Using Social Media for Affiliate Marketing

by with No Comment Uncategorized

Today, social media uses a wide range of different social networking platforms to help its users with the creation and sharing of ideas, information, personal interests, and hobbies by establishing virtual networks. Affiliates can benefit from these groups that use web-based applications to communicate, interact, and connect. Affiliates participate by generating the content, for example with comments, articles, photos, videos. Social media is an effective communication and affiliate marketing channel that is available to individuals, small and large businesses at very low cost with the ability to share this content in real-time. But how do you start your affiliate marketing on social?

To take part affiliates and digital marketers must first register with their chosen social media platforms and create a user profile by adding their user information to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest depending on their social media objectives. Once registered, the user can connect with other users or groups of users and in this way creating networks of potential partners and even customers. In order to access these platforms, affiliates have to use the social media application or software via desktops, laptops, notepads, or by downloading and setting up the media application in smartphones.

Why use social media platforms for affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing has grown in popularity in the past ten years and has become a very important customer acquisition channel for internet retailers and a key performance marketing strategy. The main reason is that it connects digital marketers with online retailers to do business in a very straightforward way by enabling a merchant to promote its services to a wide range of affiliates in any location in a cost-effective way. By promoting the digital store, the affiliate gets paid a commission for the sales referred by his affiliate website; with both the affiliate and merchant using an affiliate tracking software to monitor impressions, clicks, sales, and commissions.

One of the easiest traffic channels available to affiliates are social media sites, they are simple and quick to set up and will help you to start driving sales and affiliate commissions. Using social media for affiliate marketing will also help you start building your brand and social media audience, however, make sure that you are also sharing quality content to your audience and that you are using the right social media platform for your business.

How do I choose the write social media platform for affiliate marketing?

Choosing which social media platform really depends on your social media objectives; are you aiming to build your brand or looking for lead generation. In any case. you need to consider which channels are used by your target audience, the channels that your competitors are using, and the type of content that is most likely to engage with your audience. With this in mind, we are going to consider a number of social media platforms that we believe are easy to set up at no cost and that can create the audience for your affiliate marketing campaigns.

How do I set up a Facebook page for affiliate marketing campaigns? 

As an affiliate marketer, you need to ensure that you are set up with the largest social media platform from day one. Facebook not only has the largest network, but it also offers many targeting options. Furthermore, it offers all types of audiences to both merchant and affiliate websites to promote any type of service or product. The first thing that an affiliate should do is to create their own Facebook page by just entering some basic information and update the profile.

Once you have created your own Facebook page, you should select a theme to focus on based on your personal interest or knowledge and promote related affiliate products in this page. You should also treat it as a regular and long-term marketing activity making sure that it delivers good quality and highly relevant content to your followers.

SEO for Facebook

As with a website, there are some basic SEO actions that you need to have in place for your Facebook page. The first thing is to get your Facebook page URL shortened to make it more readable for Google (you can get your shortened URL after getting 25 likes on your page). Getting back-links from reputable Facebook pages in your niche is also important for SEO purposes and always make sure that you include your relevant keywords at the start of the sentence in your status updates.

Buying Facebook likes Vs. Organic Facebook likes

Stay away from buying likes and instead focus on getting organic likes. You can start getting likes by letting your contacts know about your new Facebook page and ask them to “like” your page in order to get updates from you. The next step is to regularly engage with your audience by posting regularly (not spamming your followers), and as you do it, you’ll get a general feel for what works taking into account that posts with photos and videos get more likes.

Frequency of Facebook posts

As far as posting frequency, according to some social media experts, posting once per day is optimal with a maximum of two posts per day, while the social media platform HubSpot recommends posting at least 3 times per week. The timing of your posts is also important, and it depends on when your audience is online, to this end, affiliates should check this in the Facebook insights of your Facebook account, so it really depends on the needs of each individual business.

You can also start promoting your page via Facebook Groups, so is very important that you find the right group for your audience, join it, and make your own regular contributions. To be successful in these groups you need to be patient and make worthwhile contributions by participating in discussions, offering advice, and sharing valuable content

How do I use Twitter for affiliate marketing?

Twitter has been around since 2006 and has approximately 330 million monthly active users. Although it’s not as large as other social media platforms, it offers affiliates an additional marketing channel. For those of you that don’t know (firstly where have you been?! secondly read on) Twitter allows users to write short messages with a maximum of 280 characters per Tweet, giving users the chance to write very concise and snappy messages.

Using Twitter for affiliate marketing will help you to increase your brand awareness and most importantly, to start building your own audience of loyal followers. As you communicate regularly and build a closer relationship with your followers, many of them will become partners and deliver valuable leads in due course.

Setting up your Twitter account

Once you have signed up to Twitter, make sure that you have a good profile for your future visitors to get an idea of who you are, including a short description of you, hobbies, interests, and the URL of your website as well. The next step is to start getting followers to your Twitter account and by doing so increase your audience. You can get followers by following users in your niche first, post engaging posts with useful advice to your followers, retweet advice from trusted users and as an additional option, you can increase the number of followers by running paid campaigns.

When running affiliate marketing campaigns via Twitter, it’s also very important to get the timing of your Tweets right based on what type of business you have. B2B companies, for example, get the most out of Twitter when they post on weekdays whereas, for B2C companies, weekends are the most engaged. To boost the engagement of your Tweets it’s advisable to use images ad hashtags. Hashtags are vital for affiliate marketing as they tell the relevancy of the content to users and find relevant hashtags for words about your product or service, for example, #AffiliateMarketing, #MakeMoney and add them to your Twitter post.

Twitter affiliate marketing allows you to monetize your social media following by adding offers from affiliate programs relevant to your audience and Twitter account content. As you become an expert in your affiliate niche, then you can start promoting your products and services from different affiliate merchants and by doing so, earn commissions. Winning!

How do I use Instagram for affiliate marketing?

Instagram is a great platform for affiliate marketing because it gives you the chance to monetize your audience easily. Instagrammers can promote an affiliate merchants’ products by placing a discrete affiliate link in published content. In exchange, the Instagram affiliate gets paid the commission percentage once a service has been purchased by a member of their audience.

One of the main obstacles when promoting affiliate products and services via Instagram is the limited opportunity to post links as only one link is permitted per biography, so affiliates need to be creative and promote the offers in alternative ways to be able to track performance. One way is to use the affiliate link in your Instagram biography to promote your top-performing service or product and change it as when required with new top-performing products.

Promoting Affiliate Offers in Instagram

You can also promote your affiliate offers by just writing it on the images as a text overlay and use a tool to shorten the long tracking URL, for example, Bit.ly. Instagram affiliates can also use coupons instead of tracking links and display the coupon as a text overlay on images to enable affiliate tracking. Finally, make sure you add the coupon or tracking link supplied by the affiliate to the image description and add a call to action. Making sure that you use high-quality images, videos, and hashtags in the description of the images are vital.

How do I use YouTube for affiliate marketing?

YouTube is the leading video sharing platform on the internet that allows users to upload, share, and comment on videos as well as subscribing to other YouTube users. YouTube is the second largest search engine and the second most visited website after Google. The platform has launched in over 91 countries and is available in 80 different languages making it the second-largest social media platform with 1.9 billion logged-in users per month.

The above statistics show the vast potential that the YouTube social media platform can offer for running affiliate marketing campaigns, making online video a great medium to reach and engage with your audience.  As with other social media channels, you can monetize your video content as part of your affiliate marketing campaigns by creating videos and placing affiliate links in the video and the video descriptions. Affiliates can also place a small image overlay on the video with the tracking link.

Tracking affiliate marketing on YouTube

Affiliate marketers can use any of the tracking methods above to redirect the user to the affiliate website or affiliate landing page, where the user will make the purchase and generate the corresponding commission. To this end, there are a number of video formats that affiliate marketers can use to drive traffic to the affiliate merchant and earn commissions from these sales. Examples of suitable video types are Product reviews, Comparison Videos, How-to Videos, and Best of Videos.

So, affiliates can harness the potential of YouTube videos by setting up a video channel and use it to deliver useful videos with good quality and engaging videos and monetize them with affiliate tracking links. As mentioned above you can place the affiliate links in the video description but be mindful of the number of links so you don’t come across as spammy.

Social media platforms are ideal for promoting affiliate marketing campaigns and it’s up to you to decide which one is most suitable for your promotional campaigns. These platforms offer a great opportunity for building your brand online, growing your own audience of followers, and generate leads, sales, and commissions.

Monetize your social media traffic by joining a high paying affiliate program that also pays you a recurrent commission, Graphic and Web pays a high 50% lifetime recurring commission to all its affiliates, we also accept applications and traffic from all geos. Our affiliate program is free to join and offers affiliates support via email, chat, and Skype. 

TOP 10 SERVICES INCLUDED IN A BRANDING PACKAGE. WHO NEEDS THEM?

by with 3 Comments graphic_designmarketing101

#1 LOGO DESIGN

Logo and brand design are tightly intertwined since any logo is an inherent part of visual brand identity. Besides, a complete branding package almost always offers logo creation as one of its primary services.

Logo design is a perfect way to make your company noticeable among its competitors and lay the foundation for your future marketing success. Since its first days, a logo will build a strong association with your company and services. Hence, make sure to invest in its quality and design. Also, note that there are different types of logos to choose from.

You’ll have to design the most suitable option for your case. Regardless of whether you order a complete branding package or a separate item, a logo is a must. Ideally, the logo design should be created before both large or small business is launched.logo design for SF catering company01logo design for SF catering company

#2 COLOR PALETTE

If you are just launching a company or still haven’t selected your brand colors, ask to add this option to your branding kit. A color palette has a significant influence on your brand image and perception.

Moreover, this branding package service is necessary for any company interested in long-term development and high-quality marketing. Note that color selection is a crucial visual branding step, so make sure to entrust it to professionals.Color Palette02Color Palette

#3 EMAIL TEMPLATES

Nowadays, a huge number of business operations happen online. Hence, it’s almost impossible to keep the leading market position if you don’t use emails as one of your marketing channels.

This is especially true for those engaged in e-commerce. A branding kit of every online store would be incomplete without branded email templates.

They turn your newsletters into a more powerful promotional tool and encourage recipients to take action. Therefore, don’t hesitate to use this branding package option if you send a lot of B2C or B2B emails and need to brand them.A branding kit of every online store would be incomplete without branded email templates03A branding kit of every online store would be incomplete without branded email templates

#4 WEBSITE

We know that websites aren’t the first thing associated with business branding packages. However, if you’re lucky to find a professional design agency, it may offer you website design as a branding kit option.

Moreover, it’s nice to have some branding elements on your official web page to promote your brand online. Even the most popular offline leaders need to work on their online presence to expand their target audience and promote their products. Thus, a stylish, convenient, and informative website is something any company cannot live without.

Check out a food provider’s website designed by The Coder to see how it combines several branding elements and promotes the services.Concept of website design04Concept of website design

#5 TYPOGRAPHY

Let’s be honest, typography isn’t the most popular branding element, and many companies choose to ignore it. In most cases, they believe that font selection is easy and doesn’t require careful reasoning.

Only professionals know the power of typography and its impact on the overall perception of branding. Therefore, a full branding package includes typography as its key element supplementing others.

Unlike a large enterprise, a small business can do without customized fonts. Especially, if it doesn’t use a lot of titles or text content. Yet for seamless multifaceted branding experience, it’s better to design customized fonts.Typography one of the most branding element05Typography one of the most branding element

#6 LETTERHEAD

If you send a lot of email attachments or use direct mail marketing, make sure to design a customized letterhead. This package branding element will make your message more memorable and increase response rates.

It usually includes the name and address of a company placed on its brand colors at the top of the page. Creating a letterhead, it’s important to stick to your brand style and use the right proportions of the heading and blank space.Letterhead design for SF catering company06Letterhead design for SF catering company

#7 BROCHURES

Brochures aren’t included in all branding packages for an obvious reason. Therefore, if you want to start a direct mail campaign or distribute printed marketing materials through any other channels, discuss this directly with your design agency.

Most brochures contain the logo, slogan, services, advantages, and contact information of a company. This is a perfect mix that covers the informational needs of an average target audience. Professional designers will help you create a brochure that catches attention and presents your brand in the most appealing way. Also, this method is usually favored by a medium or small business that operates locally and bets on offline marketing.Mask Group 18807Mask Group 188

#8 BUSINESS CARDS

Most corporate identity packages offer business cards. Easy to design and cheap to print they play an important role in your visual brand identity. If you hire many people and need a similar business card design, the agency will provide you with a customizable template.

Your company size and type of services have absolutely no impact on the necessity to use business cards. Everyone should be able to easily share their contact information. So it’s better to order business card design along with other branding items.Business cards design for SF catering company08Business cards design for SF catering company

#9 PACKAGE DESIGN

In some cases, a branding package heavily depends on a product package (Sounds pretty complicated, right?) Let’s clarify what we mean here. Package design is the look of all products that end consumers see in a shop or an online store. Want an example? The Coder has created branding that includes package design, for Concierge Catering. Click here to check out the final result.

Packages have a strong influence on the decision-making process. Furthermore, people often buy something only because they like its look. Thus, if you are a company that produces any mass-market product, you’d better entrust your product package to professionals. This will be a wise investment in the development of your company and a great way to stand among your competitors.Packaging design for SF catering company09Packaging design for SF catering company

#10 STYLE GUIDES

A style guide is a comprehensive rulebook with all specifications related to your brand. In particular, it will include your mission, vision, core values, company voice, logo, typography, and principles.

Style guides will come in handy to marketers, graphic designers, web developers, sales team, and anyone who needs to present a unified vision of your brand to your target audience.

This type of branding package is most suitable for large market players willing to build a far-reaching marketing strategy.

The listed items aren’t neither canonical nor exclusive. Besides, they don’t necessarily have to be included in every branding package. This is a basis you can rely on to understand what visual branding can boost your marketing campaign. In some cases, it’s even better to refuse from a branding package in favor of separate branded items.

If you hire a design agency that is flexible and open for communication, there should be no problems with that. You will be able to select the required branding elements and find the optimum solution for your project.

The Coder covers all these branding package elements and even more. Contact us to discuss branding package prices for your business.A style quide is a comprehensive rulebook with all specifications related to your brand10A style guide is a comprehensive rulebook with all specifications related to your brand

Eight Marketing Strategies Every Startup Or Small Business Can Afford

by with No Comment marketing101

As the founder of a marketing company that helps startups and small businesses, people often ask me, “How can we effectively market and scale with a tight budget?” It can be challenging to decide where to invest your time and limited resources in marketing. Should you invest in the top of the funnel or the bottom? 

In my experience, a full-funnel approach is usually the most sustainable over time. That said, certain strategies are just out of reach and do not make sense for smaller companies — like, for example, TV advertising. Here are eight tried-and-tested marketing strategies I recommend every startup or small business consider:

1. Earned Media/PR

The value of a credible third party touting your praises cannot be underestimated. Not only do press articles and earned media gain you trust, but you can also benefit from a wider distribution by leveraging their existing audiences. Influencers and bloggers can fall into this category and can share your company with their followers, which gains you an endorsement with potentially exponential reach. Stunts can also be a creative (and low-cost, if done right) way to garner media attention or that of your target market. 

2. Content Marketing

Creating content that’s relevant and interesting to your target audience can help you generate new leads by capturing their interest and building trust. It can also help increase your close ratio by building your brand, answering customer questions and providing reasons why prospects should choose you. From articles to infographics to eBooks and even videos, you should showcase your expertise, differentiation and brand values to attract potential customers and help those who are already considering you to make that purchase decision. Great content also often gets featured and backlinked, so you can increase your domain authority by placing it on your website. 

3. Partner Marketing

Partnering with another company or organization that has a similar target customer can help you both increase your reach and marketing abilities if you pool your resources together to build your brands. Complimentary products and services can be a great place to start. By sharing email lists, exchanging blogs, bundling offerings or even co-branding programs, ads or sponsorships, you can create win-win situations for both partners. 

4. Social Media

Having your own social channels not only allows you to control your message and share updates freely, but also allows you to build a community around your brand, company and product. As a free channel to activate, social media can be a great place to build user-generated content, get feedback or even address customer service concerns. Many customers also look to social channels to see if they can trust the brand or company or to check out their reviews, so maintaining a presence can actually help conversion rates. 

5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Most people search for information online, and organic search can account for the majority of a website’s traffic. This makes optimizing your website for SEO extremely important. Through strategic SEO, you can introduce yourself to leads with a high need state or purchase intent, which can make this kind of business easier to close. Furthermore, if a customer searches for help with a problem and your website comes up, this helps position you as a credible, trustworthy source to help them. 

6. Email Marketing

If you’ve built your email list right, you’ve gathered a group of people who have expressed some interest in your company or product. By segmenting this group based on different characteristics and then emailing them with the right content and offers at the right time in their customer journey, you can influence a purchase decision successfully with no added impact to your marketing budget. 

7. Affiliate Programs

Affiliates are a cost-effective way to build sales without adding large fixed marketing costs like advertising. Because they have skin in the game, affiliates are properly incentivized to promote your products or services and are only rewarded if they are successful. These affiliates can take the form of influencers, content publishers and review or coupon sites, and you can structure the partnerships to pay out based on clicks, leads or sales. 

8. Referral Marketing

Tapping into the goodwill of happy, existing customers is one of the fastest, easiest and most cost-effective ways to grow. Mobilize your customers to spread the word about your products or services by reminding them to share their experiences and incentivizing them to bring new business to you. You’ll likely get highly qualified leads at a lower overall cost of acquisition than if you had to find them on your own. 

Even with a modest budget, there are many options available to you to create a solid marketing plan as a startup or small business. By employing a number of different affordable strategies that address the entire marketing funnel, from awareness through conversion and advocacy, you can strategically, creatively and tactfully garner customers and build revenues to eventually reinvest in your marketing efforts and speed up your growth. 

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