If you work in advertising, you’re familiar with the concept of building brand awareness and equity. You’re also familiar with the concept of sales; direct, channel and otherwise. You may not, however, be familiar with affiliate marketing. You should be.
Affiliate Marketing is like having a sales force on steroids. Brands that create affiliate programs by offering tools and incentives which make it easy for others to sell their product which can greatly increase sales. Affiliates – those who sign up for a brand’s affiliate program – are an aggressive bunch. It is their personal mission to make as much money as they can with affiliate marketing and their financial gain is a brand’s financial gain.
There’s no reason a brand should rely solely on “regular” marketing and sales when it can enable the creation of a limitless number of sales people who will aggressively market a brand through affiliate marketing.
We just returned from the Affiliate Marketing Summit, held earlier this week at the Wynn in Las Vegas. Over 4,700 attendees packed the conference which consisted of education panels and presentations, exhibits, tutorial sessions, a program for newcombers and a Meet Market, an exhibit hall-like setup designed for brands, affiliates and networks to do business. We’ve attended many ad conferences and, for the most part, they all provide valuable information for attendees. But Affiliate Summit is the kind of conference where actual business is conducted. Sure, there’s lots of theory and education but attendees (brands, networks, affiliates) can walk away from this conference with actual signed deals. More so than I’ve seen at many other conferences.
So if you want to return from a conference with not only a snazzy Powerpoint you can share with your team but actual sales you can share with your boss, then you might want to consider attending Affiliate Summit the next time around. The next conference is in New York and will take place at the Hilton August 21-23.
