The bases of online marketing makes use of the known principles of marketing. The fad around town being the Foreign Exchange trading and Affiliate Marketing like the Getaway Club, Club Freedom and others are online businesses which most Nigerians have recently embraced even without knowing the fundamentals of online business.Most people who do not know the rudiments of online marketing do not maximize or get the required benefit in these programs. In some cases they get their fingers burnt in the process.
Generally in business, there is no such thing as ‘nothing for something’. Just 20% of your e-marketing technique will give you an 80% result. The essence of this article is to show you how you can use affiliate marketing model to build and expand your own business.
An Affiliate program is a joint venture between a marketer and a company who wants their product to be promoted. The marketer who is the affiliate, benefits from the program by selling the company’s product for a commission. Basically, the company provides the product, the website, some marketing tools, customer service and the reward. The reward and compensation pattern for affiliates is easier than in a multilevel market. It is usually a win-win situation for both parties but the company benefits more in the deal. Companies use this method to expand their businesses within a short period of time.
This type of marketing makes use of age-long effective marketing strategy of word-of-mouth advertising where loyal customers who refer prospects to your business are rewarded.
Affiliate marketing can also be regarded as relationship marketing because it builds a true relationship between your product and your customers which is the simplest and easiest way to brand your business. Put in another form, your brand is your relationship with your prospects.
Every business no matter how small it is should use this affiliate model to expand its frontier. Though some businesses have tried to come up with different affiliate programs, the issue always bothers on integrity and sustainability of the program.
For affiliates, this could be a way of making money easily and build your own business from it if you know how to use the program to your own advantage. Selecting a high quality product from a company that has integrity is the beginning of your success in this scheme.
Before you join an affiliate program also make sure that the company has good customer service, pays good commission and the payment model is okay. Affiliates should look beyond the instant monetary reward and build a long term, back-end business around the product.
Their main aim should be to build a customer base and develop a relationship with their prospects, this will bring repeat business for them.
To improve your chances of making money with any affiliate program both online and offline, affiliates need to:
-Run their advertisement to promote the product.
-Develop your own website where the product will be marketed.
-Conduct seminars where you enlighten your prospects on the product.
-Build your customer base with e-marketing strategies. This will help you market other products.
-Provide additional resources, services related to the product and incentives to your prospects.
Here Freebies should also be used to entice prospects because everyone likes free things, so give free things.
Having shown you how you can maximize your profit level in affiliate marketing, I won’t end this article without telling you that you will benefit more if you create a product or a business and use affiliates to expand your business. It is about creating a platform where people that refers someone to your business gets rewarded for that.
You need to start your own affiliate program here in Nigeria no matter how little it is because experience have shown that most of the affiliate programs are not totally reliable, the company can go under at anytime, we have seen such things happen in the past.
All you need do to start your own affiliate program is to create a product which serves the need of the people. Provide good customer service and good reward system for your affiliates.
Small businesses in Nigeria should leverage on this type of marketing model to expand and grow their businesses. Some of the biggest companies in the world today are using affiliate programs to expand their market (like Dell computer, Amazon, Google and many others) You too can also use Affiliate Marketing to your business advantage!
