Practical Affiliate Marketing

Tuesday 9th 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 3rd 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 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

Commission Junction

THE STEPS TO A CREATE AFFILIATE PROGRAM

Decide how and Set-up a tracking Test and validate Configure daily what you want to and reporting sales are tracking disposition reporting sell solution

Build creative off the Decide on the Define a brand and Create a go-to back of your affiliate payout affiliate guideline market strategy strategy

Give the affiliate On a monthly basis, creative with their take stock of sales Empanel the affiliate Affiliate publishes unique Affiliate ID made by the affiliate integrated to track validate and payout

Pay on time, never Set payment cycles default or say Build and generate 30-60 days after Test, Hone, Refine goodbye to the sustainable ROI month end affiliate!

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