Marketing is one of the major activities of any business, it involves all the processes of getting products and services of a business across to consumers.
People have adopted many approaches to carry out marketimg activities. More so, what works for a company may not work for another, hence each business can look for the best marketing approach that will cost less and deliver great results for them.
Affiliate marketing and network marketing have been used effectively by various companies. The two have helped these companies to boost sales and expand their client base. They are foremost among the cost-effective marketing methods any company can use today.
Affiliate marketing makes use of independent marketers whose sole job is to generate leads. They are to get buyers who will be referred back to the company’s sale system before they can buy from items on sale.
Affiliate marketing thrives best with use of internet facilities which makes international marketing possible.
Using this facility, affiliates can refer prospective buyers to a company’s website which has already been designed to close the deal. This will take the burden of keeping stocks, upfront spendings, closing deals, etc, off the shoulders of the affiliates.
Affiliates can register free in any affiliate program of their choice, and they are paid commissions based on any of the following; pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, and pay-per-sale. The more people these affiliates can refer, the more the commission they collect. For this reason, companies using affiliate marketing are getting more partners when compared to network marketing.
Network marketing on the other hand has been in existence since 1930s. It is a type of multi-level marketing where sales representatives buy products at heavily discounted prices and sell them to interested buyers.
In network marketing, each representative may recruit between two to five other reps who will be trained to do their own selling. These are called the downlines of their recruiters.
In this type of marketing, representatives get their commission from the products they sell to people, and also from the commission share they get from their downlines. This also mean that the more people they are able to recruit, the more money they make.
Between these two marketing methods, people have preferred affiliate marketing above network marketing because it does not involve recruiting any representative, and it is free to join.
Many network marketing programs had collapsed as a result of some representatives not doing their jobs, creating problems for those who are doing theirs.
Sales of health related products like supplements have thrived well with the use of network marketing. Simply because the buyers need to purchase the products on continual basis. On the other hand, companies like Amazon is using affiliate marketing to sell millions of products on monthly basis. It has help them to grow to become the biggest retail company in the world.
