Affiliate Marketing

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

Strategies

Okay, before we move on from affiliate marketing, let’s look at some of the key strategies to get this right.

Incentive commission structures

First of all, you need to incentivize or have the right incentive commission structure. So you need to make sure that each party is getting the relative or the appropriate return for the effort they’re putting into the process. So, for example, consider the websites that are hosting your affiliate content, or hosting your blogs that people then link back to your site, or hosting those adverts that are on their page. You need to make sure that they’re getting the appropriate compensation for the traffic that they are sending to your site. This ensures that they’re keen to continue to do in the future. And it shows your product in the best possible light. You also need to make sure that there’s enough margin in the product you’re selling so that you’re also rewarded for selling this product. Because without everyone doing well out of it, it’s a difficult process to sustain.

Strong content for affiliates

This could mean a few different things. If it’s talking about where affiliates are writing blog contents about the type of product that you offer, you need to make sure that you’ve given them all the necessary information so that they can write about your product in the best possible light, partly to make your product come across well. But also to make the job as easy as possible for the affiliate so they’re most likely to write about you rather than other products. It can also mean about creating really great, compelling advertising copy so that the advertising images on their site (or the videos on their site, or whatever the advertising format is) look great and add to the overall look and feel of their site. That’ll make it much more likely that they’re happy to work with you as an affiliate partner in future.

Concentrated affiliate recruitment strategy

This means giving it real focus, either in terms of doing it over a short period of time and signing up as many affiliates as possible in that time, or focusing on a particular area or a group of affiliates that you want to be as successful as possible with. We all know it’s much better to be focused on a particular area or over a particular time, rather than spreading that effort out over a long period of time. It just gives you the best chance of success.