Affiliate marketing is everywhere. In fact, it now drives 10% of all e-commerce sales in the UK. So, the chances are you’ve seen it before. You might have even purchased something you’ve seen online by following an affiliate link. But what actually is affiliate marketing? In this blog, we’ll cover everything you need to know to help you decide whether it’s right for your brand.

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An Introduction to Affiliate Marketing for Brands
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is when a publisher earns a commission for promoting a business’s products or services.
It’s a pay-for-performance type of marketing, with businesses paying publishing partners a fee for every website visitor or sale they bring in. Publishers can include media outlets, blogs, and other company websites.
How does affiliate marketing work?
There are usually four parties involved in an affiliate marketing partnership:
- The brand – the business selling a product or service
- An affiliate network – a platform which allows brands to connect with publishers and manage the payment of commission (this can be managed by the brand or an agency like us acting on their behalf)
- The publisher – the channel promoting the business (sometimes known as ‘the affiliate partner’)
- The customers – the people who the publisher drivers to the brand’s website
Affiliate partnerships usually begin with the brand or the agency acting on their behalf. Brands will connect with publishers directly or via an affiliate network and broker a deal. We recommend doing this via a reputable network, like Awin, because it save time and protects both brands and affiliates. During this discussion, both parties will agree on how the publisher will promote the brand, payment terms, and the length of the deal.
Once this has been agreed, the brand provides the publisher with a unique link, allowing them to track the traffic and/or sales generated by the publisher.
This process can be repeated until a brand has built a whole network of affiliate publishers that drive regular revenue for the brand and themselves. It’s a win/win arrangement.
Types of affiliate partners
Affiliate partnerships can work in lots of different ways, with thousands of publishers for brands to choose from. Here are the seven most common types of partners worth knowing about:
- Media – online media titles that use product round-ups, guides, and news stories to link back to affiliate partners in a way that adds value to their readers. These partners often offer a great way to reach your target audience via a channel they already engage with and trust.
- Influencers – social media influencers who recommend products across their channels with links for their followers to buy. Just like traditional media outlets, influencers often have large communities of followers who look to them for recommendations and inspiration. We see this working incredibly well for brands selling to consumers, including fashion, beauty, and tech brands. But there are influential figures in almost every industry, so it’s a great tactic for companies selling B2B too.
- E-commerce – third party plug-in or widget suppliers that offer brands new ways to connect with customers once they’ve landed on their website. For example, by providing pop-ups that encourage visitors to buy. These partners can be impactful in increasing the conversion rate on your website.
- Deal and voucher codes – sites that feature exclusive discounts and special offers for customers who purchase via links on their website. These offer a good opportunity to drive increased traffic and convert sales quickly.
- Cashback – cashback websites also reward customers for shopping through them by providing them with cashback on purchases made via the links on their website. These sites are incredibly popular, making them another good tool for driving traffic.
- Comparison sites – most comparison sites operate on a commission basis. Because the products featured tend to be reviewed or analysed by experts or customers, these partnerships are a good way to build trust as well as drive traffic.
- Brand partnerships – brands that share similar audiences can also partner with each other to increase their reach and drive additional, relevant traffic. This might include promotion in newsletters or offers at the check-out. This is an effective way to tap into ready-made audiences and align your company with another respected brand.
What are the benefits of affiliate marketing for brands?
There’s a reason affiliate marketing is such a popular tactic. Here are the top benefits:
- Low risk – if you opt for a ‘pay per sale’ model, you will only pay the publisher if they bring in a sale. This means it’s less risky than other forms of paid-for digital marketing, such as PPC.
- High conversion rate – just like in PR, a good affiliate programme will broker relationships with publishers that a brand’s target audience engages with and trusts. If they’re doing their job well, these publishers will recommend the brand in a way that feels valuable and authentic. This often leads to a much higher conversion rate than traditional advertising.
- Reach niche audiences – partnering with brands or publishers that specialise in a certain niche is a great way to tap into specific, hard-to-reach communities. To identify niche partners, we always start with detailed audience research, helping us understand where these groups of people are grazing for information.
- Time efficient (after the initial set-up) – once a programme is up-and-running, affiliate marketing is a fairly low-maintenance sales generator.
- Maintain control – brands are in control of the commission rates set, so you can ensure your company maintains a comfortable profit margin on all sales made via affiliate partners.
- It’s measurable – it’s easy to measure the performance of an affiliate marketing programme by tracking the number of clicks, leads, and revenue generated. We’d recommend assessing the performance of your affiliates on a monthly basis to determine which partnerships are delivering for your brand.
- Support PR work – whilst good journalists and content creators will always aim to cover stories and brands that matter to their readers, we know first-hand that the competition for coverage is fiercer than ever. So, we find offering media a commission every time they mention a brand is a great added incentive to encourage them to include a product or service in relevant round-ups and stories.
Are there any downsides to affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is suitable for most e-commerce businesses, and can offer huge rewards. But it has its limitations:
- It doesn’t work if your website isn’t up to scratch – there’s no point driving high-quality traffic to your website if your website is confusing or difficult to navigate once people arrive. Your website must be optimized to convert leads into customers, or you’ll waste everyone’s time.
- It’s not a quick-win – whilst affiliate marketing is fairly low-maintenance once a programme is set up, it requires significant time investment initially. You’ll need to find and build relationships with publishers, broker deals, calculates commission rates, draft briefing documents, and make changes to your website to support affiliates. All of this takes time, so you can expect to wait at least six months before you start to see ROI.
- Not all affiliates are honest – there have been cases of fraudsters posing as legitimate affiliate sites to trick brands. We’ve even seen instances of criminals setting up fake websites to look like legitimate, well-known sites. So, always be vigilant and aim to work only with affiliates you know (and have verified) or partners you’ve connected with through a trusted affiliate platform, like Awin, which vets partners for you.
- It’s not a substitute for SEO – affiliate links have no impact on SEO. So, whilst they won’t hurt your search rankings (so long as they’re used in moderation and on trusted sites), they mustn’t be viewed as a replacement for building strong, organic links in relevant, high-authority sites.
Can affiliate marketing work alongside digital PR?
Affiliate marketing works best when used alongside digital PR tactics. Both affiliate marketing and digital PR can help raise brand awareness, drive web traffic, and build relationships with relevant referral partners.
However, unlike digital PR, affiliate marketing has no impact on SEO. This is because Google knows affiliates are being rewarded for linking, so it doesn’t consider it a valuable endorsement of the site.
Affiliate marketing isn’t that effective for building trust amongst humans for the same reason. Whilst affiliate links aren’t always noticeable to the untrained eye, publishers do have an obligation to declare that they are earning commission on links. For savvy consumers, knowing a publisher was financially motivated to recommend a product can weaken the power of the endorsement.
By comparison, organic, earned links, like those secured as part of digital PR are incredibly effective in building authority and trust amongst both audiences and algorithms. The impact of this reputation-building work won’t simply ‘turn-off’ like your affiliate links would if you paused the activity. It offers long-term, future-proof results. We know this because we measure it for our clients, tracking metrics like organic searches and web traffic over time.
So, whilst affiliate marketing can be a fantastic tool to reach new customers and drive all-important sales in the short-term, we always recommend utilising it alongside an ongoing digital PR strategy for best results.
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