Alot of people who dabble in affiliate marketing continually ask the same question:
“Is affiliate marketing just content marketing?”
The answer is
“no”, and I’ll tell you why.
Even though they are both different, they work together seamlessly to achieve the same goal.
In affiliate marketing, you
earn a commission when you successfully promote and generate a sale for someone else’s product. But with content marketing, you’re creating content in various forms to build awareness about a product or website – or to help generate a sale.
Without content marketing, your affiliate marketing efforts are
stagnated. Let’s delve in further and take a look at how content marketing and affiliate marketing differ.
Affiliate Marketing Explained
As stated earlier,
affiliate marketing is where you get paid for successfully promoting someone else’s product or service. You get paid a percentage of the sale, and your only job is to promote the product successfully.
In affiliate marketing, you don’t have to worry about alot of things. For example:
- You don’t have to create a product
- You don’t have to worry about customer service
- You technically don’t necessarily have to create a website
- You don’t have to write a sales page
- Sometimes you don’t have to create marketing materials
All of these things are taken care of by the company or person who owns the product you’re promoting. Your job is to
market the affiliate product. You can market the product in various ways such as:
Once you start
promoting your affiliate link and people click on your link and then buy, you earn money each time they purchase through your link.
You can get started in affiliate marketing by signing up to
different affiliate platforms that allow you to promote products immediately. Affiliate marketing is a quick business to get into, but you will want to follow
best marketing practices to make your affiliate marketing efforts profitable.
Is affiliate marketing just content marketing? Well, let’s take a look at what content marketing is so that you can see the difference.
Content Marketing Explained
Content marketing is different from affiliate marketing. With content marketing, you create content in different formats for the
sole goal of bringing awareness about a product, service, or website.
Content can come in all kinds of forms, such as:
Your sole goal with content marketing is to provide helpful information that leads a prospect in the direction of purchasing whatever product or service you’re promoting.
The kind of content that you will create will more than likely depend on your
skill set. If you enjoy writing, then
SEO and blogging will be more up your alley. If you love being on camera, then Youtube videos will probably be your desired medium. If you love to talk, then podcasting and social media may be your best outlets.
No matter which medium you choose, you’re trying to
achieve the same goal:
Build awareness about a brand, product, service, or website for the goal of increasing revenue.
Content marketing is a marketing technique, not a business model.
So is affiliate marketing just content marketing?
No, it isn’t.
How Affiliate Marketing And Content Marketing Work Together
You can do content marketing to make money with affiliate marketing. You can create content and promote your affiliate links in the content you create, to
earn money from an affiliate program.
When promoting an affiliate product,
“how-to” content works great for building your credibility and getting people to trust your recommendation for a particular product.
But there are other kinds of content that you can create for affiliate marketing that are great for generating sales. These are:
- Product comparison content
Let’s take a look at each one individually.
“Best Of” Content
This kind of content focuses on
marketing an affiliate product. All it does is give a list of products that you recommend in a particular niche category.
For example, you’ll see content such as: “best Youtube video software”, “best Bluetooth speaker”, “best smart TV”, etc.
You’ll give your reasons as to
why a particular affiliate product is the best,
then include your affiliate link at the end so that people can click through to the product’s sale page – where you’ll potentially earn a commission if they buy.
Product Review Content
This kind of content focuses specifically on
1 affiliate product that you’re promoting. All you’re doing is giving your review about an affiliate product and listing the reasons why someone should purchase this product.
It’s important to give an
unbiased and honest review and try to be as objective as possible. If you can, sprinkle in your affiliate links in relevant areas of the review to entice people to click on your links.
There is an art and science of writing a product review, however, if you’re not skilled at writing one, you should just focus on listing the
features and benefits of the affiliate product, and stating how the product will help the consumer who’s reading it.
Product Comparison Content
With this kind of content, all you’re doing is matching up
2 or more similar products in a niche, and sharing the pros and cons of each. This is most effectively done in a chart or table format.
You can include your affiliate link in all products compared so that you can earn a commission if someone buys a particular product that they find best suits them. You see this alot with
Amazon affiliate products.
Product Resource Pages
With this kind of content, all you’re doing is creating pages where you share a
list of affiliate products that you’ve used before that have brought great results for you.
You know that the products are good and that whoever buys them will have positive results also. It’s just a resource page of products that you think people will have success with.
Final Thoughts: Is Affiliate Marketing Just Content Marketing?
As you can see, affiliate marketing and content marketing are not the same. Individually they differ in meaning, but they can work together to
bring you more sales for your business.
It’s in your best interest to create as much high-quality content as possible for your affiliate marketing efforts if you want to
generate commissions around the clock.
The more content you can create the better, and remember that you can create content in various formats.
Sometimes your content can attract the attention of affiliate managers who want to partner with you and offer you
higher commissions on niche products that may be a great fit for your audience.
In cases like this, you can earn more money per sale and establish a long-term partnership that can be lucrative for years to come.
