Who is affiliate marketing for?
If your company sells something online, then affiliate marketing will come in handy. You can sell flights, help find the best hotels, offer car rentals around the world, or sell any other services and products. With affiliate marketing, you can generate more sales.
Affiliate marketing is a well-established means of attracting customers. According to Rakuten research, more than 80% of companies in the US use affiliate marketing in their promotional strategies. At the same time, the travel niche is one of the most popular, as it is the fourth most popular affiliate category.
Companies such as TripAdvisor, GetYourGuide, Booking.com, Agoda, Hotels.com, SkyScanner, and RentalCars all use affiliate marketing to attract customers. Each of these companies has been steadily developing an affiliate program and some companies, such as Booking.com, have been developing an affiliate channel for over 10 years.
Among brands that use affiliate marketing, there are both large brands and local players.
Sales accounting is the fundamental principle of affiliate marketing, as partners earn income only for performance and you must be able to track it. If, in your business model, it is possible to set up analytics on the channels where the sale came from, then you can use the affiliate marketing channel to attract sales. It is possible to set up such analytics and sales accounting for most cases, even if you do not have such analytics now.
Affiliate marketing is based on performance and you pay partners for achieving a desired result. This opens up a number of unique opportunities for your brand. Below, we have compiled 13 reasons why your brand needs affiliate marketing.
1. High potential of traffic volume
The Internet generates a huge volume of sales in the travel industry. For example, in 2019, online bookings alone generated $600 billion for the industry.
You can expand your online audience with Travelpayouts. Within the network, a global audience of over five million people is available. Every day, advertisements on partners’ websites are seen by millions of users from around the world. The long-term work of Travelpayouts and travel brands has created an entire market for affiliate marketing within the travel niche. Today, there are more than 300,000 potential partners for your travel brand in Travelpayouts.
By running an affiliate program, you can gain access to a large volume of traffic. You do not need to independently search for partners, as everyone has already connected to Travelpayouts. You simply need to launch your brand on the Travelpayouts platform.
2. High-quality traffic
It is not only the amount of traffic that matters, but also the quality of that traffic. Since, in affiliate marketing, partners receive income only for making sales or achieving other specific goals, partners are interested in driving high-quality traffic. Otherwise, there would be no sales and the partner would have no income.
Traffic quality is the second reason your travel brand needs affiliate marketing. At Travelpayouts, we check the expertise and integrity of all marketing partners operating on the platform.
Of course, as in any other traffic acquisition channel, quality problems are also possible in the case of affiliate marketing. For example, an affiliate may violate your traffic policy and attract traffic that violates your requirements. Thanks to the monitoring and anomaly analysis system, the impact of such violations can be minimized. At Travelpayouts, traffic quality is monitored 24/7 using artificial intelligence.
3. Unique traffic
In addition to volume and quality, the affiliate channel also provides access to unique traffic. Some affiliates do not monetize their audience in any way other than via affiliate programs. This means that you cannot reach their website by purchasing advertisements on Google Ads. Affiliate marketing is the only way.
Affiliates themselves see affiliate marketing as a long-term and fair way to monetize their own traffic. Therefore, there are many unique websites and other projects among potential partners that are not represented in other promotional channels.
Therefore, affiliate marketing is a tool for your travel brand to reach a new audience that you previously could not reach.
4. New markets
Affiliate marketing is a great channel for accessing foreign markets, especially if your brand has not previously been represented there.
Travelpayouts gives you access to partners from more than 100 countries, which offers you with an incredible opportunity to enter almost any travel market in the world.
Partners not only have traffic from the countries you need, but they also know the specifics of the market and are ready to offer your services to their audiences.
5. Understandable sources
In addition to quantity, quality, and uniqueness, traffic from the affiliate channel has another advantage: clarity.
In Travelpayouts, partners indicate platforms that will be used to promote your brand, so you know exactly where your services are advertised. If you have moderation, you can also choose the sites that will advertise your services.
In Travelpayouts, you can monitor the performance of different channels, partners, and individual placements in real time, which allows you to control costs and track profits.
6. Low risks
Pay per result guarantees low risks. You will not waste your marketing budget. Instead, you will get a source of real customers and pay only for the performance.
Affiliate marketing allows you to build relationships with your customers with the help of partners and get in front of the client at the right time (when he/she is ready to make a purchase) to ensure there is low risk of wasting your marketing budget.
7. A different stream of customers
You should never rely on only one channel of customer acquisition, such as your own contextual advertising team. Companies with the least diversified customer sources are taking the most risk.
By using affiliate marketing in conjunction with other channels, you can get additional protection for your business from situations that are beyond your control.
There are various sources of traffic among your partners, such as travel blogs, emails, social networks, and others. This allows the affiliate marketing channel to perfectly adapt itself to changing conditions and provides your business with more stability.
8. Saves your team time
Direct collaborations can be an alternative to affiliate marketing. Direct advertising usually takes much more time and effort, while affiliate marketing can lead to even better results.
Partners themselves are interested in promoting your service, as they will receive income from promotions that generate sales for your business. You don’t have to keep track of every post, as the process is entirely in the hands of content creators.
For example, partners can place advertisements on their own popular YouTube channel to advertise one of the partner programs without your assistance.
By working through Travelpayouts, you do not have to spend a lot of time working on the affiliate program or devote a whole team to manage the program. Thanks to the smooth operation of the platform, you do not need to independently search for and select partners, negotiate conditions, sign a lot of agreements, or make hundreds of manual payments. Travelpayouts will solve these problems for you.
9. Brand mentions
Affiliates mention your brand when creating content, which serves as free advertising for you. In the world of affiliate marketing, you pay for actions, not mentions or impressions.
Every brand mention boosts awareness of your brand and helps your overall marketing strategy. It is also beneficial for your partners, as brand mentions are placed to attract customers and generate profits from sales.
In addition to being free of charge, such placement is beneficial for growing audience trust in your brands. As a rule, your partner’s audience has trust in their recommendations, which translates to trust in your brand.
10. Flexible options for meeting business goals
Affiliate marketing gives you the flexibility to obtain the results your business needs. Selling a product or service is just one example, but you can get more from your partners:
- Filling out an application;
- Subscribing to a newsletter;
- Installing an application;
- And other actions.
You can independently determine the target action. The most important thing is that it can be measured.
Even if your business is currently facing only non-trivial issues, they can be solved. For example, the Airbnb affiliate program (currently closed), through affiliate marketing, attracted not only tourists who booked accommodations, but also owners of accommodation facilities who published new accommodation options.
11. Working with professionals
Among the partners are completely different market participants (from beginners to professionals). The affiliate program gives you a chance to attract professionals to promote your brand. As a result, you will get access to an off-staff performer who will work on developing your brand.
For example, if your affiliate program allows traffic from contextual networks, you can get access to an experienced marketer who will set up an advertising campaign. You will actually work with him/her in exchange for payment for the result.
In addition, you share your own risks with partners, leave experienced partners to try new sources, pay only for the successful achievement of goals, and save your budget when your partners’ campaigns do not fare well.
12. Source of knowledge
Professionals are not only a source of sales, but also a source of knowledge. Your team certainly knows your service and market well, but your partners can also bring something new to the table. As the practice of BlaBlaCar has shown, you can learn from experienced webmasters and even adopt the best practices.
Affiliates have the ability to experiment on their own traffic. The results of such experiments can bring new things to your brand.
13. Long-term sales channel
Affiliate marketing is a long-term sales channel that will generate more results over time. By carrying out promotions (for example, by raising commissions or giving out promotional codes), you can increase sales in the moment. In any case, affiliate marketing is a channel that will enable you to build a long-term source of customers.
Over the long haul, new participants can join your program and current ones can develop their projects alongside your brand. For example, partners create more and more content over time, work on improving their own projects, attract more traffic, and more.
You will undoubtedly have to devote time to the affiliate program, but thanks to the technical solutions and expertise of Travelpayouts, the work can be completed semi-automatically.
Launching an affiliate program is the first step to driving more sales for your business. This is followed by the constant development of the program, which as a result, increases your returns.
How to start
Join Travelpayouts to gain access to all the benefits of affiliate marketing for your travel brand.
Travelpayouts works with travel brands of any size (from family businesses to international corporations). Joining Travelpayouts provides access to a quality target audience and worry-free affiliate program operation.
