Hana LaRock — January 3, 2017 
When it comes to marketing your business, it’s nice to have friends. And, by friends, we mean “affiliates.” Affiliate marketing is a great way to spread the word about your company, while also doing a favor for someone else. Affiliate marketing is highly recommended if you want your business to grow. That being said, there are some things you need to know about this type of marketing before you commit to it 100%.
Remember: Quality Over Quantity
While it’s a good idea to join a network of affiliates, remember, like anything, quality over quantity. Having a few good, reliable affiliates is much more worth it than a jumble of not-so-reliable affiliates. So, don’t be so focused on making a lot of “friends.” Instead, be focused on making strong, long-lasting relationships.
You Must Stay in Your Niche
It may be tempting to go with affiliates that are out of your network. But, if you don’t focus in on your niche, you’re going to miss out on the whole purpose of affiliate marketing. Make sure you go for partners that share the same type of business, so you can have a good chance of bringing in more leads.
Affiliate Marketing Takes a Dedicated Individual
If you’re a successful company (or you want to be a successful company), then it’s important you have a person or a team that’s dedicated to affiliate marketing. Managing all your affiliates, no matter what the number is, needs to be handled with care. It’s different than other types of marketing, and can’t just be added to an ordinary team’s to-do list. Make sure you have the time to take care of affiliate marketing demands, either yourself or by hiring someone to do so.
Successful Affiliate Marketing Takes Time
It’s really not possible to build a strong affiliate marketing program overnight. It could sometimes take up to six months before you start seeing results from the work you put in. As always, make sure you’re constantly recording and analyzing data to see how you’re doing based on the feedback.
Know Who You’re Working With
What may seem like a good opportunity on the surface could actually be a scam. Before you commit to working with any affiliates, you really need to get to know who they are. This is for two reasons. One, you don’t want to associate with an affiliate who might have a bad reputation. This could be very bad for business. Secondly, you don’t want a prospective affiliate to take advantage of you by promising something that they don’t actually plan on reciprocating on their end. Be very careful.
Keep It Subtle
A lot of affiliate marketing involves adding back links to your content or writing entire profile pieces on your partner. Unfortunately, if you don’t go about this the right way, you can end up spamming both of your audiences. If you plan on back linking to one of your affiliates, don’t be so obvious about what you’re trying to do. Make sure to keep things subtle, as to not throw off your readers or turn away leads.
Affiliate marketing is a great way to grow your business by getting your name out there to new, potential customers. But, before you jump into it, it’s good to know a few of these tips. Request a demo with Mission Suite to see how we can make affiliate marketing easy for you!
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