How to Start an Affiliate Marketing Program on Shopify

Learning how to start an Affiliate Marketing Program for your Shopify store can be an excellent way to bag more leads for your business. After all, the more leads you attract to your store and products, the more revenue you can potentially earn. 

Unfortunately, generating traffic, and engagement, in today’s competitive landscape is rarely as simple as it seems. Digital advertising strategies, such as paid ads, and content marketing are growing increasingly more complex (and expensive). 

Affiliate marketing could be the ideal alternative. Not only does it give you the opportunity to leverage the power of influence to increase your conversion rates, but it can improve your brand’s reputation too. Here’s everything you need to know to get started. 

What is an Affiliate Marketing Program for Shopify?

Before we dive into how you can start an affiliate marketing program on Shopify, it’s worth outlining what affiliate marketing is, and how it works. 

An affiliate marketing program is essentially a reward-based marketing strategy, where people promote your products or services in exchange for compensation. Influencers, bloggers, and consumers advocate for your product, and send customers to your website using a tracked link.  

Whenever a visitor who clicks on one of those links makes a purchase, the affiliate earns a reward. Affiliate marketing campaigns are relatively straightforward, and effective in both B2B and B2C business landscapes. With the right strategy, affiliate marketing can be a cost-effective strategy for advertisers looking to drive brand awareness, and improve your store’s reputation. 

Plus, affiliate programs create a win/win situation for both parties, as they offer content creators a convenient way to make extra income. 

Is Affiliate Marketing Right for You?

Before you launch an affiliate marketing program, it’s worth determining whether it’s the right strategy for your business. Affiliate marketing can be extremely valuable. According to some studies, it’s responsible for up to 16% of all internet orders in the US. Plus, 81% of marketers regularly use affiliate programs to drive sales. However, it’s not right for every business. 

If you have very small profit margins, it might be hard to pay affiliates to promote your products. Additionally, affiliate marketing can work better for some industries than others. If you’re not certain whether affiliate campaigns work in your niche, look at your competitors. 

If they show evidence of a successful affiliate campaign on their websites, or have lots of affiliate links coming back to them from other sites, there’s a good chance affiliate marketing will work for you. If you find affiliate marketing isn’t an ideal option for your brand, you can always consider alternatives, like working with influencers directly. 

How to Start an Affiliate Marketing Program on Shopify

Shopify makes it relatively easy to launch various kinds of marketing campaigns for your ecommerce store, from email marketing strategies, to social campaigns. However, there are a few crucial steps you’ll need to take to ensure you set up your campaign effectively.

Step 1: Choose the Right Products

First, you need to decide which products you’re going to include in your affiliate marketing campaigns. Popular products with plenty of social proof, and high average order value products help your partners earn more revenue, which makes your program more attractive.

Giving your affiliates access to special deals and promotions that make products more appealing to customers can be beneficial too. For instance, you could offer free shipping to customers who spend a certain amount on your store. Nine out of ten shoppers say free shipping encourages them to shop more frequently online. 

You could also offer first-time buyer discounts, buy-one-get-one offers, and bundles. The more tempting your products are, the more affiliate sales you’ll get. 

Step 2: Determine Your Affiliate Rewards

Once you’ve chosen products and promotions for your affiliate campaign, the next step is choosing how you’re going to reward your affiliates. Some ecommerce brands offer free products and credit in exchange for affiliate mentions, but most provide monetary rewards. 

The most common option, according to RefferalRock is a percentage-based commission, between around 5% and 30% of each sale. However, you can always offer different affiliate rewards for different products. 

There’s also the option to pay your affiliate a flat rate for every customer they convert for your business. Do your research to find out which strategy is most appealing to your affiliates, and which suits your business budget best. 

Step 3: Choose an App for Affiliate Management

Next, you need a way to manage your affiliate marketing program on your Shopify website. Fortunately, there are a ton of great tools for this on the Shopify app marketplace. Keep in mind, some add-ons offer a free plan, while others require a monthly fee. 

Most of the plugins on the Shopify marketplace will walk you through an onboarding process to get you up and running with the right affiliate strategy. The right solution for you will depend on your specific needs, but popular options include:

• Referral Candy and Affiliate: Affiliate and referral marketing tools for Shopify
• UpPromote Affiliate: Ambassador and affiliate program management
• Automizely: Referral and affiliate program automation tools 

Step 4: Recruit your Affiliates

Now it’s time to recruit the affiliates to help you promote your store. A successful affiliate marketing campaign relies on your ability to source the right professionals to support your business. Initially, you’ll need to outline the rules and guidelines for your affiliate program. 

Creating a website page where you outline the nature of your affiliate strategy, and the kinds of expectations you have can be helpful. You can also use tools like Shopify Forms to create a signup form for anyone who wants to apply to join your team. 

Once you have a landing page or segment of your website dedicated to your affiliate program, the next step is promoting it. You can include a link to your page on your email marketing campaigns, to attract customers who might want to advocate for your brand. Or you can consider reaching out to influencers and potential affiliates directly. 

You can also promote your program on your social media marketing channels, drawing attention to the benefits and asking potential candidates to get in touch. Other ways to find affiliates include:

• Use influencer marketing platforms: Influencer marketing platforms don’t just help you find potential influencers to work with on your store and advertising campaigns. They can also help you track down potential affiliate marketers too. 
• Affiliate networks: Affiliate networks such as “ShareASale” help you promote your affiliate program to millions of established professionals in your industry. It’s often relatively easy to join up, and simple enough to find a variety of authoritative candidates.  
• Shopify Collabs: The Shopify Collabs app is a great way to find affiliates to promote your products, as well as influencers. The app provides great tools to help you partner with creators, reach new customers, and track campaign performance.

Step 5: Manage your Affiliates

Once you have a collective of potential affiliates to work with, it’s important to keep tabs on their performance, and how well they’re contributing tog rowing your business. Remember, regular communication and transparency is crucial to getting the right results. 

Make sure you’re clear about the rules of your programs, and what you expect from your affiliates. You can also create a library of content that affiliates can use, such as pre-designed graphics, webinars, marketing campaign templates, and approved hashtags. 

Keep a close eye on the success of your program by monitoring the sales of your top affiliate marketers, and the strategies they use. You can use affiliate marketing apps on Shopify to track metrics such as:

• Total sales per affiliate
• Average order size
• Total affiliate payout
• Total number of affiliates
• Affiliate turnover

Start your Affiliate Marketing Program on Shopify

Launching an Affiliate marketing program on Shopify can be an excellent way to take your business to the next level and earn new leads. However, you still need a fantastic ecommerce store, great products, and a focus on UX design to ensure conversions.

Reach out to Storetasker today for more advice on how a Shopify Expert can help you upgrade your website, your marketing strategy, and your chances for growth.