The world of affiliate marketing is a fantastic place, but it is also a sector that is loaded with jargon and specific terms. Industry newbies will need to find their feet quickly, and this can mean learning what all of the terms are. Here are some of the marketing definitions that you need to know when operating in this sector!
Affiliate
A marketing expert that specializes in promoting products through a variety of means. They can set up paid campaigns, create unique content for websites and social media, and can use SEO and other marketing practices to boost awareness for their campaigns.
Affiliate Program
The affiliate program is the agreement that companies and brands create for affiliates to sign up to. It will include specifics such as the products and services they expect the affiliates to advertise, and the platforms and promotion methods allowed for campaigns. They will also have set rates for pay.
Verticals
The specific industries and niches that affiliates can choose to work in. Some affiliates will try out different verticals, but industry newbies should stick to just one to start out with. They can include, but are not limited to, areas such as:
- Health and nutrition – otherwise known as Nutra
- iGaming
- Cryptocurrency
- Forex
Landing Page
The page that users will be directed to when they click an advert or hyperlink. This should be relevant to the campaign and should direct the visitor to perform a certain action. The affiliate marketing page is one of the most important factors in a campaign, and industry newbies need to make sure that they know how to create a good one.
Pricing Model
How do you get paid as an affiliate? You need to make sure that you pay attention to the pricing models that affiliate programs offer. The most common are:
- Pay-per-sale, paying commission on a customer’s purchase
- Pay-per-lead, paying commission when a customer completes a specified action
- Pay-per-click, paying commission when a customer clicks a certain link, usually one that directs them from the affiliate to the brand
- Hybrid, which uses a mixture of the above pricing models. Some affiliate programs with hybrid models allow you to set your own ratios
SEO
Search engine optimisation, otherwise known as SEO, is one of the main marketing strategies that industry newbies will have to get to grips with. It includes optimising web pages and other content to push them up the rankings on search engines. This will help make it easier for visitors to discover organically.
Conversion
Conversion is the action that affiliates want visitors to complete when they interact with their content. It can include completing a contact form, finalising a purchase as detailed in the ad or affiliate campaign, or even just clicking on a certain link. This can all be tracked using conversion rate, which is the percentage of people who completed the conversion once they have seen the inciting content.
Impressions
Impressions are one of the statistics that you will need to get to grips with when learning how to analyse how successful an affiliate campaign has been. In this case, impressions are the statistics that measure the opportunity for an advert to have an influence on a potential consumer. It is a little different from reach, which can be thought of as the total number of people who see your content, whereas it is more accurate to describe impressions as the number of times that your content will be delivered to someone.
Click-Through-Rate
The Click-Through-Rate, also known as CTR, is the percentage of people who clicked on the ad or link and then potentially continued on with the actions as outlined in the campaign, such as completing the conversion. Measuring the CTR against the impressions can be a great way to see how effective a certain advert might be. After all, plenty of people could be viewing an ad, but very few could actually be interacting with it.
Tracker
A tracker is a tool that you can use to measure a certain metric. It could be anything from the number of impressions you have, the conversions you gather, or even the type of traffic your campaign is receiving. In affiliate marketing, it can seem like there is a tracker for everything!
Why do affiliates need to know these terms?
Industry newbies need to get to grips with some of the terms in the affiliate marketing world as quickly as possible. Many of these might appear to be jargon to outsiders, but they are actually descriptions and labels for some of the most important aspects of affiliate marketing.
You cannot hope to succeed as an affiliate marketer if you do not know what these terms mean. The ten we have listed above are very much the start of some of the pieces that you need to know.
Take the time to educate yourself on some of the terms that you need to know to be a successful affiliate marketer, and make sure that you understand why they are an important part of creating, shaping, and understanding your niche and affiliate campaigns.
