What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the practice of getting third-party sellers to sell your product or service, typically with you paying the sellers a commission fee. It's a primarily "business" relationship – the sellers are usually 'professional' salespeople, perhaps running their own sites or blogs.

Popular affiliate marketing solutions for WooCommerce include:

• Affiliates
• AffiliateWP
• Affiliates Pro
• Affiliates Manager
• OSI Affiliate
• Ultimate Affiliate Pro
• Yith WooCommerce Affiliates

While considering all the possible options for running an affiliate program, we'd also like to invite you to consider: why not run a referral program instead?

What's the difference between affiliate marketing and referral marketing?

Like referral marketing, affiliate marketing drives new customers to your business through individuals who don’t work for you directly. Sounds similar… right? In practice, they can actually be rather different ways of acquiring new customers.

Should you use affiliate marketing or referral marketing for your WooCommerce store?

Referral marketing has several benefits for you to consider.

1. It allows ordinary customers to participate. They don't need to have their own site or system in order to start helping you get more customers.
2. It involves creating marketing collateral for your advocates to use. When you use a referral program provider like ReferralCandy, you create referral links with referral coupons that are easy for your customers to share.
3. It improves your relationship with your existing customers. Referral marketing isn't just about acquiring new customers (although you do get some of your best customers this way, since advocates are incentivized to make referrals to people who would particularly love your product). It's also about deepening the relationship with your existing customers. Every time a customer makes a successful referral, they're reminded of the positive relationship they have with your brand.

Here are a list of WooCommerce stores that use ReferralCandy:

1. Cycleboard – 3-wheel ‘lean to steer’ stand-up electric scooters

2. Driftaway Coffee – personalized coffee subscription box

3. Novosbed – memory foam mattresses with a 120-day trial

Check out a more comprehensive list here: WooCommerce Stores Using ReferralCandy

Want to take ReferralCandy for a test drive on your WooCommerce store?

Use our easy-to-follow WooCommerce setup guide and you'll have a referral program up-and-running in under an hour! (If you're really speedy, you could even have it done in about 15 minutes!)

ReferralCandy has a 30-day risk-free trial, so you can experiment with your setup, test it out yourself and see if it fits well with your store.

You can modify the referral collateral (emails, landing pages, social sharing messages) to suit your brand.

Try ReferralCandy for your WooCommerce store today!