Affiliate marketing isn’t going to generate all the sales or brand awareness your business dreams of in an instant. Affiliate marketing can take months before brands begin to see the results. There are ways to better manage it so it works with your brand’s pre-existing marketing and figure out what works and doesn’t for your brand.
Pay for Performance
Affiliate marketing is a non-traditional pay for performance marketing. It works differently to more traditional forms of advertising, even when paying for a direct ad on a website. Potential consumers are more likely to click a link on an advertorial than they are on a glossy banner ad. Pop-up ads aren’t even seen these days with an array of pop-up blockers. Then there’s the usual TV, radio and print advertising. Short of taking a billboard ad out, is the ad even being seen?
A brand sends out a link to an affiliate and the affiliate promotes it to their audience in some way. The audience then click on the link. The affiliate gets paid either per sale, per lead or per click. It is performance based. If the affiliate isn’t generating the clicks and usually sales, then the affiliate isn’t going to be paid.
Hire a Manager
Affiliate marketing is reliant upon contacts. It isn’t a case of what you know, but who you know. The glossy banner ad may have all the right enticing features, but they tend to go ignored when fighting for attention with ten other ads, unless, of course, the consumer is already aware of the brand. An affiliate marketing manager has the connections to get your brand noticed in the places it matters, which then in turn, enhances other forms of marketing for your brand. iaffiliatemanagement.com is a results driven affiliate manager company. A good affiliate manager will specialise in just the affiliate marketing but know how to work in conjunction with the brand’s other marketing.
Know Your Brand
You aren’t going to promote your brand if you don’t know exactly what it is and where it fits into the world. A lot of the affiliates are going to be real niche market. Niche markets are where the loyalty is. The affiliate’s audience needs to be interested in the brand already. It needs to be something they’re likely to click on or buy. In order to become a brand ambassador of your own brand, you need to understand what is a brand ambassador and what your brand is.
Vet Affiliates
You can’t just sign up anyone as an affiliate. Affiliates aren’t your brand, but they’re about to become associated with it. The affiliate needs to have a decent rapport with their audience, especially in the case of niche bloggers and influences. The affiliate, no matter how niche, needs a good following. Their audience needs to find them trustworthy. The affiliate and audience need to engage with each other, unless it is a coupon or discount website.
The affiliate’s ethics need to match the brand’s ethics. A vegan brand isn’t going to want an affiliate that regularly reviews steak dinners on social media while promoting leather products on their blog. However, a lot of vegan brands offer discounts through discount sites that offer animal products and by-products. The type of affiliate matters when matching ethics.
Specific terms and conditions can be in the affiliate agreement so the brand can have control over what the affiliate does to market the brand. The brand has no say in how the affiliate markets other brands. A manager can ensure these aren’t breached, especially when using numerous affiliates.
Coupons
Offering a discount is bound to attract website visitors, as long as your brand has the resources to handle the discounts. Coupons aren’t right for all businesses, but if your brand involves food, beauty, travel or gadgets, they’re worth considering. Some discount affiliates offer a discount and earn the commission from people clicking through to it from their website, while the affiliate website swallows the cost of the discount.
Multiple Sources
Don’t focus on just one type of affiliate. Bloggers and influencers are very popular and coupons generate loads of sales, but every type of appropriate affiliate needs to be used for a successful campaign. People read review blogs when they’re ready to make a purchase, these also offer affiliate marketing.
Be Ready
Your brand needs to be affiliate ready to even attract any affiliates. It also needs to be ready for when the results of the affiliate marketing campaign start to kick in.
Affiliate marketing is marketing that is in it for the long haul. It doesn’t have instant results, but it is increasingly popular.
