Tired of the same old tips and tricks about web affiliate marketing programs? “Communicate with them, treat them with respect†yada-yada. What about what really works? I pulled together a group of my most experienced, thought-leading colleagues to find out what’s moving the needle in affiliate marketing today. The below innovations are what I discovered. I’m happy to share these best practices. Yes, they can be quickly and easily applied—helping you manage your affiliates and extract maximum sales efficiency. Stay tuned to Electronic Retailer’s blog for candid interviews with these experts where they’ll “go deep†to reveal their secrets to success.
1. Allow affiliates to access a knowledge-driven feedback loop to improve their ROI and, as a result, increase yours.
a. Let affiliates “connect the ROI dots†between their investments (media spending) and your ultimate success (sales or new customers).
b. Provide select, trusted affiliates with limited, yet unfettered, access to your internal metrics and customer behavior data.
2. Strengthen relationships with superstar affiliates and open doors for potential superstars by actively, yet cautiously, investing hard and soft dollars in them.
a. Invest in affiliates: Underwrite affordable, educational opportunities and conferences for them. Sponsoring affiliates is very popular in the European realm.
b. Sponsor low-cost, virtual innovation forums and webinars that offer training opportunities for top affiliates.
c. Provide limited access to web metrics (i.e., Google Analytics, Omniture) and optimization tools that are already at your disposal, yet possess a high perceived (and applied!) value among affiliates.
d. Invest in affiliates: Subsidize the media buying of select, high-value affiliates by providing matching contributions to their expenditures or allowing access to your media buying prowess.
3. Develop and communicate a clear, well-reasoned search marketing policy to affiliates.
a. Audit your affiliate program for confluence with paid (PPC) search advertising efforts.
b. Understand value driven by affiliates across various categories based on audit results that demonstrate “triggers†of sales transactions.
c. Create business rules that negate and approve affiliate commissions based on logical rules that are shared openly and pro-actively with affiliates.
d. Understand where your search engine optimization “sweet spot†is by identifying where you want to spend time, energy (money). Assign “long tail†search terms/keywords (those able to generate less referral volume) to affiliates for their monetization efforts.
4. Experiment with social media affiliates.
a. Scale your most precious resource, time: Use new tools, such as Syntryx, to rapidly prospect for qualified affiliates.
b. Provide affiliates with access to helpful, innovative Web 2.0 linking technologies like Linkshare’s FlexLinks or Amazon’s various tools ranging from “SiteStripe†to widgets.
c. Give affiliates access to product data, coupons and other content via flexible, RSS-enabled technologies.
5. Consider creative, new approaches to paying and bonusing affiliates based on performance.
a. Throttle up payouts among performers who drive volume at a reasonable cost, considering channel confluence issues, etc.
b. Throttle down payouts among under-performers who’ve been given a fair chance, but are not performing on a quarterly basis.
Stay tuned for more actionable tips and interviews with experts in a variety of performance-focused web marketing strategies.
Jeff Molander is a leading Web marketing expert, author and speaker. He is CEO of Molander & Associates Inc.
Let’s be honest. It’s been a while since anything interesting has turned up within the realm of online affiliate marketing. Yet that could change and soon. We need to know how and when to exploit the next performance-based marketing opportunity. Rest assured, there are exciting new opportunities for DRTV’ers big and small in affiliate marketing—but serious challenges lie ahead. From managing the intersection of search and affiliate programs to diversifying the mix of distribution points, the key question multichannel merchants should ask is, “How can affiliates be encouraged to send more incremental sales or new customers?â€
Loading ...