cim: affiliate marketing
TRANSCRIPT
Affiliate Marketing(making the money)
Who the heck am I?• Andrew Girdwood• Former Head of Strategy at bigmouthmedia• New Media Innovations Director at bigmouthmedia +
LBi
More importantly,• An affiliate• Hands on with affiliate strategies for clients
Agenda
• A quick introduction to affiliate marketing• The role of affiliate networks• The role of affiliate agencies• Avoiding problems• Reach Marketing• Some top tips for today• Affiliate marketing tomorrow
What the heck is affiliate marketing?
• Worth £38,000,000,000 in sales in the UK (Econsultancy)
• Performance based marketing activity• Very close to the sales side of the business• Affiliates only paid when they generate a sale/lead• Affiliates payments only made when a threshold is
reached. • Not for everyone; B2B, for example.
Example: Titan Books
Networks
• Amazon runs its own affiliate technology. • Most brands do not. They use networks.
• Amazon runs its own affiliate technology. • Most brands do not. They use networks.
Only 50% of affiliates trust brands to track activity accurately without network help- Bigmouthmedia survey
When do you need an agency
• When your campaign is large and complex enough– When your volume of traffic is high– Two or more networks– Two or more regions
• When you want to coordinate your affiliate marketing with other marketing channels
• When you need to optimise the channel– Quick case study: Cloggs saw affiliate conversion
rate improve by x9.5 over 12 months by moving agencies
Problems to watch out for
• Affiliates misrepresenting your brand or products– Think about the FSA, Unfair Trading Act and other
regulations• Delays on payments to affiliates• Lead leakages– Do you have your contact us phone number on
your site? • Cannibalisation of sales– Why pay for anything you don’t have to?
76% of affiliates think they are better digital marketers than the brands they work with.- Bigmouthmedia survey
Reach Marketing
• Affiliate marketing must avoid cannibalisation and must focus on incremental sales.
• Affiliates should bring those sales/leads you could not have reached through your own marketing efforts.
• Affiliates should save those sales/leads you would have lost otherwise.– Loyalty and cashback sites have a key role to play
here.
Reach Marketing
Top Tip One: Conversions
• You don’t need to pay your affiliates more in order to get more activity from them.
Top Tip Two: Communication
• The single most important thing the marketing manager and agency can do right/wrong
• Understand how affiliates communicate • Understand what they need• For example,– Benefit from ruling the natural Google results by
filling the first page of results with you and your affiliates
Top Tip Three - Listen
• Especially after a launch
• Twitter: “Learning about A4U and the #A4UExpo at @CIM_East”
Top Tip Four – Data and Creatives
• Banner sizes that work for bloggers
• Stable product feeds
Top Tip Five – De-Duplication
• Don’t pay twice – easier said than done– Monday: Shopper clicks on your PPC ad for
Product X– Wednesday: Shopper researches Product X, reads
an affiliate page and clicks through to your product page
– Friday: Shopper uses a brand search to return to your site and buys Product X.
– Is that a paid search or an affiliate sale?
Affiliate marketing tomorrow
