Affiliate Marketing VS Performance Marketing

Affiliate Marketing and Performance Marketing

Marketing is all about promoting your brand and telling people what solutions you have for them. It aims to advertise whatever you’re offering, whether these are products or services. There are a wide variety of platforms that you can advertise online so it’s important that you find the best one that suits your brand.

Marketing plays a major role in the development of a company. In this article, we are going to cover the topic of affiliate marketing and performance marketing. We will also identify the differences between these two types of marketing.

Table of Contents

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy that utilizes affiliates in marketing the products and services of a brand. Once these affiliates complete an agreed-upon action like a visit, signup, or sale, they receive a commission in exchange.

Affiliate marketing has three types. They are unattached affiliate marketing, involved affiliate marketing, and related affiliate marketing.

  1. Unattached Affiliate Marketing

Unattached affiliate marketing is an advertising model in which the affiliate has no connection to the product or service they are promoting. 

  1. Related Affiliate Marketing

Related affiliate marketing refers to working with affiliates who link to affiliate products or services that are connected to their niche but don’t necessarily use themselves. These affiliates usually have an established online presence already so they have a community that follows them. 

  1. Involved Affiliate Marketing

Involved marketing is focused on having affiliates that actually use the products and services being marketed. This creates a first-hand experience that can be shared with the affiliate’s community or platform. 

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What is Performance Marketing?

Performance marketing is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on results. Marketing service providers are only compensated when specific actions or desirable results have been achieved. These can be in the form of clicks, lead conversions, sales, shares, impressions, downloads, etc.

What is Performance Marketing?
What is Performance Marketing?

It involves optimizing the channels and strategies to maximize conversions. There are two main ad channels under performance marketing. 

  1. Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing relies on traffic from search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Advertisers pay search engines to display their landing pages when users enter terms related to products and services that they offer. Payment will be given when the user clicks through to their website.

  1. Native Advertising

The idea behind native advertising is to provide ads that blend in with the content that users consume. This process of the publisher or social platform makes them less inconvenient for users and much more relevant to whatever they’re currently engaged in.

It includes influencer marketing, email marketing, and any other form of marketing where the marketing partner gets commissions for results. 

What Is The Difference Between Affiliate Marketing And Performance Marketing?

Both of these marketing strategies are result-driven strategies so what sets them apart? It’s how these two marketing strategies achieve their goals.

Affiliate marketing creates campaigns and strategies that will convert leads into sales. It then takes necessary actions to support these campaigns and strategies to achieve said objective.


As for performance marketing, advertisers pay marketing companies to achieve these results. These marketing companies are then left to their own devices as to how they’re going to get these results. 

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Strategies for Performance Marketing

Strategies for Performance Marketing
Strategies for Performance Marketing
  1. Optimize Customer Experience 

When you spark interest in your audience, they will want to check out your website for more information. You have to make sure that your website is optimized to deliver the best customer experience you can offer. This means making sure your pages load quickly, navigation panels or menus are easy to spot, and call-to-action buttons are identifiable. 

Additionally, you have to make sure that you don’t bombard your audience with ads. If done too often, pop-up ads can annoy users which will make them leave before completing a transaction with you. 

  1. Image Search

Image search is slowly gaining popularity over the years. With this, users can simply take a photo of whatever they are looking for and use it to search for similar images online. This makes it easier for them to find more information about whatever photo they submit.

To maximize this feature, make sure that your images are optimized for image search. Take good photos of your products and services and don’t forget to include alt text. Additionally, make sure the captions of your photos are descriptive and help people understand what it’s about. 

  1. Maximize Advertising Platforms

Social media platforms are awesome for advertising your products and services. There are millions of users on these platforms so it’s perfect for you to grow your brand awareness. 

In choosing the right platform, make sure that you understand the general use of each one. Some social media platforms are more suited for blogs while others are more suited for photos and videos. Make sure you’re choosing the right one for your brand.

  1. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing can be a highly effective strategy because the influencers you get already have a loyal community following them. It helps make social media marketing much easier because these influencers have access to an audience who may not know you yet. 

Strategies for Affiliate Marketing

  1. Choose the Right Affiliates

Since this is a result-driven strategy, it’s important to find high-quality affiliates that can deliver results. Look at metrics like engagement and page views when looking for affiliates. You would want to get the most out of your investment so find ones that can meet your standards. 

  1. Optimize Your Platforms

Make sure that the platforms that run your marketing strategies are updated and optimized for the best user experience. This entails making sure your pages load quickly, creating videos and infographics, and utilizing keywords strategically. 

  1. Advertise Your Affiliate Program

Conduct proper background research on potential affiliates to make sure that you’re getting the most out of your investment. Create detailed marketing strategies that will help you achieve your goals. Explore and find more opportunities because there is no single path to success. 

  1. Partner with an Influencer

Studies have shown that influencer marketing yields 11x more return on investment than a traditional banner ad campaign. Find an influencer that you can partner with who is in the same niche as you. Chances are, they have a community that shares the same interests so it’s a great audience to have for your products and services. 

  1. Strategically Use Coupon Deals

People love saving as much as they can and coupon deals are the perfect way to meet their demands! Having coupon deals every now and then helps attract a large number of customers. Additionally, it helps you attract not just your old customers but also new ones. After all, who can resist a good deal? 

  1. Study Your Industry

It’s important to get to know the industry you belong in so you can strategize on how you’ll stand out and excel. Analyze and evaluate your audience so you can find affiliates who can effectively influence them.

Find influencers and affiliates that are within your specific niche. They’ll be able to market your products and services well since they are knowledgeable in the field.

It’s also important to keep track of the latest trends. These can help you boost brand awareness and can act as a springboard for your products and services to go viral. Strategically using these trends with your affiliate is a very good digital marketing strategy.

Strategies for Affiliate Marketing
Strategies for Affiliate Marketing
  1. Establish Brand-to-Brand Partnerships

To implement a brand-to-brand partnership, here are the things you need to help both you and your partner grow.

  • Make a Short-Term Goal

The first objective is to formulate a short-term campaign in collaboration with a brand that complements your own and its affiliates. 

  • Look for More Potential Opportunities

If your campaign was a success, consider whether there is an opportunity to expand your partnership. Perhaps you should run another campaign to put the relationship to the test.

If it benefits both of your brands, it’s time to involve other marketing teams. This can help you run larger marketing campaigns.

  1. Create Your Own Affiliate Program

There are three important aspects of building an affiliate program, namely:

  • Choose a Software Solution

This will assist you in managing your affiliate campaigns. You’d be able to communicate with your partners, manage your offers, and compensate your affiliates with them. Additionally, it can assist you in reviewing the performance of your campaigns and optimizing future campaigns.

  • Choose a Payout Scheme

Learn about the most convenient methods of payment (pay-per-sale, pay-per-click, pay-per-lead). Your goal would determine a payout structure that best fits your needs.

Compare the commissions offered by your competitors for the same products. It’s important that you try your best to offer better commission rates than your competitors while also sticking to your budget. 

  • Prepare Your Marketing Guidelines

It prompts the promotion process. It enables your affiliates to realize your brand more quickly, allowing them to promote your products more effectively.

The less time they devote to content creation, the more time they have for promotion. Presenting the best materials for each platform type also saves time and energy.

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Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are the three types of affiliate marketing?

1. Unattached Affiliate marketing
2. Involved Affiliate marketing 
3. Related Affiliate marketing

2. What are the benefits of affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is easily scalable. You can get started with a minimum number of affiliates for your campaign and easily grow from that as you get more sales.

3. What are the benefits of performance marketing?

Performance marketing is a cost-effective marketing strategy because partners only get paid when specific actions or results have been achieved. This ensures that you get the most out of your investment while effectively marketing your products and services.

Wrapping Up

Affiliate marketing focuses on creating campaigns with your affiliates in marketing your products and services. You, as a brand, will then take necessary actions to help support their efforts. Performance marketing simply hires marketing companies to complete actions for your marketing campaigns.

Remember to find affiliates and influencers who are familiar with your industry or niche. The more they are involved with your specific niche, the more effectively they can market your products and services. 

Affiliate and performance marketing are both highly cost-effective digital marketing strategies. You only need to compensate your marketing partners when specific actions are made. This helps you maximize your investment in each of them.

Additionally, both of these strategies are startup friendly and easy to scale. Once you’re getting more sales, you can start growing more campaigns and having more influencers join the campaign.

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