How Affiliates Can Mean Serious #Gains For Your Brand
Affiliate marketing is essential in growing your brand’s presence and increasing revenue. According to 2016 research done by Business Insider, affiliate marketing is responsible for driving 16% of all e-commerce sales. Not only is affiliate marketing great for revenue gains, but it’s crucial in establishing brand awareness and trust. As a brand, you can put out ads, send out beautifully crafted emails through a CRM and put forth every marketing effort to grow your audience, but when you put your brand in the hands of multiple people, each one bringing in their own audience, you’re exponentially increasing your brand’s exposure in ways you could never have done on your own.
If there’s anytime to test out affiliate marketing for your brand, it’s now. With everyone staying home, people are hungry for content and connection through a digital platform. Creators are currently in a unique position, as more and more people turn to their social media platforms to look for updates and inspiring content during these uncertain times. There is a great deal of trust formed between these creators and their followers. As a brand, you can take part in that relationship by recruiting a creator to endorse your business and products.
So, how do you get started with affiliate marketing? Below we’ve outlined five platforms and apps you can integrate into your online business to start growing your business and promoting your brands or services.
The first three are apps that you integrate with your online store to set up affiliates and track their performance. The fourth is a platform where you can connect with influencers and have them create content for your brand or product. The final one is a platform that allows you to turn your customers into brand ambassadors and generate content for campaigns.
GoAffPro
Free - $24/month
GoAffPro is a great and easy to use app you can download on your Shopify store. It has a 4.9 rating out of over 500 reviews. Within the app you can invite affiliates to sign up for your program and set commissions for either the whole site or set up different commissions for different products or affiliates. With multi-level marketing, you can have up to 10 levels of affiliates and set commissions for every level. You can quickly set up each affiliate with their own unique discount code and generate referral links for your products. Each affiliate has their own dashboard where they can track their earnings. You can also check your stats, track referral links, and see generated revenue over time.
Refersion
$89/month (14-day free trial)
Refersion is an extremely popular app on Shopify with a 4.7 rating out of nearly 800 reviews. You can quickly and easily invite customers, ambassadors, or influencers to join the platform. Refersion also gives you completely free access to their own affiliate marketplace of over 5,000 potential partners. Like GoAffPro, Refersion also gives each affiliate access to their own personalized dashboard where they can track their performance and create custom links. You can also invite customers to join your affiliate program with one click with a post purchase widget. Refersion boasts some impressive statistics as well. For example, jewelry company Pura Vida saw a 230% increase in monthly sales with the Refersion app.
LeadDyno
From $29 a month (30 day free trial)
LeadDyno is another popular app through Shopify with a 4.3 rating out of nearly 600 reviews. Like with the other apps, LeadDyno provides each affiliate with their own dashboard where they can track their performance. The app supports an impressive tracking system. They offer real-time click and commission tracking and you can also track shares of your products or content with their unique sharing widget. LeadDyno also gives affiliates access to a library of of shareable content to promote your brand.
Cohley
Contact for pricing
Cohley is a content platform where you are provided with a marketplace of social media influencers. In the platform you create campaigns and set the specified requirements of what kind of content you are looking for, whether it’s lifestyle images or videos or product shots, etc. Once you create your campaign influencers will apply to the campaign and you can select the influencers you wish to work with. From there you work with influencers to get the content you need for the campaign. Once you receive your content and it is approved, it is moved to a content library where you can download it and have unlimited rights on it. Payment to the influencers is easily completed through PayPal.
Wooly
Contact for pricing
Wooly allows you to turn your customers into brand ambassadors. You can create a unique landing page on your site where you can inform your customers about the program and ask them to apply. You can create custom application forms and select the customers you’d like to join your program. You can set incentives for your customers to refer to your product or brand. For example, for every three referrals your customer can get a free product. In the platform, you can create campaigns where you ask customers to upload a variety of content, from blog posts to video testimonials. From there you can select the content you want and save it to your content library for later use. You also can check the “social feed” to see all the posts from the invited contacts in the platform. You can easily check your brand and campaigns performance and see your post mentions, engagements and reach over time.
No matter what platform or app you decide to go with, your brand could only benefit from participating in an affiliate program. The gains are substantial when you allow influencers and customers endorse your brand for you. So start growing your audience and brand’s awareness today!
