How to Manage Affiliate Marketing and Keep your Affiliate Marketing Network Active
2021-11-18 19:17:53
How to Manage Affiliate Marketing and Keep your Affiliate Marketing Network Active
Every year there are over 627,000 new businesses, and you’ve chosen to be one of them this year. For every entrepreneur that begins a new business venture, the end goal is always the same. The end goal is to create a product that sells.
Unfortunately, the competition in the eCommerce space is fierce. eCommerce owners are therefore looking to different product advertising routes like affiliate marketing which is low risk but still provides results.
In this blog post, we are going to cover how to manage affiliate marketing and keep your affiliate marketing network alive.
(Copyright photo from: https://unsplash.com/photos/12mi25fTAmM)
What is Affiliate Marketing
Technically speaking, affiliate marketing is a performance-based advertising strategy. A strategy that allows an individual to earn a commission for promoting the products of a business.
The parties involved are called merchants or brands and affiliates, with the affiliates marketing the products by sending visitors and customers to the brand's platform.
If we were to explain affiliate marketing for beginners, we would call it a system of outsourcing product advertising. It divides the responsibilities involved in product management. The merchant sources the product while the affiliate promotes it.
How to Manage Affiliate Marketing?
In managing affiliate marketing, the core aim is to keep track of the affiliate marketing program and ensure that the brand’s objectives are being achieved.
If you want to know how to manage affiliate marketing and also do it effectively, these are essential pointers to keep in mind;
- Establish the goals of the program: In the eCommerce world, beginning a venture without establishing goals is like driving a car blindfolded in an unfamiliar environment. The ultimate end would be destruction.
The same rules apply to affiliate marketing programs without goals. If goals are not pre-established, distractions will cloud your vision, and you cannot accurately track your brand's progress.
Examples of affiliate marketing goals are; click sale conversions, website traffic increase, email list and newsletter signup, etc.
- Affiliate rewards program: No matter how good an affiliate program is; it is unlikely that every affiliate would provide the same results. For this reason, it is wise to create a unique rewards program for affiliates.
This can be through tiered commission levels, which reward affiliates and encourage them to push for more as they can still earn if the individual they refer refers someone else.
Other rewards programs can be offering competitive bonuses for top affiliates and providing branded merchandise as incentives.
- Measure the effectiveness of Affiliate marketing: When it comes to how to manage affiliate marketing effectively, tracking plays a significant role.
One of the key ways to measure the effectiveness of your program is by tracking the metrics of the program. You can do so by calculating the number of sales that occurred through the promo code offered to affiliates, revenue derived from affiliate referrals, and the percentage of active affiliates, amongst others.
- Optimize your website to convert the new traffic: Sometimes, website traffic is just website traffic and nothing more. With website optimization in affiliate marketing for beginners, the eCommerce site can be set up to convert traffic to leads and or sales. This can be done by;
- Utilizing popups
- Fulfilling search intent
- Utilizing video content
- Building trust with testimonials
- and having a clear call to action.
How to Keep Affiliate Marketing Networks Active?
We earlier mentioned how ensuring that affiliates are active can help in tracking the progress of affiliate marketing. Inactive affiliates are nonperforming affiliates.
Simply put, they are affiliates that do not create new content promoting the brand but rely solely on previously created content.
For those who know how to manage affiliate marketing, it can seem easy to cancel inactive affiliates; but there are ways to keep your network active and motivated.
- Run seasonal campaigns: it can be cumbersome to create content for products that belong to a particular niche. For example, if your brand focuses on summer outfits and aesthetics, it can be challenging for an affiliate to promote your product in the winter. To mitigate this problem, brainstorm a campaign that will tie in your product to the season, thereby encouraging affiliates to create content.
- Offer incentives to affiliate networks: Steven E. Landsburg stated in his book that "people respond to incentives." This statement proves to be accurate time and time again.
On how to manage affiliate marketing, affiliates that are rewarded regularly would be willing to create more content to promote the brand. These incentives can be bonuses, rewards, competitions for the leading affiliates, and free coveted gifts.
- Drive engagement with Affiliates: what some eCommerce entrepreneurs fail to realize is that a key to success is forging community relationships with affiliates. The same way affiliates communicate with their followers is how affiliates want to feel when communicating with brands. Every individual (affiliate) wants to know that their voice is being heard, listened to, and taken into consideration.
The burden to create engaging content can be draining on an affiliate and you as a merchant but with the above-listed steps, how to manage your affiliate marketing program just became easier.
Conclusion
Every day, it is as though more information is found on what is needed to ensure your eCommerce business succeeds, and it can be hard to keep up with it all.
For this reason, brands like AllValue were created. AllValue is an eCommerce software tool created to handle all eCommerce struggles you might encounter, including how to manage affiliate marketing successfully.
The features of AllValue include website and app creation, payment portal creation, logistics, product procurement, and the creation of affiliate programs, amongst others.
AllValue has over five years of experience, and they have worked with thousands of eCommerce businesses, both small and large, to create successful brands. And is home to over 800 employees set on bringing the values of your business to life.
AllValue is sure of the results that can achieve with your brand that they are offering a 15-day free trial experience to all. Take a step with AllValue and experience eCommerce like never before!