How to Leverage Social Media to Grow Affiliate Programs

Have you heard? Social media is where nearly everybody is at these days doing their own thing. It has mass appeal and mass following, the reason it has become an essential channel for online marketers to grow their affiliate programs. Today, mass adoption of social media by marketers has no doubt impacted every facet of marketing in many and immeasurable ways. The most beneficial way appears to be affiliate and partner marketing since this is carefully designed to leverage on the popularity of social media. Essentially, in the online marketing world of today, any type of partner, including influencers, can leverage the principles of affiliate marketing to reach a very wide range of consumers exactly where they tend to spend a very significant part of their time while online. Such channels include but not limited to where a majority of them may be found just scrolling around. Such places like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest where they are either following influencers, or they are influencers themselves. This established relationship hugely supports the idea that influencers and social media together can help bring an incredible monetization opportunity for affiliates involved in affiliate marketing programs.

 

Many online marketers now know that they can find a wealth of new opportunities for engaging with potential customers via social media channels. The good news is that it works! Just as consumers grow more and more comfortable using social media channels for brand and product discovery, and shopping, social media options continue to expand. Thus, if you are a marketer looking to deepen your relationships with customers, it is smart to consider leveraging social media in your affiliate marketing efforts. With the ease of use, popularity, mass appeal and easy tracking technology associated with social media, good marketers can easily take advantage of these offers to grow their revenues and affiliate businesses.
Here are some simple ways affiliates can leverage social media to grow their revenues and affiliate businesses.

Always Take Advantage of Social Media Innovations
 
Social media platforms are always trying to evolve new and practical ways to satisfy their numerous users. That is why many like to innovate based mostly on user preferences. These innovations bring with them, new social tactics more user-friendly platforms which are better at engaging the target audiences. As a marketer, it is smart to always seize the opportunities of these new innovations with a view to leveraging the newest ways to acquire new customers and build brand loyalists as a viable way to grow your affiliate marketing business.

Leverage Advanced Tracking Capabilities of Mobile Commerce

The world is increasingly in a hurry and mobile devices are becoming indispensable in world commerce. Most people are finding it increasingly easier to complete business transactions right from their mobile devices. These devices now come with advanced tracking capabilities which affiliate marketers can rely on to determine the direction and progress of their marketing efforts. Facebook alone as a very popular social media platform has over 1.3 billion active users and over 90% of these persons are accessing the platform by way of mobile devices. In combination with other social media platforms out there, we are looking at over 3.5 billion active users. That is a huge mobile market out there with advanced tracking capabilities affiliate marketers can leverage for their businesses. Marketers can now track nearly everything from what partner influenced an app download to what mobile tracking link led to a conversion. That makes it easy for them to incentivize their affiliate partners to ensure prompt and accurate payment of commissions. These advanced tracking capabilities of mobile devices now make it easier than ever before to optimize affiliate campaigns which marketers are running through social media platforms.

Target Your Audience from Their Favorite Platforms
 
Well, it is a marketing truism that every business person must try to take his business to where the right customers can be found. Daily, many social media users spend considerable time on the platforms and many are on multiple platforms. That is where they can be accurately targeted depending on which platforms they use more. Even if you are partnering with publishers, media brands, influencers, or other brands, distributing co-marketing content on the social networks exactly where your audience is active tends to make a very good marketing sense. That ensures a more even and much cheaper distribution among content marketers, bloggers/influencers, and social media channels. It engenders better results as well.


 
Align Your Content to All Stages of the Consumer’s Journey 

In today’s social media-obsessed world, many bloggers and other content marketing affiliates rely hugely on social media to creatively and effectively promote their brands. On social media, they rely heavily on good content to drive awareness, consideration, and eventual purchase. Therefore, social media tends to play a very huge role in the early stages of the consumer journey up to the final click to buy. Advanced tracking capabilities enables marketers to deploy better attribution and improved partner commissioning strategies. Thus, by including social media channels in your affiliate programs, you can easily enhance your ability to reach consumers in all stages of the purchase journey starting from product research to comparing prices to the actual buying of the product/service. With the ease of tracking transactions from anywhere associated with them, social media partnerships now help immensely to broaden affiliate marketing techniques and with better results in tow.

Work with Affiliates who have Commanding Influence on Social Media
 
This influence is determined by the number of followers the affiliate already has who trust him and rely in his judgement to make buying decisions. Working with such influencers as partners helps to get marketing traction faster online. If you choose to distribute promotions and offers through social media influencers, the purposes may be different. Maybe you are looking to elevate average order value, repeat purchases, or new product/service experimentation. The type of influencer you settle for on social media will largely determine how successful your quest can be. By setting very clear expectations up front with your social partners, it will therefore not cause future disputes to determine exactly what constitutes a desired action, and what doesn’t. That settled, it becomes easy for you to optimize high-performing programs and to drive incremental revenue through the social media channels that are working well and giving the desired results.