Tips & Guides — 20 Dec 2022
Multilinguality for affiliate marketing
It’s no secret that we live in an English-first world. It’s the most spoken language in the world (yup, even ahead of Mandarin), and even if you grew up in a non-English speaking country, you’ve likely seen movies or TV shows in English, or listened to popular English songs.
But English isn’t the be-all and end-all of the internet. According to Statista, English speakers comprise 25.9% of internet users, meaning there’s almost 75% of the digital population that might not understand your content.
If you want to grow your business with affiliate marketing, it’s time to consider using multilingualism to expand your network and boost your reach globally. In this article, we explain why it’s important, and share some effective strategies for implementing multilingual affiliate marketing.
If you’re a beginner, here’s a brief overview of what differentiates conventional and multilingual (international, global, whatever you want to call it) affiliate marketing from conventional affiliate marketing.
Conventional affiliate marketing refers to a performance marketing technique where affiliates promote somebody else’s product or service in return for something. Affiliates are rewarded with a commission payout each time a purchase or further action is generated via your link—so it’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.
One of the main incentives of performance marketing is that once the initial content has been created and disseminated, it becomes a source of passive income that keeps generating clicks or sales long after it’s published. Affiliate partnerships can be formed with all kinds of online businesses, social media influencers, bloggers, networks, and so on.
There are different pricing models which determine affiliate commission rates depending on marketing objectives. Note that performance marketing isn’t just for physical products or digital products, it can also be applied to generate registrations, downloads, and referrals.
Performance marketing commission models include:
International affiliate marketing, on the other hand, uses multilingualism to reach a wider network of consumers. So, instead of creating content only in English, you might start translating it into Spanish or Mandarin, or identifying unique opportunities to form partnerships with international content creators and affiliate programs or networks.
International affiliate marketing is guaranteed to have a positive impact as you extend the global reach of your brand and increase conversion rates.
The consumer landscape has evolved to become increasingly global. Consumers are more likely to purchase goods and services from overseas companies, and it’s super easy to do so.
Global retail ecommerce sales are predicted to reach a whopping $7.385 trillion by 2025. As businesses cater to a wider global audience, marketers must look for ways to reach new audiences before their competitors do. One way to do this is with multilingual affiliate marketing.
International affiliate marketing can be hugely profitable when done right. But getting started isn’t a piece of cake, and it can be challenging for newbies. Here are some tips for implementing an effective international affiliate marketing strategy:
First things first, you’ll need to define your affiliate marketing niche. Consider which niche will appeal to audiences where you want to expand. Research different verticals thoroughly and identify which are least competitive, as these will be areas you can get a head start in.
Think about which kinds of content and topics will be popular in your chosen niche, and consider how you can form a performance marketing strategy with them. Also look into the monetization of affiliate products, for instance whether they’re prone to seasonal sales.
The most profitable niches for affiliate marketing include health & wellness, fashion, beauty & cosmetics, technology, finance, and gaming.
Before you jump into the deep end with your international affiliate marketing campaign, it’s important to research the market in the areas you want to expand. This means delving into customs and traditions that might affect the outcome of your online marketing campaigns, as well as any language barriers that might come up.
While doing this, you’ll likely come across some of your local competitors, which will give you a better idea of how to handle your own localized performance marketing campaigns. How do their products or services compare to yours? Which affiliate networks are they a part of? Do they have high commission rates?
Also be aware that different regions will vary in size and the demand for your product/service. Set your expectations to match the market you’re aiming for. For instance, if you’re a SaaS provider selling online call center software, you’ll likely find the market in a well-established location like the US to be larger than in a smaller location like Portugal, where there’s less brand awareness and demand for this type of software. Setting your expectations is key to understanding the results of your affiliate marketing campaigns in the context of different locations.
If international audiences are being pointed to your ecommerce store or website, it’s a good idea to feature content that speaks their language—literally.
Nine out of 10 international users will ignore your product if it’s not in their language, so offering translations or content tailored towards different cultures can remove barriers to purchase.
Often, Google will translate a website automatically, but these translations are far from perfect, and don’t show audiences that you’re making a conscious effort to acknowledge them.
Consider the following tips when creating locally-focused content for your affiliate campaigns:
Your website probably won’t meet the needs of all your global customers. However, understanding where buyers are coming from can help you to tailor your website and content activities to meet some of their expectations.
If it’s possible, you could ask your web developer to code your website to show different content depending on where visitors are from.
SEO is a cornerstone of any performance marketing strategy. A good SEO strategy can help boost your website to the top of search engine results pages. So how can you leverage SEO for affiliate marketing?
If you’re still unsure which countries you want to target with your affiliate campaigns, use Google Analytics to see where your website visitors are coming from and what their conversion rates are like.
Check out how keywords and search queries related to your business rank in different languages and what their keyword difficulty is. You could use Ahrefs to identify the best keywords for your blog, which have a high search volume but low keyword difficulty.
Analyze which websites are ranking for the keywords you want to target. This’ll help you pinpoint which kinds of content is missing so that you can create content that outshines it.
If you’re branching out into international affiliate marketing, it’s a good idea to check out some affiliate programs and networks to help you form partnerships. There’s a difference between the two, so be sure to check out all your options.
Affiliate networks are online platforms that connect affiliate publishers (people who want to promote other people’s offerings) and merchants (owners of the product or service). It’s like a digital marketplace where you can find affiliate offers around the world.
An affiliate network is essentially a digital marketplace, and some popular affiliate networks include ShareASale, Awin, Flexoffers, Avangate, Clickbank, and Rakuten Advertising.
Affiliate programs come directly from the company to boost marketing efforts and sales. To start your own program and recruit partners across the globe easily, you can use a platform like Affise Reach. It helps to connect your brand with publishers, influencers, and other partners all over the world to increase brand awareness and boost sales. Affise Reach also enables brands to utilize new marketing channels to expand reach globally through new traffic channels.
Once you’ve started to run an affiliate program or form partnerships with affiliate networks, you’ll need to structure your team before implementing your campaigns. This all depends on the size of the affiliate program, but you might need to hire a dedicated account manager to work with local teams and manage relationships with publishers, or an international team with dedicated affiliate managers to handle specific regions or countries.
When you’re expanding to a market where English isn’t the first language, you should localize your affiliate marketing program with a team that’s able to provide local language support.
This way, you can ensure all your translations are spot-on and nothing gets lost in translation. The language used should be natural, using native wording and phrasing.
It’s a good idea to hire a team that’s based in that location, so they can be available to provide customer support in the market’s time zone and release campaigns in a timely manner.
Business intelligence and digital marketing tools can streamline the international affiliate marketing process. There are plenty of different apps out there to help with various aspects of your international affiliate strategy.
Tools to look out for include:
Forming partnerships with international affiliates can be challenging, but with the right strategies in place and a dedicated affiliate marketing platform like Affise Reach behind you, it’s more than doable!
If you want to go global, there’s no better way of succeeding than to speak your customers’ language.
Written by
Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad, an AI-powered cloud communication platform for better and easier team collaboration. She has over 10 years of experience in content writing and strategy. Currently, she is responsible for leading branded and editorial content strategies, partnering with SEO and Ops teams to build and nurture content.
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