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If you are a beginner looking to earn money or grow your online business, you have probably encountered digital marketing vs. affiliate marketing.
However, what separates them, which is the best fit for you – and where do you start?
Everything you need to know about the main differences between digital marketing vs. affiliate marketing is covered in this blog, so you can make a wise choice.
Let’s begin now.
Digital Marketing Vs. Affiliate Marketing: What Is It Digital Marketing?
Every marketing tactic that businesses and advertisers use to interact with and influence potential customers on digital platforms falls under the category of digital marketing, including:
- SEO
- Social media
- Content marketing
With this type of marketing, you may target market, reach specific audiences than with traditional means, and evaluate the impact of your marketing plan.
What Are the Available Channels for Digital Marketing?
Indeed, there have been 70 million more online buyers this year than there were the previous year, totaling almost 2.71 billion.
So, optimizing different digital marketing channels helps you meet prospects where they are ready to shop — online.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is making changes to your website so that it ranks higher on search engines like Google and Bing without requiring paid advertising.
You can increase your visibility and attract more potential customers to your website and offers by appearing at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).
You can view a brief comparison to be aware of the differences between on-page and off-page SEO strategies if you want to get the most out of it.
| On-Page SEO | Off-Page SEO |
| Conducting keyword research | Building backlinks |
| Creating topic clusters | Guest posting |
| Optimizing meta titles and descriptions | Having a solid social media marketing strategy |
| Having an internal linking strategy | Running influencer marketing campaigns |
| Boosting page speed | Brand mentions monitoring |
SEO, although easy to hop on and cost-effective, doesn’t produce overnight results. It may take 3–6 months for your SEO efforts to start paying off.
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
It refers to paid advertising.
This includes both search engines and social media. With PPC, you bid for visibility on the (SERPs) and pay a fee each time someone clicks on your ad.
The hallmark benefit of search engine marketing PPC is that you can show up at the top of SERPs for specific keywords even though you may not have pages ranking organically. That’s right—PPC ads sit at the top of Google, above organic results.
How do the search engines know what PPC ads to show?
Ads that are displayed for particular keywords have the highest bid and quality scores. Quality scores indicate how relevant the ad is to the search query.
(You can see in the image below the few things affecting ad quality.)
In terms of PPC ads, there are various digital marketing platform types you can choose from.
- Text ads
- Shopping ads
- YouTube ads
- Google ads
- Social Media
62.3% of the world’s population uses social media. That is around 5.04 billion people, with 266 million users coming on board within the last year.
Social media marketing enables you to connect with a significant portion of your audience, hear what they have to say, and cultivate stronger bonds with them when utilized effectively.
For instance, Instagram and TikTok are highly visual different platforms that use more images and videos…
Whereas, Twitter and LinkedIn are more text-based…
Understanding how users on these platforms love to consume content lets you craft content that resonates with them.
(so you can maximize your chances of turning these consumers into customers.)
- Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most profitable forms of digital marketing. With an average ROI of 4,000%, you gain $40 for every $1 invested.
Pretty solid, huh?
Of course, to get to this crazy ROI, you need to optimize every aspect of it. Here’s how to do that:
- Segment your target audience based on their interests
- Personalize your digital marketing campaigns
- Nurture and convert prospects.
Email marketing allows you to have greater control over your email list, unlike social media platforms, where you may lose your audience when your account is restricted.
…which, to be honest, does not happen that rarely.
To start your email campaigns, we recommend these software solutions:
- ActiveCampaign
- Klaviyo
- HighLevel
Quick Note: You can also sign up for Mailchimp, which is FREE initially. However, it has terrible delivery rates, and oftentimes, as much as 50% of your emails don’t get delivered.
- Content Marketing
Content marketing involves creating and publishing content, including:
- Blogs
- Videos
- Email newsletters
- Social media posts
Unlike pay-per-click advertising when you’re trying to get customers to make a conversion, content marketing provides value-first throughout the customers’ journey with your business. This makes it very critical since it allows you to build trust with your audience and increases the likelihood of engagement and conversion.
How Do I Start Digital Marketing?
If you’re interested in starting digital marketing, too, you can follow these steps.
- Take professional courses like the Google Digital Marketing and Ecommerce Course
- Find an internship to get hands-on experience
- Choose an area of interest to specialize in (such as PPC)
- Network with other digital marketers
- Carry out projects such as starting a blog posts or growing an email list
On top of that, you will also have to choose which digital marketing channel is right for you at that specific time — which means that if you’re a complete beginner and want to boost sales and awareness, you can:
- Deploy Social Media PPC for quick results
- SEO for long-term efforts and to get organic traffic
- Utilizing email marketing to generate and convert leads from SEO and PPC
- Content marketing helps educate and build trust with your audience.
It may be a long learning curve if you were to do all of these yourself… so start looking for a mentor!
Digital Marketing Vs. Affiliate Marketing: What is Affiliate Marketing?
In affiliate marketing, which is performance-based marketing strategy, marketers who promote brands on behalf of “affiliates” get paid with commissions.
These affiliates use blogs, email lists, social media pages, and websites to promote the product sales.
How does affiliate marketing works? Each affiliate is given a unique link by the product owners, which makes it easy to track sales back to them.
There are 3 major parties when it comes to affiliate marketing.
- The offer owner is the company or person responsible for creating the product or service. They pay commissions whenever an affiliate makes a sale.
- The affiliate is responsible for promoting the offer. They earn commissions whenever a purchase is made
- The customer buys the product from the affiliate using their unique link, at no additional cost to the customer.
Some affiliate programs will pay you for driving traffic to their website, getting prospects to sign up for a free trial, or downloading an app. The beauty of affiliate marketing is that it’s relatively easy to get started without worrying about creating a product.
Additionally, most programs have resources and digital tools to assist affiliates with promotion.
Different Types Of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing comes in three types. Knowing each of them enables you to choose the type of affiliate marketer you want to work with.
They include:
- Unattached Affiliate Marketing
In this type of affiliate marketing, you’re “unattached” to the product you’re promoting. It doesn’t require you to build an online reputation for the product or establish trust for the audience.
Often, you may have zero understanding of the product you’re trying to promote.
Unattached affiliate marketers run PPC advertising and social media ads to drive traffic to their links. When people buy, they make a commission. If you’re just getting started with affiliate marketing, and you don’t want to be held down with creating a website or building a relationship with your audience, this is a quick way to kick off.
- Related Affiliate Marketing
Here, you promote company’s products and services around your niche.
Say you’re a golfer and have a website that talks about everything golf. You may raise awareness about products and services about golf to your audience and earn commissions when they buy. The downside here is that you might not have tried these products yourself, and so you stand the risk of receiving negative comments from your audience who were not satisfied with the product.
You might even lose their trust and follow…
So, make sure you don’t make claims about personal use or experience with the products to reduce your risk of involvement.
- Involved Affiliate Marketing
For this type, you’re deeply connected to the product based on your experience or usage of the product, allowing you to share your unbiased opinions. Buyers depend on the information from your experiences to guide their purchase of the product.
This is why you must share unbiased experiences and only promote products you’re confident about.
To become an involved affiliate marketer, you must have a credible reputation online — this will take some time to build.
How Can You Earn As An Affiliate?
Earning as an affiliate is simple — when someone uses your affiliate link to take action, you get paid a commission. This could be a purchase or a related action, like signing up for a free trial.
Here are some common ways to earn money as an affiliate.
- Pay per sale: The most popular option, you get paid a commission for each sale you make.
- Pay per click: Earn a commission for each click on a link with pay per click, a rare marketing strategy utilized by large corporations.
- Pay per install: Receive a commission rate for each time one of your sites’ apps is installed.
- Pay per lead: This popular lead generation strategy pays you a commission for each free trial sign-up made through your link.
- Pay per action: Get paid a commission when users do particular tasks, such subscribing to a newsletter.
Your monthly earnings can vary from $100 to six figures based on the product, reputation, niche, and marketing tactics. In sales, commissions generally fall within a range of 5% to 30%.
Whereas, various methods such as clicks, install, or action may be a fixed amount say $7 per action.
How To Start Affiliate Marketing
To begin affiliate marketing, the first step is selecting a niche.
This helps you learn about it and create relevant content creation. Next steps include:
- Research affiliate programs that align with your interests in terms of commission, products/services, resources, and tools for promotion.
- Apply to join these affiliate programs.
- Begin to build your online presence, so your audience will trust you.
- Produce high-quality content that educates, informs, and entertains your broader audience then insert your links strategically.
- Use marketing tactics to drive targeted traffic to your website, social media pages, and affiliate links.
- Monitor and analyze your affiliate marketing campaigns to see what’s working and what could be done better results.
- Comply with guidelines and disclosures to reduce your risk, establish your affiliate relationship, and follow ethical marketing practices.
If you are an online business owner and need to create an affiliate program, you can choose to list your program in affiliate marketplaces such as Clickbank, JVZoo, and Amazon Associates.
Affiliate Marketplaces connect affiliates with merchants (you).
You may also use affiliate marketing software, such as Post Affiliate Pro or LeadDyno to run your affiliate marketing program.
Differences Between Digital Marketing VS. Affiliate Marketing
Digital marketing vs. affiliate marketing are both forms of marketing, but they have their key differences. Let’s take a look.
| Digital Marketing | Affiliate Marketing | |
| Ownership | You own the brand and marketing process. You have full control of the ads and content you create, and how you track your result. | You don’t own the brand or the affiliate products. You’re only the middleman between the product owner and the customers |
| Reach | Offers a broader reach as it uses a variety of marketing channels to create brand awareness, engage prospects, and convert them | Reach is limited as it uses just a few online channels and digital marketing techniques to promote the products/services |
| Nature of activities | Involves a multi-faceted approach to customer analysis, marketing, campaign measurement and improvement | Since the primary focus is sales, activities are centered on promoting products to earn commission. |
| Technical expertise | Requires a high level of expertise to strategize, implement, and improve digital marketing strategies in various channels. | It’s more beginner-friendly and doesn’t require technical expertise. |
| Cost | It requires upfront investment, people and software to run digital campaigns and channels | It’s performance-based, and doesn’t require as much upfront investment. |
| Risk distribution | You bear the full risk of the digital marketing effort, as results are uncertain until campaigns are executed and measured. | Risk is shared by both parties, as affiliates take on the promotion, and merchants pay for the effort. |
Digital Marketing VS. Affiliate Marketing: Which Is Best For You?
Now that you know the difference between digital marketing vs. affiliate marketing, you can decide which marketing best suites for your business.
- If you’re looking to earn life-long skills that are in demand, then digital marketing may be right for you. However, affiliate marketing is a good choice if you want to start making money quickly.
- On the flip side, you can use affiliate network as a platform to hone digital marketing skills, gathering experiences as you progress in your career.
To learn more about each of these types of marketing, check the resources below.
- Freelance Digital Marketing: Strategies For Success
- How To Add Affiliate Disclosure To WordPress Website – 3 Easy Ways
- What Does A Digital Copywriter Do: A Comprehensive Guide
In his book “Secrets of the Millionaires Mind”, T. Harv Eker suggests that when faced with two choices, one should question, “Why not have both?”
You might be able to merge both online marketing strategies for maximum results for your business.
