Companies looking to promote their business should look no further than affiliate marketing. An affiliate marketing strategy is an exceptional approach for businesses interested in improving engagement with their targeted niche audience. Nearly any industry can utilize affiliate marketing, but one of the best industries combines health and fitness. The health and fitness industry is what many would refer to as an evergreen industry, in that it’s content, products, and services never really go out of style. It shows, too, since wellness businesses pulled in over $5.5 trillion globally in just 2023.
But the industry can be difficult to break into as an upcoming venture. In all truth, it’s an industry saturated with businesses, which all offer a special solution to a person’s health and fitness desires. So, how do you break through the industry red tape? One of the easiest ways to do so is to provide top-of-the-line products and service — but that can only go so far on its own. A great product is an incredible thing for any business, but that can only do so much to produce organic traffic in the modern digital world.
This poses an issue: How do you get yourself noticed? One of the simplest ways to do so is through the implementation of an affiliate marketing strategy — but how do you start an affiliate marketing strategy? Let’s explore the reasons why affiliate marketing is right for health and fitness companies, and just how they can implement the right campaign to success.
Health and Fitness
When considering the niche markets that work with affiliate marketing campaigns, health and fitness are the first to come to mind. What are people always in need of? People always have a desire to improve themselves, whether it is their health, the way they eat, the way they look, etc. This makes for a popular industry that makes money providing solutions like:
- Weight loss
- Muscle gain, strengthening, and physical toning
- Addiction treatment
- Dietary planning
- Alternative health remedies
- Treatment of diabetes and heart disease
- Stopping smoking
The truth to all of the above, and health and fitness, is that they require commitment — a person needs to be committed to a diet, working out, stopping smoking. This commitment requires a severe amount of personal motivation and, sometimes, people need outside help to boost themselves up. It makes sense: Making changes to your health is a change in the way you live, which can take quite the toll when done alone.
So the health and fitness industry steps in to take the weight off the shoulders of concerned people either looking to bulk up or slim down, reduce their eating or increase their intake, live a healthier lifestyle or learn to slow down. By offering a product or service, you’re providing people with a line of guidance toward improving their lives. And the truth is that there will always be people out there who need help in this venture — remember what we said about evergreen content.
There are always people to help, so there will always be an audience for what you provide to the marketplace. But how do you get it to the right people? Affiliate marketing is the way to do it nowadays, especially with the extreme use of social media, where over 5 billion people use one or many of the platforms every day. But before you can outright target them, you need to take the time to understand who it is you want to target in the first place. That will require you to identify your audience and business niche.
Identifying Your Niche
Affiliate marketing works on niches, and this is no different for health and fitness businesses. If you want to increase your audience engagement, you need to know who it is you’re talking to. This will require a great amount of consideration on your part. You’ll need to ask yourself questions, most of which are related to what your business is not. Knowing the subcommunity you want to target is important when using affiliate marketing software — it ensures you get the most out of its features. So, here are some things you need to consider:
- First, are you a health and/or fitness business?
- Do you sell supplements?
- Are you targeting people who want to lose weight?
- Are you targeting the gym crowd?
- Do you consider athletes to be part of your audience?
- Are you more masculine or feminine in appearance, style, and voice?
- What age range do you target?
- Are your products and services exclusive or inclusive to the population?
The answers to these questions, and many more, are the fundamental ways you can describe who your average customer is. The average matters because it can help you identify who it is you are targeting — rather than throwing a net into the sea, you can fire a harpoon at your exact target.
What Exactly Does Your Audience Look Like?
So, you’ve identified the niche which you serve, but how much further does it go from there? There is more to be learned about your niche and your audience, beneath the basic questions of what you do.
There will be many other considerations you’ll want to look into, such as what demographics make up your audience, what their most common goals are, what their other interests are, and more. Also, take to social media and do your work, getting insight into who they follow and what content they most like to see.
This will take research, but it’s well worth your time. The added insight into your customer base is incredibly important, as you can’t do business without knowing your average customer. And, once you have an idea? Then you’re ready to explore what they want to hear and who the right person is to tell them about your business. Is it an affiliate brand? An influencer? Someone who is a health and diet guru or the person who posts gym selfies every morning? You can learn the answer to these questions. Take the time to do your market research, digging up whatever you can. It will help you narrow down just who you’re going to sign to your affiliate network.
Sticking Out in the Crowd
What is it that makes affiliate marketing so grand? Even if you’ve identified your niche, it won’t mean anything unless you can get the word out about your company. Word of mouth campaigning among customers will happen, but it will be nowhere near enough to drive business to the level of success you’ll likely want to see. So, more legwork will have to be put into the game, as you take the time to truly commit to your business.
Thankfully, the health and fitness industry shows no signs of slowing. With gym closures due to COVID, people have had to take to finding personal motivation at home, offering another lane to businesses. But, again, a saturated market doesn’t spell good news for anyone just starting in the industry. Businesses need to find a way to stand out in the crowd. Relying on the word of mouth of trusted brands and influencers is one of the best ways to achieve that.
Branching Out with Affiliate Marketing
So, you think it’s worth your time to start an affiliate marketing campaign — but why exactly should you join an affiliate network and start your first campaign? Affiliate marketing provides many opportunities for businesses looking to promote themselves. The multi-pronged approach of the marketing effort makes it easy for businesses to spread their name to their target audience. Here are just a few of the ways how:
- Getting your content before the right people — So you have your niche but you’re not sure how to get in touch with them. Affiliates will already have established relationships with these people, providing you with a direct link to their content feeds. Whether it’s a brand or an influencer, they can guarantee your content gets before the right people.
- Creating relationships with products and services — When affiliates share your content with their audience, they’re going to give it a personal spin and charm, making it useful for their audience, allowing value to be instilled directly through content. This is important for the promotion of your products, as it will make it easier for potential customers to form an emotional connection to what you’re offering.
- Results for analysis — An affiliate marketing platform like Refersion provides businesses with statistics related to the success of their marketing campaigns, letting them see how well their affiliates are doing, all in real-time. Not only will you have high-quality customer support, but you’ll end up having a trove of information to learn from.
- ROI is the name of the game — Affiliate marketing is a low-risk investment with high ROI. You’re only making payments whenever an action is made, meaning you’re spending when it benefits you. This differs from the models of traditional advertising, where you’ll spend big to place an ad that might go nowhere fast.
How to Start Affiliate Marketing
As great as all of this is, where do you start? It starts with developing an affiliate marketing strategy. You’ll need a plan to work off of — one that has clearly defined goals that you can work toward over the year. You’ll need affiliates. This can be a process within itself, but it aligns with knowing who your audience is. If you know your audience, you can identify potential affiliates.
Look for brands and influencers with similar audiences. They should regularly post content, interact with their audience, and put up good numbers when it comes to engagement. This matters, as you’ll only want a representative who can provide value to your business — someone who can take what you have to say to consumers and make it real for them.
With this backing, you’ll have to move on to starting your first affiliate marketing campaign. It might not be a total success, but it doesn’t have to be from the start. Have your affiliates test out some content with their audiences; see how your approach works. Then track results closely. The findings from this initial campaign will be important, as they will help you identify rough spots from the very start, whether that means tweaks to your content or finding different affiliates.
The analytics won’t stop there. You’ll need to keep up with your latest analytics to ensure your health and fitness business’s affiliate marketing plan is thriving. This is a necessary step of keeping your affiliate marketing strategy successful, as it will make it easier for you to identify key characteristics as time goes on, whether those are certain ideas that should be thrown out or affiliates that deserve personal recognition.
Continue Progressing
Don’t ever let your business fall by the wayside. Your affiliate marketing campaigns deserve regular attention, and you should give them the utmost care to ensure that they’re successful. The same goes for your affiliates. Keep them in the loop, show them appreciation, and recognize their success. The world of health and fitness is as much about community as it is about personal growth. People come together, in some form or another, to improve themselves. Put in the work as a business to provide them with the very same. Show consumers that you and your affiliates are here to support them through their journey of self-betterment.
Use the tools of Refersion’s platform to your benefit, tracking statistics and regularly communicating with your affiliates to improve the lives of consumers. Continue giving it your all so your affiliates and customers can do the same.
