Affiliate Marketing through social media
Social media runs the world today. With about half of the world's population using it in one or more forms, the opportunities it offers to sellers and buyers are limitless.
Almost 90% of millennials are daily active users on popular sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. With that obscene number amounting to over 1.5 billion trendsetters, they become the prime target audience.
Selling as a creator and a promoter has been facilitated by the spreading popularity of social media platforms aimed at a specific audience. In a world where everyone is a consumer, everyone can be a seller as well.
You must be wondering how. Let’s find out.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate Marketing is an effective way to earn a good passive income by promoting someone’s product on your platform. You get a small commission for every sale or get paid on a monthly basis.
Why use social media for affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing has seen a steep rise in popularity and revenue in the past decade. Marketing strategies are now specifically designed with social media as a key player. It has opened up a whole new world of referrals, where the consumer has a direct role in influencing the market.
With affiliate programs, you can generate a good passive income through your social channels. You can choose what products you sell, what platforms you sell them on, and the perks you offer your followers. You control your narrative.
How to choose the best social media platform?
In a simple sentence, the answer depends on your audience and your product. Each platform caters to a different audience and serves a different purpose.
For example, Instagram and Telegram are great apps to sell directly to customers. These are called B2C marketing platforms. This helps in campaigns that run on impulse purchases. The user sees something they like, click on the link to buy the product, and you get your cut. Simple!
Facebook and LinkedIn on the other hand, cater mostly to B2B marketing. You pitch the product to a business in an elaborate, informative post in order to generate hot leads. The commission on these transactions is higher than B2C sales as well.
How to get started with Affiliate Marketing?
In order to start your journey as an affiliate, you need a couple of things in place. Don’t worry, it’s not a long list, and it doesn’t require investment.
Step 1: Finding an Affiliate Marketing platform
We have two types of affiliate programs; high-volume, low commission programs and low-volume, high-commission programs.
The former type, like Amazon, offers lower commissions depending upon the product. Such platforms offer a large customer base though. The latter type, like Kinsta, offers high commissions for the sale of their usually costly products. The sales remain low and the competition, high.
So how does one choose the best program? The answer is that it depends on your niche and audience. Simply put, you should opt for programs like Amazon and Shopify if you are marketing directly to customers, and opt for programs like Kinsta if you are selling mostly to businesses.
Here’s a helpful list of the best platforms for beginners.
Step 2: Choosing the products you want to promote
Selecting the products you want to list on your socials is the next big step. For example, your audience of makeup enthusiasts may not appreciate a post about a web hosting package deal. Always sell products in your own niche.
It is unrealistic to think that you would think of everything your audience wants at the get go. This is where keyword research comes into the picture. You can know about other products that people are interested in buying while scrolling your feed. For example, the audience of a fitness trainer is likely to buy health supplements at his referral.
Step 3: Displaying products on your platform
Once you have found the products that you want to promote, you can put their affiliate links in your content. Instagram allows one link per account, but you can include a link in each post everywhere else. All you have to do is copy the URLs and paste them strategically.
After publishing the updated content with affiliate links, you should track the performance. Simply log in to your affiliate account and find your statistics on the dashboard.
One can also easily become an affiliate on Facebook by posting about products in groups. It is a useful way to increase the reach without spending time to gain followers. A good, informative post about a good or a service can attract the right audience in the right group.
Conclusion
All you need to earn handsomely through Affiliate Marketing is good content. There is no investment required that blows a hole in your pocket. There is no advanced high-tech stuff that requires an ability to code. It just needs the affiliate to understand what the audience wants and sell it to them by making them want it.
