Affiliate Marketing – One of Top Customer Acquisition Methods

For a long (in fact, way too long of a) time affiliate marketing experts did not have a seat the CMO’s table when digital strategy was discussed and online customer acquisition channels were budgeted for. In 2015, however, we have finally noticed a significant change in this as (a) more research has been conducted and published, and (b) more brands have been giving affiliate marketing a try.

Earlier this year, in conjunction with Shop.org and Bizrate Insights, Forrester Research released their much-anticipated report on The State Of Retailing Online 2015: Key Metrics, Initiatives, and Mobile Benchmarks. Among other things, 224 survey participants were asked to rank their most effective customer acquisition methods. Here are the top seven arranged by popularity (bold font mine):

58%: search engine marketing (mobile and desktop)
55%: SEO and natural search optimization
52%: email (to a house list)
38%: affiliate marketing
31%: online marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, Rakuten)
27%: remarketing and retargeting
25%: Facebook

Furthermore, The Affiliate Marketing Report from BI Intelligence, announced just last week, revealed that in the U.S. affiliate marketing currently drives as many e-commerce orders in the as email, which makes it third only to SEO and SEM.

Here is a graph that compares 2014 to 2015 (again, highlighting mine):

BI Intelligence has also emphasized that “approximately 15% of the digital media industry’s revenue now comes from affiliate marketing.”

If your brand is not yet employing this highly effective marketing method, drop me a line. I’d love to see how/if I can help.