The profile of the publishers in affiliate marketing is very diverse, going from individuals to companies. Regarding the sources of traffic, we can say that nowadays almost all the traffic sources available in the internet can be used to market products through affiliate marketing. In the last years the more and more bloggers started working with affiliate platforms, and not only for displaying ads in their blogs but also for creating custom content for brands and get paid for it. In this article we will explain how this kind of traffic sources can fit in your marketing strategy.
As an advertiser/brand you probably have your own content strategy and you are focusing efforts towards that direction. Whether you have an internal team or you work with external partners, when working with content affiliates through affiliate marketing it is important to get feedback from your content team and use affiliate marketing to work in the same direction. It is very important to keep the content creation consistent, from both your internal team and affiliates. You do not want potential clients to see contradictive messages in different websites about your brand. Coordinating the content creation with the different content creators is a must if you want this source of traffic to be effective.
It is possible that you were already working with external partners for the content creation and publishing, so in this case, affiliate marketing could be considered as a way of getting new content publishers to work with your brand. In order to select the best ones you will have to evaluate their websites, the relevance to your products/services and the traffic they have.
The most common way to pay affiliates is CPA, but when it comes to content this may not be the ideal retribution model. The content created by affiliates will support your brand awareness, and will have an impact in the consideration your potential clients may have from your brand. A single affiliate may not generate direct sales from his content, but the sum of all of them will have the power to convince future clients. CPA model won’t work in this case, so other retribution models should be used for this channel, such as pay per impression or pay per view.