Can Affiliate Marketing Help Service Businesses?

If you ask any marketer today, both experienced and new ones, about affiliate marketing, they would probably say it’s a good idea for your business.

But does that apply to service businesses as well?

Service businesses do not sell tangible products. They provide a service or support to their clients/customers. A few examples are travel agencies, accounting firms, or any business where you’re not selling a physical item but providing a service.

However, all businesses need traffic and leads in order to grow and affiliate marketing can help with that. 

In this post, we talk about affiliate marketing and service businesses and how this marketing method can you.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a simple and popular marketing system where an affiliate joins an affiliate program created by a merchant to promote a brand’s product or service for a commission. 

Hence the reason why about 80% of brands have affiliate programs.

The affiliate, also called the publisher, joins a merchant’s affiliate program and chooses a product to promote. The affiliate then creates content with the goal of promoting/selling that product through affiliate links embedded in the content. 

When a user clicks on the affiliate link and purchases said product, the affiliate gets a commission. They receive a percentage for every sale made through the affiliate links. 

Exposure

If there is one thing that every brand needs it is exposure. How do you get exposure when the competition is so fierce and the market seems flooded with similar services to yours?

Affiliate marketing helps businesses achieve just that. It enables businesses to reach a wider audience, an audience that would have otherwise been very hard to reach.

Thanks to affiliates with specific niches and selected audiences, you get more traffic coming from people who are actually interested in your service which then boosts conversion rates. 

Choosing affiliates who can connect to your brand and have a genuine interest in the service can help you expand your pool of customers.

This exposure is priceless and the commission fee is a small price to pay for it.

Brand Awareness

Another way affiliate marketing can your service business is by boosting brand awareness.

The ultimate goal of every brand is to be recognized for top-quality service, right?

When you start affiliate marketing and carefully vet affiliates to select those who are genuinely interested in your service, they become your advocates. They want to earn money so they are highly motivated to promote your service.

This helps build trust among customers and drive traffic to your company website. If the affiliate’s target audience trusts the affiliate and their content, they will eventually start trusting you as well.

The fact that 79% of marketers use affiliate marketing to engage customers only further proves how beneficial this marketing tactic is. Check out our tips for designing branded banners as well.

Save Time and Money on Marketing

Perhaps the major benefit of affiliate marketing for service businesses is saving time and money on marketing. 

Big brands spend large sums on marketing every year but small businesses can’t compete with that. Affiliate marketing essentially provides the same opportunity for both big and small businesses to compete for their share of the market but at a fraction of the cost. 

The marketing tactic is very low-cost since there are no upfront fees. You pay the affiliate when they make a sale, not before. 

But you’re not just saving money, you’re also saving a lot of time since essentially, affiliate marketing is like expanding your team of marketers. Other people work to promote your brand and boost sales while you get a passive income and only pay a percentage of each sale to the affiliate. 

For small, struggling businesses, this is a marvellous solution, especially because most of them can’t afford to hire more people or invest in elaborate marketing strategies. 

Things to Keep in Mind

When starting an affiliate program to grow your service business, you should be careful about which affiliates you accept into the program. 

Affiliate marketing will benefit your business only if the affiliates are genuinely interested and knowledgeable about the service (or willing to learn) in order to promote it to their target audience. 

Another vital thing is the quality of their content. Whether it’s a blog or a YouTube channel, the content should be engaging and useful, otherwise, it won’t resonate with consumers. 

It’s best to have a vetting process in place when recruiting affiliates to join your program.