Kick Start Your Business
When it comes to search engine marketing, both link building and affiliate marketing are probably some of the most potent ways to boost your businesses online. Link building is particularly effective as businesses can rank themselves higher on search engine result pages by having external websites linking back to their landing pages.
Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, is considered the most appropriate choice for e-commerce stores as they are able to promote their products and services by augmenting their visibility on further channels.
According to a recent report compiled and published by Hosting Tribunal, the affiliate marketing sector is worth $12 billion and is projected to grow by 10% in the coming years. Furthermore, back in 2017, affiliate links were clicked more than 5 billion times with marketing networks carrying out more than 170 million transactions worldwide.
Keeping this information in perspective, let’s take a quick look at some of the ways link building and affiliate marketing can help your business to become a powerhouse.
Review Blogs
Review blogs are an ideal outcome that you would want to have through affiliate sources. This is where another domain reviews your business and shares a positive image of your venture online through their blog and social sharing network. Not only is your business able to receive a push from your affiliate through their own channel, but you are effectively able to gain attention and create awareness for audiences that might be new to your knowledge.
By reviewing blogs you also build up an immense amount of credibility and trust for your business as it is essentially a testimonial about your products and services. When one company praises another for its well-managed system and method of customer service, it acts as a certification for consumers and users to consider.
Online users can then become influenced by the written piece and might show less resistance to do business with your enterprise than their previously held judgment.
One of the best examples of this can be taken from the automobile industry. Edmunds, Car & Driver, Motor Trend, and other domains like The Car Connection offer users and online visitors with car reviews. Now I am not saying that this is affiliate marketing, but the power of such reviews is immense as they can influence the decision of buyers and capable people who are looking to purchase a car anytime soon.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is huge, and it’s probably considered a hub for all known media marketing that can be used online to promote, sell, and create awareness about your brands and businesses. Content marketing is considered as a popular means for ventures to reach out to targeted audiences and engage them further.
Since it is an umbrella term, content marketing can include a lot of things such as blogging, EBooks, email marketing, infographics, podcasting, Slideshare presentations, social media, video marketing, and webinars to name a few.
When it comes to affiliate marketing and link building, you can use content marketing strategies through your own channels or create a partnership since affiliate marketing is effectively offering a share of your revenues to your affiliate partners.
It is a win-win solution for both entities as your business gets to receive a terrific boost while the ones supporting your cause get to have a slice of their own for their efforts and use of resources. A good example over here would be of YouTubers (influencers) reviewing Rihanna’s Fenty makeup line, such as James Charles who has 23.8 million subscribers.
Social Sharing
The power of social media is simply undeniable. With billions of users across multiple channels, social media itself is a central-capital and dynamo that impacts and influences online users and their lives immensely. The youth is hustling and bustling on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and whatnot.
It is a whole new world out there, and the majority of businesses are only beginning to realize the scope and space that social media can offer them to boost sales and bring in tons of new customers. This makes social sharing the go-to option for both link building and affiliate marketing programs.
Businesses that have tons of followers (and this can include social media influencers) are most susceptible to receive offers from domains to review their products and services. This is because social media profiles and pages that amass tons of followers have that much of a difference to offer to promote and create awareness about your products and services.
They not only increase the visibility of your brand and business, but they can also help you generate leads and earn big sales figures. Cupshe is one of the brands out there that is killing it right now. They offer you a complete affiliate program for users to get registered and start sharing their reviews on Cupshe featured products.
Network
Affiliate networks are best described as the middle-man between publishers and merchant affiliate programs. Their huge and expansive profile, as well as reach, allows website publishers to find and participate in affiliate programs easily. Hence, in a way, they are like web portals and online marketplace to find the best people for the right job.
Some of the best affiliate marketing programs out there include none other than Amazon Associates, ShareASale, and Awin, to name a few. These platforms are specially designated to bring in more sales and earn a tremendous amount of commissions. They are simply affiliate marketing channels on steroids.
Everything becomes exponentially bigger while making sure that your marketing remains cost-effective with low-risk involvement.
Tracking System
Since affiliate programs are mostly run on agreed commission, and it’s basically an official contract between two parties, you need a tracking system to understand the viability and credibility of each transaction.
To help you further in this matter, specifically designed affiliate tracking software is available online that can help your business to track all such referrals, endorsements, and recommendations.
The affiliate marketing software can help you track various aspects and actions, and these can include programs such as cost-per-click, cost-per-acquisition, cost-per-impression, cost-per-sale, and so on and so forth. Some of the best affiliate tracking software include names like AffTrack, Everflow.io, Impact Radius, LinkTrust, and Voluum, to name a few.
Joint Venture Webinars
If you are familiar with the inner workings of a webinar, then a joint venture webinar wouldn’t be too much of a bother for you to understand. They are basically held by two businesses or business owners where one may act as the host and at the end of business delivers an offer for viewers.
In short, it is a mutual collaboration and event held by two ventures in partnership. While more of a chat than a webinar, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk sat down with Jack Ma, the progenitor of Alibaba Group in Shanghai back in 2019. This was a part for the opening events for the annual WAIC (World Artificial Intelligence Conference) that was viewed by millions on popular social media platforms including Twitter and YouTube.
However, for businesses and enterprises seeking to bring in new clients, JV webinars are absolutely fantastic, to say the least. This is because JV webinars help create the hype from two distinct sources and bring in a lot of like-minded customers and prospects together.
Email Marketing
A small twist to your normal email marketing strategy is affiliate email marketing. In an affiliate email marketing campaign, companies actually earn passive income as another client automates their task. This means that your affiliate marketing link lands directly into the inboxes of your recipients and contact persons.
This process can be achieved by producing emails that add value to your readers, build trust, and provide excellent content. Hence businesses who have constantly been growing their email list will benefit hugely from this tactic. The larger your email contacts list the more chances you have to drive conversion and actively engage your audiences.
Plus most of your contacts are already probable prospects and candidates for the future; hence they might be interested in your business, content, and niche or at least be familiar with it in some aspect. Some of the best services out there include Active Campaign, Aweber, ConvertKit, GetResponse and MoonMail, to name a few.
Pay Per Click
Considered as one of the most effective internet advertising models, Pay-per-click can be used to drive traffic for your websites. It usually works in a way where an advertiser pays a publisher for an ad whenever it is clicked.
The publisher can range from search engine to a website owner and can include other intellectual properties online that bring in a lot of traffic. Some examples of good PPC ad networks include AdRoll, Bing Ads, Facebook, Google Ads, and Yahoo Gemini.
Getting an Affiliate Link
So far, you probably understand that affiliate marketing heavily relies on the attainment of an affiliate link. Without which tracking can become a nuisance for businesses. To get an affiliate link, all you need to do is find a product or a service online and search for its affiliate program.
There are many options available online as well as services that can help you generate affiliate links for your campaigns as well. These include names such as ClickMeter, Affiliate Royale, Monster Insights, and Thirsty Affiliates for example.
Lead Magnet
Lastly, a lead magnet is an incentive that marketers can offer potential buyers in exchange for valuable and marketable information. Usually, companies offer downloadable content such as EBooks, PDF checklists, videos, or whitepapers. Users would usually fill out a form where they disclose their name, email address, and other contact information.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing holds the potential to broaden and further strengthen your client base effectively. It can help businesses grow and create a tremendous amount of awareness for their offered products and services.
Author Bio
Samantha Kaylee currently works as an Assistant Editor at Crowd Writer, a UK based platform serving the academic community. During her free time, she likes to read thriller-mystery novels with works from Dan Brown as her favorite amongst the rest.
Related reading:
- Which Affiliate Marketing Niches Work Best
- 5 Awesome Affiliate Marketing Strategies to Generate More Sales
This blog post is about:
- Affiliate Marketing
- Link Building and Affiliate Marketing
- Digital Marketing
