Affiliate marketing sounds like a great deal for the third-party sellers that get to make a portion of profit from each sale that they help secure. But is this deal really so great for the businesses that have to pay for their services? There are surprisingly many benefits of affiliate marketing for merchants.

You may be skeptical, but this is absolutely true. Affiliate marketing does have some major benefits for sellers, as well as affiliate marketers.

In this article, we will discuss how affiliate marketing is beneficial for both sides of the aisle and provide you ten benefits of affiliate marketing for merchants and small businesses.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is an arrangement that is based on commission given to third parties in order to sell products and outsource marketing. Businesses will invest their money into affiliate advertisements by giving them a part of their earnings that is based off of how much exposure or confirmed sales that the affiliate reels in for the business. This is what we referred to by discussing that this arrangement is good for both businesses and affiliate marketers.

Affiliate marketers are able to make money by advertising while businesses only usually have to pay for marketing that was successful for them. There are different types of arrangements that fall into affiliate marketing contracts or agreements.

Some affiliate marketing arrangements are on the basis of commissions, while other arrangements are based on clicks or engagement with a particular link. Regardless, both of these options will allow you as a small business to save some money on marketing by ensuring that you are only paying for successful conversions.

How Can Small Businesses Benefit from Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing for small businesses can differ slightly from affiliate marketing for big businesses. Let’s get right into our list of top 10 benefits for small businesses and merchants.

Benefit 1: Increase your visibility online.

This is a no-brainer benefit of online affiliate marketing. By partnering with influencers who have an established following, you are displaying your brand to a whole new audience. Even if your affiliate marketing campaign does not bring in any sales right away, you have still put your brand name and message in the minds of people who previously didn’t know about you!

Seeing affiliate marketing as an opportunity for exposure is the proper way to look at affiliate marketing as a small business. The sales potential is also a huge bonus, but when you are starting from the ground up, you really need to increase the reach and awareness of your business as a whole. Affiliate marketing is a great way to do this.

Benefit 2: Add more reviews to your products.

Increasing your sales through affiliate marketing is a great benefit of starting a campaign with an influencer. But even more importantly, more sales means more reviews. As well, you may also consider the influencer’s comments on your brand as a review of theirs if you have allowed them to share their own opinions of your products online.

Reviews are so essential for future sales as reviews are a way to build trust with future customers. People trust the opinions of others and will be more likely to purchase products with positive reviews than with little to no reviews.

Benefit 3: Affiliate marketing will provide you with data.

These days, data makes the world spin round! Affiliate marketing campaigns can be a boon to your business in terms of providing data on your products and target market. These campaigns may point out glaring issues in your target market or could tell you that you are on the right path.

The failure or success of an affiliate marketing campaign can provide you with the means to make major changes to your business model that can improve your future outcomes. In this way, affiliate marketing should definitely be considered beneficial to your small business. With so many data points out there, measuring the success of an affiliate marketing campaign is one to pay attention to.

Benefit 4: Affiliate marketing is a cheap way of running advertisements!

We all can get behind a good deal and affiliate marketing for small business is a very fair way of advertising on social media. Small businesses especially can benefit from the affordability of affiliate marketing as a paid advertising opportunity that is low in cost and low in risk.

Because your main payouts will come in the form of commissions, your payout for advertising is directly linked to the success of the advertising campaign itself. This means that there is very little risk involved in affiliate marketing as a small business. As long as sales are made, both you and the affiliate are getting paid!

Benefit 5: There can be a higher return of investment than other ads.

As affiliate marketing continues to grow in popularity, so does its reputation for locking down sales and impressions for businesses and affiliates alike. Social media advertising can be costly, but with a pay per sale model, affiliate marketing has lower startup cost.

Pair this with affiliate marketing’s propensity to convert into sales and you have a net benefit result from investing in this kind of marketing. Your sales should see improvement through affiliate marketing when compared to running straight social media ads or Google ads online.

Benefit 6: Potential to form long-term brand relationships with influencers.

Have you noticed social media figures or celebrities that have become associated with a particular brand? In the age of social media, this is incredibly common. These relationships are beneficial to both the representative and the business.

By starting affiliate marketing campaigns, you have the potential to find influencers who love your products and want to arrange long term affiliate deals. These deals will then continue to bring you traffic and will bring them passive income in return. This also promotes trust between the influencer and their audience because of the element of consistency. This makes their audience more likely to purchase from you.

Benefit 7: Affiliate marketing can increase your search engine optimization.

Affiliate marketing has yet another sneaky benefit. That is, that it can improve your SEO keyword ranking without you really having to do much. If you haven’t heard of backlinks before, backlinks are when your link is shared by other websites. This action can improve your page rank.

By engaging in affiliate marketing, you are inviting people to share your website link which is creating a backlink. This action will have a very positive effect on your search engine optimization and can send your website soaring through the ranks as a result.

Benefit 8: Can increase your own social media following.

People who are interested in brands are more likely to follow them. By being recommended by social media influencers or bloggers, your business social media pages are likely to increase in followers and impressions. These metrics on social media are important in creating and promoting trust on social media.

This is yet another benefit of the visibility that affiliate marketing can bring your brand and business.

Benefit 9: You don’t have to abandon your other strategies.

Affiliate marketing does not have to be the only way that you market your products online or on social media. In fact, affiliate marketing may just end up being a small part of how you do marketing as your business grows. The fact remains that this strategy is helpful for small businesses.

The point here is that affiliate marketing can work in tandem with other strategies if you do have the capital to push for more costly and high-ticket advertisements online in the future.

Benefit 10: Gain wisdom from people with experience in sales.

This is a benefit that is often overlooked when considering whether or not to start an affiliate marketing partnership with an influencer. By reaching out and creating a relationship with another business, you will be able to gain unique insight on the way your brand is presented.

Forming this relationship can even result in you receiving helpful advice from this influencer, including feedback on your products, your website, and the purchasing experience. In this way, affiliate marketing can be a great way to reach out to your community. If you are a health and wellness brand, partnering with a health and wellness influencer can provide you with a lot of wisdom on the market and on your competitors.

Conclusion and Takeaway

All in all, as you can see, there are many benefits to using affiliate marketing as a way to increase sales and visibility for your website, products, and services. The nearly free brand recognition and brand awareness will be a boon to your business. As well, the insights that you will gain through your partnership should help you to better define your future marketing strategies.

Now that you know all that you stand to gain from reaching out to influencers or bloggers about affiliate marketing opportunities, will you choose to add affiliate marketing to your advertising budget? Let us know in the comments!