Digital marketing vs affiliate marketing; what’s the difference? The term “digital marketing” refers to a type of marketing in which a company/business sells and promotes its products via various online channels. “Channels” might include a website, an advertising platform (e.g. Google Adwords) and other online marketing techniques such as email marketing, retargeting etc.
Affiliate marketing refers to an online business model where third parties are rewarded for online referrals. With affiliate marketing the person referring a product isn’t the product owner. Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular online business models. Anyone can use affiliate marketing to earn from the sale of other people’s products and services.
To make money recommending products an affiliate simply needs to join an affiliate program and learn how to promote their affiliate link.
Digital Marketing Vs. Affiliate Marketing – Digital & Affiliate Marketers
An owner operated business might use both their own digital marketing techniques and enlist affiliate marketers as well. Businesses use affiliates to help with their marketing because affiliates generally only get paid for successful referral sales. This means it is a very efficient way to advertise for businesses.
Affiliates can earn a variety of percentages for sales referrals. Typically physical products will pay affiliates from 1% to 10% commission for referring a sale.
Digital products on the other hand pay much more. A typical digital product might pay an affiliate between 30% and 40% commission for a referral. This can be done because with digital products there’s very few overheads and advertising is one of the biggest costs. For example, there’s no postage and handling costs with digital products. They can be accessed online without the need to physically ship something.
Strategies & Tactics
Both digital marketing strategies and affiliate marketing strategies can involve the same tactics. A popular marketing platform is Google Adwords, for example which is used by owner based businesses and affiliates alike. With Adwords, the business/affiliate owner places advertising budget on the platform and run adverts according to their targeting and products/services.
Email marketing is a useful strategy used by both affiliates and “owner run” digital marketing. With email marketing, the advertising campaign sends visitors to an email capture page where the email address is taken. The visitor joins an email list and becomes a subscriber of an email list.
Email marketing is a useful tool used by online businesses to nurture customers over a longer time frame. On a website, a visitor only has a few minutes to make a decision. Email marketing extends this timeframe to weeks, months and even years and decades.
Other marketing tactics can involve social media marketing, blogging, video creation and retargeting. A combination of several different marketing tactics can create an overall strategy of attaining customers through online marketing.
Summary
Digital marketing refers to any form of online marketing used by a business. Affiliate marketing refers to third parties who earn from online referrals. Businesses can also use affiliate marketers as a form of their overall marketing strategy too.
A business might decide to pay affiliates as part of their overall marketing strategy because they offer a cheap an economical method of marketing. Since advertising online can be quite costly, and affiliates take the risk of using their own advertising budget to make sales, it’s a popular method for businesses to extend their marketing reach at low risk since they only pay affiliates when a sale is made.
For affiliates it can be a good deal too. If they can find a method for earning a profit through the sale of other people’s products, they can build an independent income and work for themselves. See also “what is affiliate marketing all about“.
