Digital marketers should always be working to improve their website. A successful website should do the following: (1) generate traffic, (2) drive conversions, and (3) maximize revenue per conversion (Gregory, 2019).
Affiliate marketing is a way to broaden the awareness of a website to a larger audience, increase the percentage of visitors that act, and increase the value of each action. It’s an excellent way to take gain thousands of new customers; and it’s an inexpensive way to take.
In the Stukent expert session “Affiliate Marketing 101”, Victoria Galperina teaches the basics of affiliate marketing and how to make it work for different types of businesses. She provides information on the best types of affiliates to use in your campaign, how to entice affiliates to selling your product and not the competitions, keeping affiliates happy, commission models to use, and deciding whether to use an affiliate software or affiliate network. However, from all this good information shared one statement made stands out above all: “Help affiliates help you”. Although she talked about this briefly, it’s a big statement.
Affiliate managers must recognize that affiliates are the folks who have chosen your company as one they will invest their time and effort promoting in return for monetary compensation. Your affiliates depend on you — and you depend on your affiliates to dramatically improve your marketing efforts. “As an affiliate manager, the more successful your affiliates are, the more successful that you are. Keeping that in mind, the more you help your affiliates, the more you are helping yourself” (Stocker, 2018).
The truth is you’re paying affiliates to help sell and promote your product. You must discover ways to help them do their job better. If they earn more money, you are making more money too.
There are many ways to get affiliates excited, produce more content, send traffic, and help them be successful in representing you. etc. Chris Stocker, an Affiliate Program Management Expert, in his blog How to Help Your Affiliates Be Successful suggests a few ways to ˈhelp your affiliates help youˈ (Stocker, 2018):
- Provide them Resources
Providing your affiliates resources to help them become more successful is an integral part of being a successful affiliate manager. It doesn’t matter if you are an outsourced affiliate management company or an internal affiliate manager. You want to provide as many resources as possible to your affiliates.
- Updated Banners / Links
There are many forms of resources. But one the primary resources used in affiliate marketing is that of banners/links. Not having updated affiliate banners can kill an affiliate program very quickly. It is important to upload new banners / links for every new sale or promotion that is being ran on the website.
- Educational Materials
Another primary resource of affiliate marketing is providing your affiliates more information about your company and your products. These educational materials can help affiliates create content about your products. Content is key!
- Be Responsive and Proactive
Lack of communication is very common. It is crucial to be responsive to any affiliate requests and to be proactive by answering questions before they are even asked. Provide as much information as an affiliate may need before they even need to ask you for the information. Respond to all affiliate communications as soon as possible.
Being an affiliate manager is not only about the number of affiliates have or the number of new affiliates you recruit. It’s much more than that. “It is also about building great relationships with your current affiliates and ensuring that you are doing everything in your power to help them succeed” (Stocker, 2018).
Remember, by helping your affiliates be successful you are also helping yourself to be successful. The more successful your affiliates are, the more successful that you are.
References
Gregory, C. (2019, March). Marketing 2.0: Merging Traditional and Digital Marketing. In Davenport University – MKTG705. Retrieved from https://marketing2.ca/digital-marketing-foundations/?utm_source=Blackboard&utm_medium=Blog&utm_campaign=Announcement&utm_content=Week_1
Larson, J., & Draper, S. (2018). Digital Marketing Essentials (Fall ed.). Idaho Falls, ID: Edify Publishing.
Oldmann, R. (2018, October 2). How affiliate marketing can help grow your business. In Baltimore Post Examiner. Retrieved from http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/how-affiliate-marketing-can-help-grow-your-business/2018/10/02
Stocker, C. (2018, March 27). How to Help Your Affiliates Be Successful. In AM Navigator. Retrieved from https://www.amnavigator.com/blog/2018/03/27/how-to-help-affiliates-be-successful/
The Digital Marketing Cafe 
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This was a great blog full of information that can help gain a better understanding of what affiliate marketing is and what exactly the pros of joining a affiliate market could be. As many know some of the most popular affiliate markets is eBay and Amazon. They have become well verse in their target and verse in where to place their company ads to generate the most traffic and brand awareness. They have even understood how to keep repeat customers and increasing their spending. As Larson & Draper noted it is easier to increase the revenue of a customer then it is to covert a customer (2019). They made understanding the behind the screen work that goes into just building a website, creating a domain, and more take very intrinsic details along with a tremendous amount of research. Including understanding the performance of the sites and places you are choosing to affiliate your market with (Purkayastha, 2018). Understanding if you are looking to diversify your targeted audience or stay within the same target. When looking for a affiliate market yo have to know will company you are choosing will promote your company as if it was their own and if not how will this affect the bottom-line.
References
Larson, J., & Draper, S. Digital Marketing Essentials (2019). Idaho Falls, ID. Edify Publishing.
Purkayastha, A. (2018). Performance of business group affiliated firms in emerging markets. International Journal of Emerging Markets, 13(6), 1538-1558. doi:10.1108/IJoEM-09-2016-0243
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