Any company with an online presence and product or service to promote should consider affiliate marketing – it’s an ideal way to market your business to new audiences and generate revenue with reduced risks. Selected wisely, an affiliate programme can open the door for your business, regardless of its size.
Inhouse or network?
When moving forward with an affiliate marketing programme there are two options: you can either build the programme in-house or partner with an affiliate network. An in-house-only affiliate programme may be appropriate if your business is too small to join a network, or if you have the resource, technology, publisher reach and experience to easily manage a programme in-house.
If you choose to work with a network, you will benefit from the ability to work across its pre-established web of publishers as well as the overall set up, publisher payment process, technology and expertise. The following tips are based on using a network.
1. Choosing the right network
There are several factors to consider when choosing a network. You need to consider how wide its reach of publishers is – and whether it has the right target audience. It’s important to ensure the network will deal with the payment of publishers for you. Doing this yourself can get complicated as there can be thousands of publishers involved. Don’t forget the basics: the technology must be robust, and service and account management must be agreed on before you start working together.
2. Where to start
Contact a few networks to discover which ones will offer what you want. You must make sure you provide the publisher with tools to sell the product such as online creative (banners or text links), product catalogue and email creative. In terms of getting set up, your network will need to implement a tracking pixel, so some technical support on the advertiser side will be required, but your network should provide this.
3. Hiring a virtual sales force
View an affiliate marketing programme as hiring new members of sales staff whom you pay on a commission-only basis. One of the key advantages of affiliate partners is that they work alongside your business. They complement your business as a virtual sales team. The commission-only structure is one of the advantages of an affiliate programme as it means you are paying on results you can clearly track, manage and incentivise.
4. It’s time to deliver ROI
One of the reasons affiliate marketing is so successful is because it is a measurable online marketing programme where spend is directly linked to results. The way in which you pay your affiliates is defined by you. To do this, you need to gain understanding of the value of a customer and assign the value of commission, which you pay to the publisher in return for the commissionable action. This way, there should never be budget restrictions as you dictate what you pay for an online sale.
5. Improve brand awareness
Affiliate marketing can improve brand awareness as it gives you the chance to advertise your brand across sites within your niche and also take it into new areas. Affiliate marketing agencies can extend your brand across a vast network of publishers with constant tracking and evaluation of the return on your investment of the sites. This means areas that are not performing as well as they should can be refocused – after all you are both working towards the same goal.
6. Increase traffic with quality controls
It is also important to consider brand protection. In order to control the exposure of your brand you must ensure you do not compromise this by partnering with a network that doesn’t understand the nature of the affiliates it works with. Manage your brand by entrusting it has strict checks in place for all the sites on its network and controls in place to monitor any fraudulent operations which may compromise this.
7. Launch new products and promotions
An affiliate programme allows you to build a platform to communicate directly with customers. This requires a dedication to providing up-to-date content on a regular basis. Having constant dialogue with your affiliates and providing email updates on product will improve performance.
8. Measurability and accountability
Affiliate marketing is easy to measure because of the transparent nature of its commission-only structure. If you operate on a pay-per-action model you will only pay a percentage of commission to the affiliate if you make a sale. This means you have the ability to measure and account for your affiliate marketing spend versus results achieved. Although it is advisable to keep a programme running for six months to a year to measure the true value of the results, you can make changes to your programme throughout your partnership.
