Articles in The 'performance-based-marketing' Tag

Affiliate Marketing is a Winning Strategy for any Marketing Goal

by Anne Garcia

U.S. Affiliate Marketing is projected to reach $4 billion by 2014. If your marketing mix does not already include affiliate marketing, now is the time to learn more and consider your options.

According to Jupiter Research, Affiliate Marketing spending currently accounts for nine percent of total online spending.  More importantly, consumers that shop via affiliate links spend $7 more than the average consumer and are 17% more likely than the average Internet shopper to have household incomes larger than $75k. And, online shopping through affiliate referrals are 43% more likely to convert than average.

Still not convinced? Affiliate marketing has a higher ROI compared to all online marketing channels. The best benefit of this type of marketing is that you only pay an affiliate based on actual sales or leads generated, making marketing expenses more effective and directly attributed to revenue.

There are two main models of affiliate marketing — cost per sale and cost per acquisition. Cost per sale, also known as revenue share, is where you pay a percentage of sales referred by an affiliate. Cost per acquisition, or lead generation affiliate marketing, is where you pay a flat dollar amount for a referred sale or qualified lead.

Affiliates will extend your products to more potential customers, especially in niche groups, in more marketing channels, which is normally an expensive task for a business to tackle. They also allow you to be visible on sites at the actual point of interest in the decision making step, and also where your competitors are.

If you are looking for a rapid-response marketing program where you only pay based on performance, then affiliate marketing is for you.