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:

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. 

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.