Affiliate Marketing for Startups – Yes or No ?

Clients have been asking me whether affiliate marketing is a good strategy for startups and other businesses trying to grow. They often sound sceptical but my answer is always Yes. If I had to point out any disadvanteges of starting an affiliate program in an early stage of growth, only very few would come to my mind, if any. I will get to these later, let’s focus on the advantages first.

The Pros of running an affiliate program

“Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as ‘retailer’ or ‘brand’), the network (that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments), the publisher (also known as ‘the affiliate’), and the customer.”

Why is affiliate marketing a good option for Startups?

According to eMarketer, 46% of marketers consider affiliate marketing to be “very cost effective” as it relates to customer acquisition, second only to email.

1. You only pay for results – unlike traditional advertising methods, affiliate marketing is the most cost effective one. If your affiliates don’t perform and bring leads, they simply don’t get paid. Have you ever received a check from Google saying that your AdWords didn’t bring enough revenue so they’re giving you your money back? Me neither.
2. You don’t spend time on advertising – let others do the work for you so you can worry about other, more important issues, or issues that you have skills for. You don’t need to be a marketing expert, neither you have to learn any marketing methods to run an affiliate program. Simply setup your affiliate program and then payout your affiliates once a month. That’s where your job ends.
3. Find Super affiliates and you’re golden – you don’t need hundreds of affiliates to succesfully run an affiliate program. In general, most of businesses have 3-5 Super affiliates who generate more than 50% of the revenue from their whole affiliate program.