In today's dynamic and progressive market, effective marketing strategy has became the most important tools to survive and sustain in the market for longer time which has led to the development of various marketing concepts that have been proved to be highly effective than the traditional marketing strategies. Affiliate marketing has emerged as one of the most effective marketing tools in present context that has made marketing and promotion easier as well as efficient.
Affiliate marketing is basically a performance based marketing system in which the affiliates are paid commission by the business for every lead or sale they drive to their website. In affiliate marketing there are basically four players involved: the merchant, the network, the publisher and the customers.
Merchant:
Merchants are the retailer or the brand for which the marketing effort is to be done.
Network:
Network refers to the affiliates from which the merchant choose to elect. This also follows the payment options.
Publisher:
These are called the affiliates that relate to affiliate marketing.
Customer:
Customers are the ultimate factors who influence to the visit and ultimately lead to revenue generation for the merchant.
Affiliate marketing has now a day's emerged as a boon for promoting organizational product and services due to its cost effectiveness and efficiency to attract a large number of visitors conveniently as well as fast. Moreover, integration of concepts like organic search engine optimization (SEO), Social media marketing, paid search engine marketing (PPC - Pay Per Click), e-mail marketing, content marketing and display advertising is even alluring to the merchants that adds high benefits in terms of revenue generation in less promotional expenditure.
Merchants providing goods and services on internet basically use three affiliate program commission payments in general:
Cost Per Sale (CPA)
In CPA, the affiliate refers a visitor to the merchant's website, who purchases the goods or services from there. This is also called cost per acquisition.
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
The affiliate refers a visitor, who then fills a form on merchants website and the payment structure is called cost per lead (CPL).
Cost Per Click (CPC)
A visitor to the Affiliates web site clicks on a Merchant's advertisement or banner on Merchant's web site and the payment system is called - cost per click (CPC).
In today's dynamic and internet driven world, affiliate marketing has proved to be one of the most effective promotional tools for any business. The domains of internet marketing are extending its horizons with each day and implementation of useful affiliate marketing can certainly help a business for sustainable growth. It helps spreading a strong online presence to the website in different search engines and helps in business growth significantly in terms of popularity as well as revenue generation.