For thousands of years, companies keep looking to promote their products and services proactively, and we can see the same trend going on today. The matter of fact is that today every business is frequently searching for innovative and creative channels to advertise their solutions. This is one of the few reasons why digital marketing is gaining so much popularity.
There are many types of online marketing, and many of them are often mistaken for each other like there is always confusion between affiliate marketing and partner marketing.
Though both of these methods pre-date digital marketing actually, they are two of the selected promotional techniques used by companies all over the globe. How these two works and what are the differences between them are important to recognize; only then can you choose the best option for your business.
We will describe the difference between affiliate marketing and partner marketing in this article. The comparison of these two will make it easy for you to decide the best method for your business.
Contents
The Basics Of Affiliate Vs. Partner Marketing
What are partner marketing and affiliate marketing all about? Let us start from the basics:
You formally recruit influencers, bloggers, and other content creators with affiliate marketing as your creators to promote your services or products on their own channels. Every affiliate places links of your website on their own blogs, websites, or social media accounts. Every time someone clicks on that affiliate link and makes a purchase through that link, that’s how the affiliate marketer earns a commission.
Channel partner marketing is also called partner marketing. This implies to any partnership with the third party that helps sell the products or market, or services of your company. This third party can be an individual or a business.
Channel partners and their types you can include:
- Retailers: through their own storefronts, they sell your products.
- Distributors or wholesalers: they buy products from you and then sell them to the other retailers.
- Brokers: the distribution relations between companies are established by them.
And as mentioned above in the article, affiliates count as channel partners. In partnership with your company, they market your products though they don’t handle your products directly.
As partners of channel incentive programs, channel partners generally are rewarded for every sale they help you make, regardless of the type of partner. The more incentives you provide, the more these partners get motivated to promote your products and generate more sales.
Differences Between Partners And Affiliates
Here we will break down the main differences between partners and affiliates in full detail, which will help you understand which type of marketing is right for your brand.
Their Role In Sales And Marketing
Content creators, social media personalities, website owners, or bloggers are always Affiliates. To promote and link to your brand, they use their own content channels. Sometimes, digital publishing companies like Wirecutter and Buzzfeed are the affiliates of other companies like Amazon, though many affiliates are individuals. One benefit of choosing affiliates is that personal experience with your brand is not required with affiliates. Their work is to simply highlight products that their audience is likely to enjoy.
Other kinds of channel partners are not content-centric. They might help you market your products, especially when sales come because of the efforts they’re incentivized for. But their main focus is on distributing your products. These channel partners are businesses for the most part, although they can also be individuals from agencies. From the business your company signed the agreement with, you will possibly work nearly with sales team members.
The Sales Channels They Are Involved With:
Marketing your brands is the main focus of most affiliates. Through retail or distribution, they don’t open up new points of sale. Physically they don’t hand off your products to customers. Directing the traffic to the main sales channel, your company websites through affiliate links is the affiliate’s primary focus. Prospective buyers could still engage with your channels this way and buy directly from your business.
Channel partners are involved with organizing new channels meanwhile, where your products of yours can be sold and distributed. For example, the retailers sell your products in their own stores, while wholesalers and distributors buy your products and get these products into different retail outlets.
Rewards They Are Offered
On each sale made by their affiliate links, affiliates receive a commission rate. This commission can be a percentage of a flat bee or the sale. But it is nearly always paid out in cash, permitting affiliates to utilize the reward they get any way they please.
The incentives of other channel partners can take many forms, including, though not limited to, cash. It depends on the structure of the partnership how partners will be rewarded. They may get discounts or rebates on the products they purchase and distribute. Or, to boost their sales and marketing efforts, they could be paid with funds.
Sales reps at channel partner companies get direct rewards for meeting specific sales goals sometimes. These rewards are not often paid in cash; they can be tech gadgets, gift cards, or some other luxury perks.
Wrapping It Up
Hopefully, this post helped you in figuring out the difference between both affiliate and partner marketing so that you can make an informed choice about the approach that will work the best for you.
