This is a yet-to-be-published article written for Mantle on the importance of Shopify app reviews, and how Mantle can help you improve your rating numbers.
When it comes to marketing your business, it’s hard to find a method as useful as working with affiliates.
Affiliate marketing is a low-cost way to make new people aware of your business, and draw them in as new customers. Your affiliate promotes your project using a unique referral link, and they earn a commission when new customers use that link.
“It sounds too easy,” you’re probably thinking. “What’s the catch?” you’re probably asking.
Well, it is easy, and there is no catch. Just a marketing partnership that can be mutually beneficial to you and whatever type of affiliate you choose to work with.
So let’s dig in.
What Are Affiliates?
Simply put, affiliates are connections, whether it’s people or companies, that refer your business to others. In exchange, you pay them for every new customer they send your way. This marketing partnership is popular because of the low startup cost and low risk level.
There are two common ways affiliates can give referrals. The first is one-on-one, where affiliates recommend your business to other individual people that they feel might benefit from it. They can also refer you to an audience, like when your favourite podcast tells you to try a meal kit or a mattress that they love.
In exchange, you pay your affiliates for their referrals. Typically, this arrangement is structured as an ongoing revenue share, with affiliates earning a certain percentage monthly over a pre-agreed number of months. The amount typically ranges from 10% to 30%. The length of time can be as short as six months, or can even be an ongoing, indeterminate length.
Most of your partnerships will include some type of affiliate component, whether they’re pure affiliates, or something more like tech partners or agencies, which we’ll cover in further detail below.
Why Should You Start an Affiliate Program?
There are loads of benefits to having an affiliate program for customers to participate in. Affiliates can help you scale your revenue, particularly when you’re still new to the game. Working with affiliates allows you to leverage other people’s or companies’ audiences while you’re still building your own. This helps build both your sales and your following at a critical point in your business, andthen keep building as your business flourishes.
Affiliate programs are also more successful than traditional paid advertising, because you’re paying for the results, not the advertising. With paid ads, you shell out your money and then just hope that they achieve what you want them to. With affiliates, you’re paying them for their performance, giving them a percentage of the sales that they bring to you.
Depending on your lifetime value, affiliate marketing can be both very affordable, and great for your cash flow. If you’re used to paying a multiple of your monthly recurring revenue (MRR) in customer acquisition costs up front, then customers brought in through your affiliate program will cost you a certain percentage of this, distributed across the lifetime of the account.
The main downside to this is that affiliate marketing can be an expensive method in the long-term. But even that isn’t a grave concern, because affiliate marketing is flexible and you can scale your affiliate numbers up or down as needed.
Types and Use Cases of Affiliates
Affiliate marketing can come from a number of sources. Who you work with and how you work with them comes down to what is best for your business. So what are your affiliate options?
Agencies
You’ll find that most larger and well-established Shopify stores work with at least one agency to help them in one or more areas of their business. This might be their design, development, marketing, or a myriad of other departments. These brands depend on their agency (or agencies) to advise or even make technological choices. It’s important to have professionals on your side, and affiliate programs are a great first step towards a successful agency program.
Influencers
As the number of B2B influencers and Shopify thought leaders rises, the amount of content that’s created and shared is growing astronomically. Unlike the stereotypical influencers of Instagram, B2B influencers cultivate their affiliate content to reach other businesses through different channels such as LinkedIn or X. Though the targeted audience may be smaller than B2C influencers, B2B influencers can reach more niche and focused customer groups.
Tech Partners
If you have an integration with another software tool, or even if you’re just in the planning stages of that integration, working an affiliate program into that plan is a good addition to that partnership. It lays the groundwork for you compensating these partners for referrals towards your business.
Pure Affiliates
Similar to influencers, “pure” affiliates are considered more established. We’re talking media properties such as content websites and blogs, particularly those aimed at Shopify and ecommerce content.
Customers!
It goes without saying, but your customers can be some of your best cheerleaders. While using customers as affiliates isn’t as common in B2B marketing, it can actually work well for Shopify since many of the brands are more consumer in nature. The people behind brands talk to each other all the time about tech choices they love. So why not leverage this into a mutually beneficial situation?
Using affiliates can help grow your business and revenue at a reasonably affordable cost. There are a number of ways to approach it, and it’s easy to make affiliate marketing work for your business. Affiliates can help you connect with new customers and markets that would be hard to tap otherwise. It’s ultimately a straightforward marketing method that can provide a great return on investment.