PPC Vs Affiliate Marketing –  Which is Best for Maximum ROI

Recently updated: November 10th, 2020

Each and every business looks out for advertising in order to expand its reach. It is one of the key pillars of marketing, convincing the audience to become customers.

The most famous form of advertising is display ads. In this, the promotion of one business is done on another website with the help of display banners or advertisements.

When somebody clicks on these display ads, he or she gets redirected to the business site whose ad was being displayed. This is the oldest and the most widely used form of marketing, known as PPC or Pay Per Click.

Advertisers (businesses) place their PPC ads on multiple websites to gain maximum customers. They pay a fee to the website from where a customer comes after clicking the ad. The more the clicks, the higher the traffic, the better the conversion.

But is PPC worth the price investment?

Many businesses have a large budget for advertising. And a considerably larger proportion of it is being dined in PPC.

Seeing this, one can conclude that PPC is worth the investment.

But in reality, as the Google algorithms get updated, the conversion rates of PPC campaigns have dropped down. Many users are in fact using ad blockers to prevent seeing the display ads, thereby putting   These PPC advertisements as refuse.

PPC ads used by a continuous source of paid traffic to a business website, generating sales and leads in large numbers. But with more effective targeting options available, PPC has lost its charm.

What took over PPC?

As PPC became ineffective, people switched to making affiliates (agents) for their business. If the agent convinced anyone to make a purchase on the website through his referral code or link or barcode, the affiliate gets a commission. The more the sales that take place through the affiliate, the more the conversion.

This is the new advertising concept that has been widely embraced by people. In fact, many people have blogs and YouTube channels where they promote other websites by providing affiliate links in the content. Once a user clicks on the affiliate link and makes a purchase, the affiliate owner gets the fee.

Businesses have created a lot many affiliate links for various products and services that is a user directly to the selling page. Upon every successful purchase made through the affiliate link, the affiliate earns.

Many people get many affiliate links to their credit and supply leads to them. Affiliate links are the new continuous source of paid traffic, with 80% conversion rate. Because anybody who follows the affiliate link is actually impressed by the content that promotes it. And so it most likely to make a purchase.

What is better – PPC or Affiliate Marketing?

This was all in terms of the benefits that business websites have with PPC or Affiliate Marketing. And with the above discussion is it clear that in the fight between PPC vs Affiliate marketing, Affiliate marketing is the clear winner. If we go into the context of the promoting websites, which are highly traffic fetching, we will also find more reasons to say that Affiliate marketing is better than PPC.

The most important thing in the mind of an affiliate or an ad displaying platform is the de that they get. They optimize their ad placements or link placements in such a way that it fetches maximum leads for the other website. The best example of this Optimisation can be seen in an article that speaks about sports events going to be held and contains a link to sports equipment being sold at another website.

How does affiliate marketing work?

Any user who comes to read this article is already interested in sports and might be has a need to buy sports equipment as well. So, if the person sees an ad related to his need or requirement, he may go into making a purchase. Unknowingly the reader becomes the customer, by following the affiliate link and supplying a fee to the affiliate.

Like this, many affiliates across the globe are making tons of money. They are crafting content that revolves around the selling product link to get more targeted users who can become customers. An affiliate link of lipsticks has makeup hacks written with it, an affiliate link of electronics items has an elaborate description of its utility mentioned on the site. Likewise, the content changes depending upon the product or service being promoted.

The maximum benefits of affiliate links are to the businesses as they have to do nothing. Their promotion happens online on multiple platforms through multiple channels. They cut down their budget of advertising largely by having a strong affiliate marketing network. This advantage is missing in the case of PPC campaigns.

What are the drawbacks of PPC?

In PPC, only display ads in a rectangular box are shown. Which might or might not interest the user. These are primarily market-oriented and advertising is not associated anywhere. Also, they are less costly, for they are specific for marketing. For example, you might have come across search engine PPC and website banner PPC. In the case of search engine PPC campaigns, the ads show up in relevant keywords. On the websites, they keep displaying. But then too, the charges of getting them clicked are very less.

The click-through rate (CTR) in the case of PPC is considerably less in comparison to that of affiliate links. The content with affiliate links is more compelling than the content with PPC. Hence, affiliate links are much more delivering and have a higher commission for the affiliate.

Secondly, the chances of any user following an affiliate link are very less. It depends upon the affiliate to get more people into making the purchase through content or through the mouth to mouth publicity. The chances that a user will reach your site through an affiliate link are less, as the links are hidden in the content on various sites. Owing to this difficulty, the fee for affiliate links is also higher.

How business can earn from affiliate marketing?

If you are a blogger or YouTube video producer, you can become an affiliate of any selling website and make a decent earning by helping them to earn more.

The other challenge in affiliate marketing is the probability of potential users discovering the useful link. If the link is not before the customers, how would the other site get traffic? This makes affiliate marketing tougher.

Coming back to the business perspective, which is more about having profits than losses, more about having sales than running a dumb day, affiliate marketing is certainly better. The more affiliates any business has, the wider its reach becomes.

For new businesses or startups, going for PPC campaigns in the first instance is advisable. It’s us a fast delivering source of paid traffic. In fact, affiliate marketing is a long-term delivering campaign. You will earn leads for a considerable proportion of the time. Whereas in the case of PPC, the traffic is dependent on the display of the ad. You might be getting the flaws.

Can we balance both?

But this doesn’t mean that PPC is useless or you should discard the use of PPC marketing at once. The smarter businesses would maintain a balance between PPC and affiliate marketing. They would divide their budget for advertising – wisely into the two campaign sets and compare which one is working better for them. They can then improvise their strategies and work in the direction of achieving the best results.

If PPC is delivering better, they can hire a “PPC marketing agency“ to outsource their needs and requirements. And if affiliate marketing is working better, they can focus on building a wider network of affiliates. But the best way out is finding the middle line solution to balance both.

When you will work on both, you will draw easy conclusions from the comparisons you make in terms of various verticals. Slowly you can move to the marketing strategy that delivers the best for you.

As a digital marketing agency based in India, we have researched the trends and we believe that the time for PPC marketing is up. It will soon be replaced or taken over by other forms of marketing, which has affiliate marketing as its primary alternative.

Conclusion

Marketing is all about strategy. Landing into marketing without a good strategy, a good plan for execution is like trying to build a mall without a construction map. You might construct the walls, the floor, and the roof, but you might not be able to make a big house.

So, try to make good strategies. In fact, balanced strategies with both PPC and affiliate marketing. It is better if you outsource this job to an expert or focus on building an affiliate network.

Together, both these campaigns can take your business to another level. You can not judge which of them is delivering better. But if you survey the users, affiliate links supply good income.

The income is not only concerned with the business sales but also with the commission. So, everybody grows together. Start a bit of affiliate marketing today!