Affiliate Marketing Strategy
Affiliate Marketing is a form of online advertising that works by only rewarding actual results. As an advertiser (or merchant) you will only pay when a sale or lead has been generated by the Affiliate. Affiliates (other website owners) earn their commission by promoting your website and services with a view to driving purchasers to your website.
The commission you pay is based upon the sale amount. Affiliate technology allows you to track the purchaser through the advert on the Affiliate's site, to your site, and record the amount of the sale.
If you advertise your products and services online, Affiliate Marketing is an efficient way to generate additional business. It's a cost effective form of advertising for merchants; a way of extending reach to more customers with the added benefit of free brand awareness.
£1.35bn UK sales were generated from the Affiliate network channels in 2006 allowing Affiliate Marketing an established role in the marketer's arsenal.
Your company can be promoted by the Affiliates in a number of ways including banner adverts, text based adverts, product feeds and content units.
Why affinity i-marketing?
Affiliate Marketing can be very labour intensive which is why a good affiliate marketing strategy will be required for an affiliate program to be successful. Furthermore a good level of technical knowledge is essential to set up and maintain the affiliate programme. Despite its size, the UK market is surprisingly 'close knit' and relies heavily on building relationships. Therefore there is a distinct advantage in having established relationships and a positive profile within the sector.
affinity i-marketing have set up numerous successful programmes across a wide variety of industries and therefore we have solid relationships with both Affiliates and various networks. Being active members of relative forums, having participated in networking events and roundtables, affinity i-marketing have established a good reputation within the industry.
affinity i-marketing Affiliate Service
affinity i-marketing manage the initial set up process of the campaign and, if required, the ongoing maintenance and marketing of the programme.
The Initial set up service includes
- Researching the most suitable network for your products
- Researching and creating the programme
- Set commission levels
- Set cookie lengths
- Advise on Affiliates sign up process
- Advise brand bidding policies
- Create the programme description
- Add a promotional page to the existing website
- Create a range of banners for Affiliates to promote the programme
- Create text adverts for Affiliates to promote the programme
- Audit the existing site and identify possible factors that will deter an affiliate from promoting the programme
- Liaise with the chosen network to ensure a smooth 'launch' and provide technical support
- Launching the programme on the relevant affiliate forums
The benefits of continued support
Once the initial set up of the campaign has been completed, the programme can run with a relatively small amount of support. However, as with all Affiliate programmes, someone within the company would need a basic understanding of Affiliate Marketing to liaise with the network regarding payment issues and any technical problems that may arise.
The programme will become available to all the Affiliates on the network of choice but will not be actively marketed by the network. This means that there is no guarantee that Affiliates will pick up the programme, nor is it guaranteed that once signed up an Affiliate will actually promote your programme, or in time competitors may offer better incentives (or discounts) and offers to lure your Affiliates away.
The risk of this happening can be greatly reduced by assigning an 'Affiliate Manager' who would take over the ongoing maintenance and management of the programme.
affinity i-marketing offers a full range of professional Affiliate management skills to ensure your programme gets the best exposure.
Affiliate Manager's role
Responsibilities of an affinity i-marketing's Affiliate Manager include:
- Development of fresh marketing creative, new campaign ideas and incentives
- Affiliate communications such as e-Newsletters
- Technical support - creation and management of content units and product feeds
- Manage problems with Affiliate payments, and dispute resolution
- Monitor Affiliate activity, analyse performance, identify areas of improvement and recommend ways to increase individual Affiliate generated revenues
- Manage and recommend tiered commission levels
- Recruit new Affiliates
- Manage Affiliate sign up process
Our sister company, affinity new media offer website design and development, database integration & management and many more technical services. Click here (opens in a new window) to find out more.
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