Practical Affiliate Marketing Tuesday 9 th June 2015
Stephen Whitelaw 35 years technology experience Internet, Web, Digital, Social Media. www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwhitelaw www.kimtag.com/stephenwhitelaw @toowist
About Your name? What you your job role/title? Affiliate Marketing and Online Advertising experience? Expectations from today?
WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts
Affiliate Marketing a.k.a... Also known as...» Associate Program» Internet Affiliate Marketing» Direct Marketing» Performance Marketing» Partner Marketing» Pay-Per-Performance Marketing» Referral Program
Some definitions Who s who? Advertiser (also called Merchant or Retailer) Has products (or services) to sell Pays commission on referral/sales (e.g. Uses Adwords) Publisher (also called Reseller or Affiliate) Earns Commission Accepts ads on their website (e.g. Uses Adsense) Affiliate Networks These are 3 rd party companies linking Advertisers and Publishers
How it works A performance based relationship with Action and Reward
Advertisers provide you with.. Text links Banners Widgets Flash Animation Email templates
What is An Affiliate Network? An Affiliate Network is a third party that acts as liaison between Affiliates and Merchants Allows Affiliates to find Merchants which are suitable for their site Allows Merchants to find Affiliate sites that expands reach to their target audience Services include tracking technology, reporting tools, payment aggregation and processing Provides a creative bank or repository for storing and accessing creative assets Is no cost for an Affiliate to join
Affiliate Commission Model Pay-per-Performance (Revenue Share) - merchant pays affiliate commission based on a percentage of the total order value Pay-per-Lead / Cost-per-Acquisition merchant pays affiliate commission for every lead or order referred from their site Cost per Impression merchant pays affiliate commission for every 1,000 impressions of their banner on affiliates site Cost per Click merchant pays affiliate commission every time a visitor clicks on their banner on the affiliates site 13
Some more definitions! PPC Pay Per Click (Google + Facebook) CPA Cost Per Action/Aquisition CTR Click Through Rate CPC Cost Per Click (Facebook) CPM Cost per Thousand (Facebook) ecm effective Cost Per Thousand Impressions CPL Cost Per Lead CPS Cost Per Sale CPI Cost per Install CPE Cost per Email CPD Cost per Download CPV Cost per Video View
Cost Per Action
Cost Per Lead
Cost Per Click (CPC) or Pay Per Click (PPC)
The Key is Tracking
Cookies
COOKIE TIMES Most common set-ups The most common cookie drop is a 30 day period 60 days can incentivize affiliates to deliver a lot more traffic Lifetime will mean all repeat business will also be paid out to the affiliate
Always remember Affiliates are as fickle as cats they will always go where the cream is richest!!
SETTING THE RIGHT PAYOUTS AND INCENTIVES Getting the payouts right can make or break your campaign Tiered payment structures where the big affiliates get big payouts usually work best i.e. < 50 sales -.20 / sale > 50 sales -.225 / sale > 100 sales -.250 / sale >500 sales -.300 / sale
Most common performance based models Pay per Sale (PPS/CPS) 80% of all programs Pay per Lead/Cost per Lead 20% of all programs Pay per Click/Cost per Click (PPC/CPC) Pay per Call 25 25
USE LINK ANALYSIS SOFTWARE TO UNDERSTAND YOUR COMPETITORS AFFILIATE BASE www.ahrefs.com www.moz.com/researchtools/ose
Why use an Affiliate Network?
3 ways to work Go direct e.g. Sign up with Amazon Affiliate program. Go through an Affiliate Network e.g. CJ, Linkshare, ShareASale, ClickBank, PepperJam, Affiliate Window (own buy.at), Affiliate Futures, Tradedoubler. Go through an Affiliate Aggregator. e.g. Viglink, Skimlinks, Adsense, Kontera, Infolinks.
Huge Affiliate Companies are now houshold names MoneySupermarket.com Floated for 1 billion Confused.com - 700 million valuation uswitch.com Acquired by EW Scripps for 210 million Kelkoo Acquired by Yahoo for 475m
Amazon Associate model Stephen Whitelaw 2010
OfferVault Stephen Whitelaw 2010
Commission Junction Stephen Whitelaw 2010
Affiliate Window
Advice for Advertisers (those who have a service/product to sell)
THE STEPS TO A CREATE AFFILIATE PROGRAM Decide how and what you want to sell Set-up a tracking and reporting solution Test and validate sales are tracking Configure daily disposition reporting Decide on the affiliate payout Define a brand and affiliate guideline Create a go-to market strategy Build creative off the back of your strategy Empanel the affiliate Give the affiliate creative with their unique Affiliate ID integrated to track Affiliate publishes On a monthly basis, take stock of sales made by the affiliate validate and payout Set payment cycles 30-60 days after month end Pay on time, never default or say goodbye to the affiliate! Test, Hone, Refine Build and generate sustainable ROI
Who pays who what? Advertiser has a product that retails (RRP) at 100 Affiliate/Merchant gets say 10% of RRP = 10 CPA Network (e.g. CJ) gets 30% of affiliate commission = 3.33 Thus the advertiser gives away 13.33
Time to sell some stuff on Pinterest
Advertising on Linkedin Checkout
Useful Affiliate Marketing & Online Advertising Books