Running a successful business is never easy. Once you’ve established your product or service, it’s time to figure out how you’re going to market it. Both affiliate marketing and direct advertising are legitimate ways to build sales, but it’s hard to know which is right for your business.

Knowing what advertising method is the best fit for your needs can help you to save time and money in the long run. To do that, you simply need to consider a few key factors, including whether you are trying to build brand awareness or increase sales directly.

In this post, we'll discuss the basics of affiliate marketing and direct advertising, then explore the advantages and drawbacks of both strategies. Let’s take a look!

Affiliate Marketing vs. Direct Advertising

Affiliate marketing and direct advertising are two popular but very different methods for marketing a product or service online. Affiliate marketing is useful for getting more eyes on your offerings, while direct advertising is excellent at creating brand awareness.

Both are important techniques that you can use as a part of your campaigns, but what sets them apart from each other?

Affiliate marketing is a process where you recruit other people and businesses to help spread the word about your product or service, and send more traffic to your website.

These people and businesses are called affiliates, and you pay them a commission for each sale that results from their referrals. This is an effective technique for small businesses, because there are few upfront costs and you only pay commissions after each sale is made.

Direct advertising or marketing, on the other hand, involves creating messages targeted at a specific audience that may be interested in your product or service. You might call this ‘traditional' advertising, as it largely involves placing ads on other websites.

This strategy is all about communicating what your brand offers to potential customers. Sending car insurance solicitations to someone who has just purchased a vehicle is an example of direct marketing.

The Pros and Cons of Affiliate Marketing and Direct Advertising

First, it's important to note that both affiliate marketing and direct advertising have their place in a successful campaign. What's more, many businesses employ both methods at some point. If you’re just getting started or your business is small, however, it’s important to know where to focus your energy and money.

Celebrity endorsements are perhaps the most well-known type of affiliate marketing. A celebrity is paid to use a specific product, and to talk about its benefits publicly.

This builds trust and interest with potential customers who follow that celebrity. Traditionally, this technique is often combined with more direct marketing in the form of television commercials or other advertisements.

However, most affiliate marketing these days is more about recruiting regular people and “influencers” to promote your product online and on social media sites.

Influencers are people who have large online followings, or a lot of trust with a specific audience. You would hire these affiliates to spread the word about your product, and for every sale that results from one of their affiliate links, you'd pay them a commission.

On one hand, this type of marketing is more organic and friendlier to your customers than direct marketing. It's also a great way to increase the reach of your business, diversify your customer base, and improve sales.

On the other hand, you'll have little creative control over how your affiliates choose to promote your business. Affiliate programs can also require a great deal of organization and management to run, although you can simplify this process greatly using a plugin like Easy Affiliate.

Direct advertising is much easier to implement. All you need to do is tell a target audience about your business or a specific product, and prompt them to make a purchase.

Most of your time will be spent on researching your target audience and creating your advertisements. You'll also need to consider where your ads will be placed, and whether you want to focus on a single campaign or diversify your messaging.

This type of advertising can be very effective at presenting a solution to potential customers' problems, and getting them to buy. It does have its drawbacks, however.

For instance, there's so much direct advertising everywhere that many people have begun to tune it out entirely. It can still be useful to a certain point, but ads may not convert as many sales as affiliate marketing content. Also, if your ad campaigns are too aggressive or misleading in any way, that can leave a bad impression of your business.

How to Choose Which Type of Advertising to Focus On

Affiliate marketing offers greater reach and diversity for your business, while direct advertising can be effective at building awareness of your products or services. So, which is right for you?

If you have a limited budget and a small business, you may want to start with affiliate marketing. If you're willing to put in the time and effort to set up a strong program, this type of marketing can be very effective.

Affiliate marketing has an excellent return on investment (ROI) rate, as many people are more willing to buy if they see others using and enjoying a product. This strategy is also a good choice for products that are more complex, and harder to explain via traditional ads.

If you have some money to invest upfront, on the other hand, direct advertising may be a great place to begin building your online campaign. If you can identify an audience that has a need for or probable interest in your product, this type of marketing can be very effective. Products and services that provide obvious solutions to common problems are perfect for direct advertising.

As we mentioned earlier, both marketing techniques have their place in successful campaigns. If your business sells a variety of products, for example, you may want to employ direct advertising to spread the word about your business as a whole, while using affiliates to boost sales for specific products.

Affiliates can provide positive recommendations for your product, while direct advertising will show potential customers what it does and how it can benefit them.

Conclusion

Marketing is not only one of the most important aspects of a successful business, but also one of the most difficult to implement. It’s hard to know how best to spend your marketing budget, and where to focus your time.

Affiliate marketing and direct advertising are tactics that both have their place in a successful business. Affiliate marketing can help your business increase its reach and diversify its customer base, while direct advertising provides immediate value and is easier to control. These strategies work well on their own, and can also be combined to produce even better results.

Do you have any questions about affiliate marketing, direct advertising, or the Easy Affiliate plugin? Don't hesitate to ask in the comments section below!

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