How To Make Work For You: Affiliate Marketing
How To Make Work For You: Affiliate Marketing
How To Make Work For You: Affiliate Marketing
Contents
3 What is affiliate marketing?
46 Glossary of terms
What is affiliate marketing?
What is affiliate
marketing?
4 How affiliate marketing began
B
4 Implications for advertisers
4 Making money and the importance
of tracking
5 It’s not the size of the affiliate, but what
you do with it that counts
New Products 1999 saw the birth of the affiliate network in the UK with DGM,
Commission Junction and Tradedoubler setting up within a few
months of each other.
The benefit for
C
campaign advice, independent tracking and maintenance of
relationships with the affiliate base.
Matt Bailey,
DGM
Who are affiliates?
– understanding the different types
Loyalty and reward websites build a loyal user base by marketing “With co-registration,
merchants to their users and then sharing their profits with them. PPC, e-mail, newsletter
They can share these profits by offering pure cash back to users marketing and classic
or awarding them with points that can be built up to contribute affiliate banners and
skyscrapers on offer,
towards discounted online purchases through the website or
affiliates now have a variety
towards a central prize.
of different options available
to them. Each option
The idea is that by sharing profits with their users, these affiliates
results in a different quality
can build a ‘loyal’ database of users who are happy to make
and quantity of leads,
purchases online through the websites because they feel they
varying their incoming
are ‘getting something back’. revenue streams.”
Nichola Halford,
Type 3: PPC and search affiliates Advertising.com
Pay per click (PPC) and search affiliates bid on words and
phrases in search engines to help drive traffic to a merchant’s
website by using the sponsored links on portals such as Google,
Yahoo, MSN and Miva.
Who are affiliates?
Remember, the more you put in, the more you get out.
There are thousands of affiliate programmes out there, so
to stand out from the crowd you need to create something that
is more attractive than your competitors are providing.
G
Marketing collateral
New Products
If affiliates are to be used to drive your traffic, they will need the
necessary ammunition to do the job. This will vary from one “There are thousands of
industry sector to another. For instance, while product feeds are affiliate programmes out
essential in travel and extremely useful for retail, they are of little there, so to stand out
use to a financial service provider. from the crowd you need
to create something that
Have a look at the materials your competitors are offering is more attractive than
affiliates and be prepared to listen and act upon the requests competitors are providing.”
affiliates make. As with any other channel, it means updating Mark Kuhillow,
your adverts in the same way you would for TV or press. Refresh R O Eye
Tracking
Putting affiliate
marketing at the
heart of your
B
business
Metrics
14 Be selective
15 Affiliates: members of staff?
15 Summary
I
Metrics
Be selective
J
Also, choose an agency that considers all aspects of the sales
and marketing mix. Affiliates need to be placed at the heart
of the direct response and media schedule, to get
the best out of all channels.
The SoYou! AM logs in to their online interface to review the network enquiries
performance of their programme. The OMM checks that sales and online affiliate
are tracking correctly and that the top performing key affiliates
discussion forums
are on track to achieve their targets.
for posts that
Both the OMM and the AM check for emails, network enquiries specifically relate
and online affiliate discussion forums for posts that specifically to your SoYou!
relate to the SoYou! programme. programme.
Data-feed
PPC Arrangements
Newsletter feature
Voucher code
SoYou!’s OMM sets up the code and informs the affiliate that
they can launch the promotion. The results will be observed
over the next four weeks before a commitment to roll out a
boarder discount code scheme is made.
Considering a 12
month strategy
B
for merchants
Will affiliate marketing work for you?
21 What do you want to achieve?
22 How will this fit in with your annual media and
marketing plans?
23 How should you structure your commissions?
24 How do you recruit affiliates to your
programme?
23 How do you support your programme
once it is live?
23 Where do you begin?
C
You must consider how you will validate sales, review affiliate
performance, provide creative updates and ensure prompt You must consider
payment. The affiliate community is very vocal so any slips could how you will
cost you dearly, especially if you are not on relevant discussion validate sales, review
forums to respond.
affiliate performance,
Although these are direct response metrics on one level, it is New Products
interesting to see advertisers starting to utilise the channel for
goals that are less sales focussed, and which have additional “Although recruiting a third
brand value above the traditional CPA model. party to sell your product
does mean devolving
Brand control control to a certain extent,
it doesn’t necessarily mean
compromising your brand.”
In allowing affiliates onto a programme, you are giving them
permission to promote your product within the context of their James Briscoe,
Unique Digital
site(s). So the thinking goes, your products or adverts could
appear next to any type of content, on any old site. Although
recruiting a third party to sell your product does mean devolving
control to a certain extent, it doesn’t necessarily mean
compromising your brand.
Affiliates and brand
R
Programme terms & conditions (T&C’s)
New Products Using terms & conditions, a merchant does have a degree of
control over where their brand is appearing. Although affiliates
“Keep your friends close are generally well behaved, these rules do need to be policed
and your affiliates closer!”
and their effectiveness will come down to the vigilance of the
James Briscoe, network or affiliate manager.
Unique Digital
Merchant approval
S
Brand benefits of an affiliate programme
more knowledge and insight an affiliate has into your brand, the a programme is to
better they will be able to align with your vision for the brand and open dialogue with
how best to promote it. There would be no harm in including
your affiliates.
affiliates in a brand brief!
Managing affiliates
and pay per click
B search
Search – the areas you need to focus on
30 Protecting your brand using brand term and
generic keywords
31 How to maximise your keyword activity
32 Working with trusted affiliates
32 Managing your affiliate program
Recent reports indicate that Google alone now has an 80% market
share of all search activity in the UK (Yahoo! and MSN making up
a further 15%). Search is now viewed by many in the industry as
T
a reputation management system. This is due to its ability to
dictate both awareness levels and business dealings!
How to maximise your keyword activity Now compare this to “Zurich car
insurance” in Google. Zurich has
a complimentary affiliate program
Most customers have a feel for where they want to that works to supplement the
go online, and typically perform multiple searches, but brand’s Search strategy and
research by Onestat also shows the importance of thus manages to optimise the
covering generic longtail keywords: exposure so there are multiple
branded messages for Zurich
displayed. This gives Zurich a
• 2 word queries currently account for 30% of Search greater reach and increased
queries share of space powered by this
•wo3rds: 27% unique affiliate strategy.
•wo4rds: 17.1%
•wo5rds: 8.25%
•wo6rds: 3.7%
Number of keywords
Managing affiliates and pay per
click search
Working with trusted affiliates
U
A fundamental part of a successful PPC strategy is to allow trusted
specific affiliates to use a brand’s URL and link direct to your site.
The advantages of working this way are enormous because:
So remember, your affiliates are your ‘virtual sales force’. You would
not let anyone work for you promoting your brand without a proper
interview, probation period or one who’s not equipped with the
right tools to sell, and the same applies to your PPC affiliates.
9 Making affiliate marketing a sustainable
channel for sales and marketing
Making affiliate
marketing a
sustainable
B
channel for sales
andmarketing
In-house v. affiliate network?
35 Bringing advertisers and publishers together
35 Selling it to the board
36 Case Studies
publishers is fundamental
Selling it to the board
to accelerating affiliate
buy or
reserve
Making affiliate marketing a sustainable
9 channel for sales and marketing
Case Studies
Play.com study
buy or
reserve
37
Case Studies
C
Gala Bingo know their cost per
acquisition target from their own
analysis of customer lifetime value
and other channel costs. Gala
Bingo worked with their affiliate
network to ensure that they
offered the best commissions to
affiliates, providing competitor
landscape feedback and
negotiating with key affiliates in
order to deliver new members
well within this target.
buy or
reserve
Making affiliate marketing a sustainable
9 channel for sales and marketing
Case Studies
buy or
reserve
39
Case Studies
E
Harrods case study
buy or
reserve
Making affiliate marketing a sustainable
9 channel for sales and marketing
Case Studies
buy or
reserve
41
Case Studies
buy or
reserve
Making affiliate marketing a sustainable
9 channel for sales and marketing
Case Studies
Results
December 05–October 06
compared to December 2004–
October 2005:
buy or
reserve
B
45 Caveats
45 Timescales
Affiliates will also have to be policed to ensure that they are promoting
the right message for your company. You will need to keep check
on what pages your ads are running on, if keyword restrictions are
being followed, new creative has been updated etc.
Timescales