Why affiliate programmes aren’t just for big businesses

Affiliate marketing, a cornerstone of digital customer acquisition, is a performance-based strategy that allows businesses to reward partners, called affiliates, for bringing in sales through their promotional activities. It's one of the fastest and easiest ways to build an online presence, and with results-driven pricing, affiliate marketing guarantees a strong ROI for any brand involved, which also makes it one of the most cost-effective advertising strategies.

The problem is that unless you're a large brand with an equally large budget to invest in tech and the people to manage it, creating your own, dedicated affiliate network will be beyond your remit. And that means putting your faith – and your money – in the hands of an established affiliate network managed by a third party and relinquishing some of your advertising autonomy in the process. 

That's the perception, anyway. But does it need to be the case?

Why affiliate programmes are becoming more accessible to smaller businesses
When you think of dedicated affiliate programmes, names like Amazon, AirBnB, and Shopify come to mind. They have the marketing power, the customer base, the products to appeal to a broad audience, and the funds to pay for a dedicated tech team. But of all of those assets, with the evolution of technology, the latter is the least integral. Money always helps, of course, it does. But as long as you have products or services worth selling, it's become possible for brands of any size to implement their own affiliate programmes. And to receive the full benefit of this low-cost, highly effective marketing strategy. 

What value do dedicated affiliate programmes bring to SMEs?
Affiliate programmes have become such a mainstay of digital marketing because they can deliver strong conversion rates and a high ROI, with brand awareness also increasing with the number of affiliates promoting your goods. The difficulty is that when you work with a generic affiliate programme, you not only increase your overheads, but you lose control of the process – you have no say over which affiliates or influencers your brand is promoted by, and that holds the very real potential to damage public perception of your brand. When you manage the process yourself, you get to pick and choose the quality affiliates that share your values and best represent them to your desired audience. And once your programme is established, it can only grow year on year, despite low ongoing costs. 

What are the features of a successful affiliate marketing programme?
To make a success of any affiliate marketing programme, brands have to ensure they have control of four core elements.

• Quality affiliates – Your affiliates are your brand's face. If they don't represent your values, appeal to your demographic, or know how to properly present your products or services, they can be of no value to your business. And, in fact, can hurt your brand. 
• Strong KPIs – KPIs are the defining feature of an affiliate programme. A range of metrics will be involved, including Click-Through Rate (CTR), Conversion Rate, and Cost Per Click. And each of them will provide insights into the success of the affiliates you work with. Most affiliate programmes will also offer a range of KPIs for affiliates to choose from – Pay Per Click (PPC), Pay Per Sale (PPS), Pay Per Referral (PPR) – enabling affiliates to select a model that is most likely to work for them.  
• Tracking tools – If you don't have tracking tools, you can't monitor your KPIs or your affiliates, and your programme will fail. 
• Clear guidance and communication – If you're going to work with affiliates, you must be able to provide clear guidance of your expectations, values, and the do's and don'ts of your programme. There also needs to be a means for your affiliates to easily communicate with your company should they need support or further guidance. 

How can smaller businesses implement an in-house affiliate marketing programme?
The problem for many small businesses is that they approach affiliate marketing as a distinct entity, rather than a variation on a theme. Because, when it comes down to it, affiliate marketing is just a slightly more advanced version of a referral programme. Which means that if you have the technology to onboard a referral programme – and there are now SaaS platforms available to help you quickly create, personalise, and manage a dedicated referral programme for any business – you have the potential to extend that programme out to affiliates. 

Once you know how to create a referral link, it's yours to do what you choose with it. You may decide to focus purely on customer referrals, offering minor incentives for each new customer acquisition. Or you may decide to change the proposition, and offer your customers the opportunity to become brand advocates for their loyalty, using their unique referral links to earn money and their digital presence to broaden your customer base – by becoming an affiliate for your business. 

Affiliate marketing and referral marketing share a foundation. They are both built upon trust and loyalty, and they both allow you to benefit from these assets, which really matters at a time when 84% of consumers say that they trust recommendations from friends and family above all other sources of advertising. You can gain significant returns from relatively small investments with referral and affiliate marketing. And thanks to technology, it's now possible for businesses of all shapes and sizes to manage both marketing strategies through the use of plug-and-play referral software.