You may have heard of this thing called affiliate marketing. It’s a not so quiet segment of online marketing that Forrester predicts will experience a 17 percent compounded annual growth rate between 2-12 and 2016 to become a $4.5 billion segment.
I’ve been to Affiliate Summit, the premiere conference in the space, every year since 2008 as attendee, press or photographer. While I can’t say I’m an uber affiliate marketing professional after all those years (my own fault), I can say I’ve formed some of the closest personal and business bonds of any of the many marketing conferences I attend. And I’ve learned about an entirely new segment of online marketing.
So what is affiliate marketing? A partnership whereby independent online marketers promote a brand’s product or service and receive performance-based remuneration in exchange. If you’ve ever scene Amazon book ads on a website, you’ve experience affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Summit is an event that includes merchants (brands) looking to partner with affiliates (individual marketers who promote merchant products) and networks (like ad networks, connectors between merchants/brands and affiliates/sites) as well as the affiliate managers who manage affiliate programs for brands.
If you’re a brand who is interested increasing sales (ok, that’s everybody) then you will (and should) most certainly be interested in affiliate marketing. After all, what brand wouldn’t want to exponentially increase its sales force without hiring boatloads of sales people. Yes, you part with a percentage of your profit with an affiliate marketing program but the increased sales you can achieve far outweigh that pittance of percentage.
Check out this video touting the Affiliate Summit conference. It’s geared mainly to affiliates but you will get a sense of how your brand could fit into the equation. If, after watching, you think the event might be worth attending, check out more information and register here.
