How to Succeed in Affiliate Marketing in Atlanta – A Fractional CMO Perspective

Marketing is all about collaboration and working with different parties to reach mutual benefits. One of the best ways to achieve this is through affiliate marketing.

Part of many companies’ marketing involves working with individuals who sell your product or service in exchange for a fee or percentage of sales—affiliate marketing. In our digital-first world, affiliate marketing is likely much of what you see on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and blogs. 

Reports suggest that Georgia's social media advertising market will be worth $30.7 million by 2028. There’s a lot to be made if you can stake a claim and hold onto it.

When you are in a competitive market like Atlanta’s, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of affiliate marketers. Fortunately, you can enlist the help of an Atlanta fractional CMO who understands the ins and outs of affiliate marketing.

Continue reading to learn more about how to succeed in affiliate marketing in Atlanta and watch this video to see how an FCMO can help!

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Before we get into how to succeed in affiliate marketing in Atlanta, let’s quickly talk about how affiliate marketing works. Simply put, affiliate marketing is a strategy where businesses sell their products or services through other brands, influencers, or entrepreneurs.

This process is often done through affiliate links. These marketers encourage buyers to purchase the brand’s products through these specific links to make tracking and paying the necessary commission easier.

This involves a company giving a unique link to an affiliate to give to customers. This link leads to a specific product, allowing the customer to make a purchase. When a purchase is made, the company can see where the buyer came from (i.e., the affiliate link). Now that the affiliate succeeded in selling the company’s products, they get a little reward, which is a portion of the profits.

This is affiliate marketing in a nutshell. There are more moving parts, and it can include multiple parties, but any brand can perfect it with the right strategies. 

5 Atlanta Affiliate Marketing Tips To Remember

Affiliate marketing can be an effective and profitable strategy once you master the fundamentals. If you are considering affiliate marketing, remember these tips:

1. Know Your Niche/Product or Service

What is your company selling? With affiliate marketing, you can sell pretty much anything, but you cannot sell just anything.

To get affiliate marketers to sell your products, present them with something worth selling. Affiliate marketers usually choose a product they are passionate about or have a lot of knowledge of. Alternatively, they might choose a niche that is in high demand.

An affiliate’s niche can range from pet care to beauty and cosmetics. It can be in any industry (as long as they do proper research beforehand and are confident in their knowledge of the subject matter).

For example, an affiliate marketer might choose to market for a home decor brand. In that case, they should be able to promote furniture or house maintenance materials and confidently give decorating-related guidance.

On the other hand, they might choose an already-popular niche and capitalize on that. An example might be marketing for a technology company—they will be competing against people who are more experienced and knowledgeable than them.

• FCMO Tip: Social listening can be very helpful in getting a better understanding of your brand identity by seeking out what people say about your company online and on social media. 

2. Choose the Best Affiliate Program

Identify which type of affiliate marketing would benefit your company the best: unattached, involved, and related. 

• In related affiliate programs, influencers share products or services relevant to their niche to attract and engage their target audience (even if they don’t use the item themself). 
• Involved affiliate marketing is when influencers actively use and endorse certain products or services. 
• Unattached affiliate marketing relies on generic ads and is not associated with personal experience or has any direct involvement.

Once you have chosen your niche, you need the best affiliate program to earn you the most revenue. You could do this by trying to do a Google search and adding your niche at the end of your search query. However, seeking the advice of an Atlanta marketing professional is smart here: It gives you a better chance of making every dollar (and hour) count. 

Some of the biggest e-commerce websites, such as Amazon and eBay, have their own affiliate programs. It is all a matter of choosing the most appropriate one for your niche. You can learn more about specific affiliates by visiting their website and reading about their affiliate program, if any. 

Some popular affiliate programs include the following:

• Amazon Associates
• eBay Partner Network
• Shopify
• Rakuten
• ShareASale
• FreshBooks

3. Conduct Audience Research

Affiliate marketing involves researching your target market. After all, you want to sell the right products to the right people.

In the case of Atlanta, you want to get inside the minds of the locals. What are they looking for? What are their pain points? How can your product or service be a game-changer for them?

Learning more about your audience allows you to create nuanced marketing strategies that resonate. It also gives insight into the buying habits of Atlanta consumers and what products are high in demand; it’s a major part of how to succeed in affiliate marketing in Atlanta.

Your marketing team and a local Atlanta social media marketing agency can help you build out buyer personas for your target audience. To do so, start with collecting data on your current customers. You want to know their pain points, behaviors, likes and dislikes, and more. How can you solve their pain points? 

4. Track Conversion Rates and Commissions

Even when seeing profit roll in, it’s important to keep an eye on the data. One major metric to track is the conversion rate: the percentage of people who clicked on your affiliate link and made a purchase.

This metric allows brands to accurately track how many people are taking action. It also indicates how successful your affiliate is in promoting the company’s products. The higher the conversion rate, the better it is for the brand and the affiliate.

This step is likely part of your KPIs. Ask your marketing team what number they’re looking for and how they are tracking these KPIs and reporting on them. 

5. Be Trustworthy

Like with any type of marketing, building trust is one of the most crucial things to remember when affiliate marketing in Atlanta.

This is your chance to show your expertise as a brand and that your products and services can improve the lives of your customers.

Both your company and the affiliate must show transparency to demonstrate trust. Be clear and open about what your product does. If possible, ask your affiliate to review the product honestly—its strengths and weaknesses. 

This is a good time to bring up the legal aspect of affiliate marketing. First, check that your business is licensed appropriately. Do you need to be a sole proprietorship, LLC, or corporation? These vary by state, so make sure to check for laws in Georgia. 

Your Atlanta affiliate marketing campaign in the States is governed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). If your company goes beyond the United States and into Europe, for example, stay within boundaries set by the General Data Protection Regulation.

The FTC has guidelines on affiliate marketing, including disclaimers to include when a person gets a commission from the links they share. 

Summing Up: How To Succeed in Affiliate Marketing in Atlanta

Any company can succeed at affiliate marketing with the help of a fractional CMO from a good Atlanta digital marketing agency.

Luckily, here are Digital Authority Partners, our services are top-notch, covering a wide range of services that match the fractional CMO’s scope of work.

DAP’s fractional CMOs in Atlanta work on a part-time basis. The fractional CMO hourly rate may vary depending on who you hire, but you can save yourself the hassle and expenses of hiring a full-time CMO.

To learn more about how to succeed in affiliate marketing in Atlanta, contact us today!

Sources:

Social conversation listening and monitoring | Enterprise Brand and Marketing Guide

FTC's Endorsement Guides: What People Are Asking | Federal Trade Commission

Choose a business structure | U.S. Small Business Administration

Social Media Advertising - Georgia | Statista Market Forecast