28 March 2024, 12:50
By George Currie Jan 30, 2014

How to grow your business with affiliate marketing

With the furniture industry dominated by micro and small- to medium-sized businesses, and figures showing that 84% of companies in the sector turned over less than £1m in 2011, what can be done to break the mould? Growing any company is never an easy feat, but it is a challenge that should be willingly accepted – and affiliate marketing can be a crucial element to expanding any business, says George Currie …

Whilst the cost of furniture varies between product type and retailer, items such as dining tables, office desks, sofas, wardrobes and beds generally don’t come cheap. With this in mind, it’s more important than ever for furniture retailers to start thinking about their affiliate marketing activity, if they haven’t already.

Any retailer with an e-commerce website will find it easy to tap into the extra revenue that affiliate marketing can offer, but for those of you who don’t know your cookies from your commission rates, here is a guide for the first steps you should take and the first things you should be thinking about.
 

What is affiliate marketing?

Perhaps the easiest way to describe affiliate marketing is to think of it as having an online commission-only workforce promoting your furniture business to prospective customers. Just as your sales staff on the shop floor might point customers towards certain pieces of furniture, your affiliates direct potential customers to your site. If a sale takes place, it is tracked using cookies and the affiliate receives commission once the sale has been confirmed.

You, as the retailer, are the merchant in this relationship, whilst one of your affiliates could be a discount website that helps to drive traffic and customers your way by advertising the deals and discount codes you have available for shoppers.

If a shopper on the discount site – which happens to be an affiliate of yours – sees that your store is offering 10% off all dining tables with an exclusive discount code, and then ends up on your site considering a purchase, this is good news. The shopper would have clicked a link on the discount website to reveal what the discount code was, and this plants a ‘cookie’, a small text file, on the web visitor’s browser.

“Affiliate activity is low-cost and low-risk marketing, because as a retailer you only have to pay out commission once a sale has been completed”

If this shopper goes on to purchase a piece of furniture or product from your e-commerce website within a set amount of time – the cookie period, which can be decided by you, the merchant – you reward the discount website, your affiliate, with commission – usually a small percentage of the sale value, which you can decide on to suit your margins.
 

What kind of affiliates should I choose?

If you decide you want to utilise affiliate marketing, you first need to select an affiliate network to work with. An affiliate network acts as the middleman between you, the furniture retailer, and the affiliates/publishers that advertise your products or brand. Find a network that already has plenty of affiliates which are advertising merchants in your industry. You can also find and connect with affiliates that you’d like to work with by contacting websites yourself.

Once your affiliate programme is set up, have a clear idea of which affiliate sites you will and will not work with. Plenty of furniture retails become discount brands, at least at certain times of year such as over Christmas and New Year. With discount code websites amongst the biggest publishers in the UK that can deliver high traffic volumes, it’s definitely worth thinking about. Even if your furniture is more high-end, the occasional free delivery code can really help drive more sales and affiliate revenue your way.
 

Is your website ‘affiliate ready’? 

From the moment a potential customer lands on your website after being tempted across from an affiliate site of yours, the point at which they find a product they like to the point when they purchase the item needs to be seamless. If your website is about as user friendly as a blank screen, it will do you no favours. Have clear product descriptions and great images of your stock, and make it simple for a customer to add items to a basket and checkout.
 

Does affiliate marketing suit the furniture industry and its customers?

Affiliate marketing suits any business with an e-commerce offering, but it’s very well suited to the furniture industry because more and more customers are turning to the web for their furniture purchases.

Changes in consumer behaviour are apparent – prospective customers may use high street stores to get an idea of shape and design of furniture, but the more price-conscious customer will also look for furniture retailers on price comparison sites, cashback and voucher code sites. More and more consumers are aware of the fact that they’ll often get better savings online, and the furniture sector is an expanding market with lots of opportunities since enjoying new growth as the UK heads out of the recession.

To recap, affiliate marketing is booming. PricewaterhouseCoopers found that affiliate marketing accounts for over £8b of sales in the UK, so it’s something that most furniture retailers should at least be considering to help growth.

Affiliate activity is low-cost and low-risk marketing, because as a retailer you only have to pay out commission once a sale has been completed. It helps to increase exposure of your brand to a wider audience, and is cheaper than other forms of marketing such as Pay Per Click (PPC), display advertising, TV/radio advertising and ads in local newspapers. So why not start right now?

George Currie is the senior account manager of affiliate network Paid On Results, which manages affiliate programmes to ensure more leads and sales through the strength of its selling tools, brand controls and affiliate database. This article previously ran in the January 2014 issue of Furniture News magazine.

© 2013 - 2024 Gearing Media Group Ltd. All Rights Reserved.