Digital Marketing vs. Affiliate Marketing: Which is the Better Choice?

Small and mid-size businesses always experiment with marketing channels and find the ideal way to get sales. Thus, each of them comes to an affiliate marketing idea sooner or later. This is when the question "What is better digital marketing vs affiliate marketing?" arises. What do these two have in common? How are they different? Can we combine them?

You'll find all this and more in our guide below. Discover the fundamentals of each type of marketing and compare their elements and tactics to generate revenue in 2025.

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing, also known as online marketing, covers all the forms of activities companies use to engage and convert their target audience to their products or services on the web, including apps and mobile devices.

For instance, among the common activities of digital marketers is customer analysis. In-detail knowledge of the brand audience is a must-have step defining the success of the future campaigns. Its elements are used in marketing copy, channels and messages sending time choice.

To create and execute digital marketing strategy brands hire in-house experts or delegate tasks to outsource agencies. These people use many techniques to define whom, where, when, and how to sell the company's solution. To engage the target audience and get better sales, they use tools like chatbots, live chat, automated email campaigns, popup messages, etc.

For example, to sell the grammar checker to IT marketers, the Grammarly team:

👉 Launched YouTube ads

👉 Regularly post on social media like LinkedIn

👉 Optimize its website for SEO

👉 Educate their users on email

And that’s far from the end of channels this company uses. Btw let’s examine the most popular digital marketing channels brands use to talk to potential clients 👇

Top 5 Components of Digital Marketing

Different combinations of digital marketing success elements exist. Companies vary their strategies depending on their target audience, but well-known stars appear on each list. 

Let's start with a headliner. 

Content Marketing

Text, images, and video are a base for all marketing activities. 62% of companies use them in different formats like blog posts, YouTube videos, lead magnets, newsletters, and social media posts to attract, educate, and convert the audience into buyers. 

And it works.  

84% of customers want brands to entertain them with exciting content. 

To make it work, a digital marketer ensures that it meets the audience's interests at each step of a brand's journey. The next rule is that content should be high-quality. This means grammatically correct, easy to read, expert, and in keeping with the company's tone of voice. All this is a basic requirement consumers have for brand content. 

On top of that are also requirements from a search engine, like Google or Bing 👇

SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, a list of actions marketers take with website content to improve their website's position on the search results page. At the core of all these activities lie queries a potential customer uses to Google information, like "best customer support tools." Google has robots that scan all the content on the web, rate its relevance to the query, and show it on the search results page. 

So, the main goal of markets here is to optimize web page content according to the target keywords. 

Here is how the process looks: 

• SEO Manager finds keywords associated with a company product or issue it resolves.
• Analyze competitors' content to define how they optimized their content to be on the top of the SERP.
• Collect all insights and keywords in an SEO brief for a copywriter.
• The copywriter creates relevant text and publishes it on the website.
• Google robots scan, rate it, and show it on the search results page. 

The better your content quality, the higher positions you take. But how those robots rate your content is a total mystery. 

Another part of this game is backlinks to your content from other websites. The number of backlinks is a clear sign of the expertise for Google. The more resources placed on their website links to your web pages, the higher your chances to be in the top 10.

But if you want fast results, pay money👇

Pay-per-click advertising

Pay-per-click, a.k.a. PPC advertising, is a fast way to get your website to the top of the search results page by paying money to Google (or a different search engine.) Thus, your ad will be displayed under a sponsored label at the top of results, and each time people click it, you pay Google. 

Here is how it typically looks like:

A short intro on how it works:

Let’s say you want to be on the top of SERP on the “marketing automation tool” keyword. For this you create an ad text: title + description + link to the page you want to land people. 

Since you're not the only one who wants to get that place, the bidding part goes. You bid $3 per click, your competitor J bids $2, and competitor K — $4. To resolve this situation, Google compares the quality of your ads and ranks you three accordingly. If your rank is higher than competitors, in addition to being in the first place, you will pay even less. 

To avoid uncontrolled spending, brands usually set a budget for such campaigns.

All you have to do then is track conversions and optimize ad text if needed. 

Email Marketing

This element of digital marketing is all about communicating with consumers via emails by sending them highly personalized content like product/company updates, articles, or discounts on items they are interested in.

Due to the 1-to-1 communication format these emails can be personalized according to receivers behavior on the company website, pain points, interests. Thus, each message directs the right person at the right time and with a right offer. 

The result: 3% conversion rate!

Here is how email marketing works: 

• Consumers share email addresses with a company and give their consent to send them messages. They share their interests right in the opt-in form or the company collects this info by tracking subscribers behavior on the website or in communication with managers. 
• Based on that info, companies segment subscribers.
• Considering company goals and interests of each segment brands relevant content. 
• By using automated email platforms, they create an email design, define a list of emails where to send it, and set a time when to send it. There are pre-scheduled campaigns and triggered campaigns triggered by some event connected with a subscriber like a payment deadline. 
• After all the emails are sent, markets track the campaign results like Open Rate or CTR and correct future messages.

But there is a limit in emails per week, ideally, it shouldn’t be more than 2. Otherwise you’ll be labeled as a spammer. 

Want to engage your target audience more often? Consider social media platforms. 

Social Media Marketing

Whatever social media platform your target audience prefers, there are millions of opportunities to get clients by interacting with them via posted content or comments. 

Usually, companies tell more about their brand story, values, mission, and customer stories and less about product updates or discounts. That's because social media marketing is about building trustful relationships with consumers rather than just posting sales updates. 

To get conversions on social media, marketers research target audience interests on the specific platform, style of communication they prefer, content they like, and only then craft strategies on how to engage with them. 

It may take you years. However, the result is that a million people actively communicate about your brand when your email list is limited to the number of contacts on your list. 

What is Affiliate Marketing?

This is one of the digital marketing tactics when companies pay money to other experts (affiliates) who promote their product or service. Every time someone makes a purchase by an affiliate link, a company pays money to an expert who promoted it. 

The best part for companies is that you don't have to spend time working on reputation or audience. Affiliates already have it.

Here is how it works:

Among the common elements of affiliate marketing are the following:

• The product owner/retailer who sells a service or product and offers an affiliate program.
• The affiliate — an expert or business who recommends on their blog, email, social media the seller’s product and receives % from each sale.
• The platform where the product owner/affiliate tracks affiliate conversions and pays/gets money to an affiliate.

For business it is a great method to grow revenue without actively investing in digital marketing. All you have to do is to create a separate space where affiliate marketer could register, get their link, promo materials, check their balance, withdraw money.

Here is how PageOptimizer Pro SEO service does it:

This platform offers its affiliates a 25% recurring commission on every sale.

To join it, the affiliate marketer should fill in the form and get a reply from the company manager.

A website and how do you plan on promoting POP fields can be one of the qualification elements. PageOptimizer Pro employees check affiliate marketer resource traffic or social media profile followers.  

Those who pass qualification get access to the affiliate cabinet and personal link to place on their posts. On top of that, the company provides affiliates with exclusive promo materials like banners design, marketing copy, videos, etc.

When the commission balance reaches some level, let’s say $200, they can withdraw it. 

Another example of a SaaS affiliate program is from GoZen. This sales revenue platform offers a partner program that enables its affiliates to earn a 30% recurring commission on every sale for life.

The success of the affiliate marketer depends on their audience size, marketing tactics, and if they actually use the seller product. Based on the last characteristics, there are three types of affiliate marketing defined 👇

2 Types of Affiliate Marketing

There are two main models of affiliate marketing based on how the affiliate links are promoted:

1. Online content creators who place affiliate links into their copy, visuals, or podcasts.
2. Specialized websites (hubs) that provide access to affiliates or enable affiliate link listings.

Surely, there is a more detailed division into subcategories by type like newsletter publisher, podcast host, etc. 

This is important to know when qualifying the affiliate for further cooperation. 

How is it different from digital marketing? Let’s analyze digital marketing vs affiliate marketing.

Comparing Digital and Affiliate Marketing 

Here can be a long list of differences between affiliate marketing vs digital marketing, but to save you time, let’s focus on the main ones.

Despite this list of differences, there are still a lot of things in common.

What’s Common Between Digital and Affiliate Marketing

Since affiliate marketing is one of the digital marketing strategies, they share the same basics. For instance: 

• In the heart of each marketing idea there is always a specific buyer persona. Thus, each campaign targets their interests, pain points, and online behavior.
• Every affiliate or digital marketing hypothesis is built based on the SMART framework. The main part here is that the goal is achievable and the results are measurable.
• Compared to traditional offline marketing both types are cost-effective. Companies can change their budget based on the campaigns or channels performance. 
• The base of each campaign in every marketing type here is content. 

Conclusion: When to Choose Digital Marketing or Affiliate Marketing

It is time to summarize the comparison of affiliate marketing vs digital marketing 👇

Digital marketing is perfect for companies with a good budget, broad audience, who want to test different strategies, build brand voice and reputation, engage a potential customer on different channels. But if your marketing has limited investments, it is better to consider affiliates whom you pay only for conversions but not for the time in the office. This is a choice of companies with established products ready to scale with a low risk. 

The best scenario: combine them both! Build the product reputation with digital marketing, and monetize it in quick sales with affiliates.  

FAQs on digital marketing vs affiliate marketing

Digital marketing vs affiliate marketing, what is better?

It depends on your company and product growth stage. If your focus is sales, but not reputation — choose affiliate marketing. If you want to control everything and work with a target audience directly — digital marketing is better. 

Is affiliate marketing a digital marketing channel?

Yes, affiliate marketing is a digital channel, aka a tactic or strategy for digital marketing.

Is there a downside to affiliate marketing?

Comparing digital marketing vs affiliate marketing both have downsides. When a company relies on affiliate marketing only it makes it dependent on the performance of these partners which a company can’t control or influence.