Affiliate marketing isn’t a new concept anymore.
We might be more accustomed to seeing an asterisk at the beginning of an article stating, ‘When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn commission’, there are better ways of using similar tactics to get these valuable links published via news articles.
Cost-per-click (CPC) editorial stories are a relatively new approach that straddles affiliate marketing and advertorials. It works by pitching a branded news story through a third-party platform to some of the world’s most well-known and trusted publishing brands. Handpicked by you, such as Mail Online, Refinery29, Marie Claire, BuzzFeed, etc. The publishers you’ve cherry-picked would then request the story on a first-come-first-served basis. They determine this based on whether they believe it’s a good fit for their platform, which requires it to have editorial merit.
When the article receives a bid, a journalist at the publication will draft a custom article in their house style.. This also includes a trackable cost-per-click link, which directs readers to your website to help drive sales. UTM tags track link clicks to see how many people have clicked through to the link.
The attractive thing here is that you can land coverage on a high-profile site (or even multiple sites). These usually are unlikely to feature such heavily branded content editorially…however, it looks just like editorial to readers. The beauty of this is that, unlike advertorial, you can set your maximum budget and campaign timeframe. Usually around 6-8 weeks to deliver maximum clicks through; this means only paying for the results you get.
What to spend
The total spend is capped at a certain level. Up to that cap, the publisher will receive payment every time someone clicks on the link in the article. This means that if you capped the spend to £2,500, anything under this, you only pay per number of clicks. Anything over, you pay the capped spend and no more. Depending on the platform, setting the minimum CPC at £1 is recommended to secure a good publisher set it at £1.50.
You can choose to place solo articles about your brand, and you can also have your brand featured in listicles and product roundups. While it may not significantly impact click-through rates, having solo articles about the brand can enhance evergreen coverage. It’s worth noting that 99% of these CPC articles are evergreen, so they remain online long after the campaign period.
Want to learn more about how Storm Communications could help with affiliate marketing for your brand? Contact us at hello@stormcom.co.uk
