Rob’s Blog

Is affiliate marketing really growing or are more shoppers drawn to coupon sites?

Over the past few quarters, as the economy slows and consumer spending slows affiliate programs have been growing and in some companies growing faster than search engine marketing programs. I had a good conversation with a major clothing retailer recently that about the growth that he has been seeing and skeptically we were both uncertain if it was true growth or a shift by consumers to the types of promotions offered through affiliate programs.

In most affiliate programs there are a group of “coupon sites”, sites whose sole purpose is to consolidate and provide users with unique offers or coupon codes. While there are several other groups of affiliates that participate more at the awareness or consideration levels of the purchase funnel the coupon code websites are at the base of the purchase funnel. When savvy customer has researched and evaluated their product and decided to purchase a quick search on Google will generally result in several sites offering coupon codes to improve the current offer. The theory is that as consumers become more cost conscious more and more will search out a coupon code prior to purchase.

One question that arose was “Will a consumer, after researching and evaluating a product, change their mind if they do not find a coupon code?” or better yet, “If your search engine marketing program is also built on a revenue share model but on a different platform than your affiliate program.. Are you paying twice? Is it worth it?”

I will try to keep you posted as we begin to answer these questions, please comment if you have any insight to share.