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Affiliate_Marketing _Part_II_Giving_a_facelift
| Affiliate Marketing- Part II Giving a facelift
"20% of your sales force produces 80% of your company revenues"
- Vilfredo Pareto, Economist.
This is one rule that definitely rules the world of Affiliate
marketing. While a company may boast of a high volume of
affiliate base it enjoys, the fact lies that only 20% of that
base are the actual driving force for the sales of that company.
Leaving that cliched statment, lets talk about the more obvious
question which is, Why does it hold true and more revelant for
affiliate marketing.
The answer to that lies in the fact that most companies always
tread the usual road and well, slowly dissolve into the already
burgeoning pit of companies that are into afiliate marketing.
How often have you seen a company that is proactively involved
in the affiliate marketing promotions? Not many right?
One major mistake made by most companies, rather almost every
other company is that they do not experiment with new ideas.
True affiliate marketing is a vast subject and at some point the
company does lose its focus once the affiliate base starts to
build up.
A few suggestions for companies that are into affiliate
marketing.
1. Eliminate the 80:20 Rule.
Lets take an example of a company that would want to launch its
affiliate marketing program. The usual way is to do an e-mail
campaign coupled with some CPM deals on portals. The end result
of this exercise would be to just increase the affiliate base.
While the above 2 exercises would be a good way to begin the
program, it does point to one gaping loophole. It opens the
doors to 80% of junk. By junk, I mean to say sites/webmasters
who sign up just for the kick of it. They promote the product
with enthusiasm initially and later it dies down.
To eliminate the 80:20 rule, companies should focus on building
a niche market rather than concentrate on increasing its reach
to more affiliates. To begin with, proper research needs to be
done with regards to the really good quality sites. These sites
are the ones which enjoys a good viewership, good hits, a loyal
and a targeted customer base.
When a company focuses on sites and has a proactive approach,
what they can discover is an entirely different market which is
more focussed and sales driven. These sites could vary from
portals, information sites to personal webpages. Although the
downside in this is that you would not be able to see a great
increase in your affiliate base. The advantage though is that
you just get a step closer to a better balanced ratio of sales
versus total workforce.
2. Personalization from the beginning.
I have a question to ask you. Except for the top 50 or 100
performing affiliates, how often would a company contact its
other affiliates. I am not talking about "Personalized Auto
Generated E-Mails," but a mail that is drafted by a person from
the other end? By keep in touch with the affiliates the company
can learn a lot and also help the affiliate generate business.
Word of mouth marketing is cost effective and can produce
amazing results.
3. The psyche of an affiliate.
Most companies write of affiliates who do not generate any sales
in the first quarter of signing up. This is a dead situation as
both the parties would have lost interested. However, a little
retrospection into this will show something else. Most
affiliates who sign up do not know the technical details for
setting up the banners, etc. Instead of having a generic FAQ
page, customization is the keyword here.
Companies will need to monitor the affiliate's path on the site
and contact them accordingly. For example a person who signs up
as an affiliate and then logs into the system, clicks on the
banner links and then logs off. If this happens way too often,
(and im talking of not more than 2 times) there is something
seriously wrong. If a company can take this opportunity and
provide support to the affiliate, trust me, you have one person
who is going to be all praise for you.
4. Custom deals.
Another most common fact is that companies provide custom
commissions only to affiliates who bring in higher volumes of
sales. While many people do know that a company would not limit
itself to the commission type it displays on the site, the
company also needs to approach the affiliate and negotiate a
custom deal that will be appropriate for the affiliate. Most
often it happens that companies tend to either overquote or
underquote the deal. Perhaps a little more research into the
market and the affiliate himself would provide a better insight.
5. Special promotions.
Now, I would not call these anything special, far from being
called a promotion. For most companies, a special promotion
would mean giving the affiliate an extra amount for a set number
of sales brought to the company in a specified timeframe. What
is the use for having a special promotion when your
infrastructure is still the same?
It would take anywhere between 2 to 3 quarters before a company
can consider offering you a special promotion. Apart from the
usual custom of offering extra commissions or increase
discounts, it would be a better idea to actually gather
information from the affiliate. If a company assigns an account
manager for an affiliate, 2 to 3 quarters time is more than
sufficient for the account manager to be able to guage the
requirements of their affiliate. Companies will have to move out
from the usual and experiment more in terms of the likes and
dislikes of the affiliate so that it would fit well into the
system and at the same time not lose the focus from the
affiliate.
While most companies always rely on the same roadmap towards
having a successful affiliate program, this sector needs
companies to experiment with new ideas and innovative campaigns
to give a facelift to the affiliate programs.
About the author:
John Benjamin works as a freelance consultant for Internet
marketing and has his website at http://www.promindsinc.com/
A complete list of articles can be found at his forum
http://www.promindsinc.com/bb/
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