How to Prepare an Affiliate Marketing Program
TechsPlace | Affiliate marketing program is becoming increasingly popular. Mainly due to the growing number of bloggers and influencers specialized in their niche. They want to earn on their blogs just by recommending to their recipients, products of other companies.
This is just one of many options for acquiring customers, but maybe it will work best for you? Check out what factors you should take into consideration when building your affiliate marketing program.
How to create an affiliate marketing program?
The first thing is your products or services that you want your partners to recommend. Will it be your whole offer or just a part of it? Of course, it is known that it is best to sell everything. But it may be better in such an affiliate program to recommend your best goods or the ones you want to sell the most.
The second aspect of choosing the products to be recommended is the preparation of promotional materials. Even if you have the best partner who has crowds of customers, he will still need some information about the products he sells. It is worth to share them in an accessible way. And if you have thousands of products, it can be a problem to complete everything right away.
Start with strategy
When you want to achieve a specific goal, think strategically. Therefore, first, ask yourself a few questions:
- What do I expect from the program?
- Which target group do I want to reach?
- What partners do I need?
- What motivates them to participate in the program?
- How will I stop them?
- Which billing model will help me achieve this goal?
If you take the strategy seriously, the next steps will be arranged – you will determine what you want to achieve, so it’s easier to determine how to do it. Each point will result from the other and create a coherent action plan.
Get the top partners
Create a list of best partners who will help you achieve your campaign goal. Suggest them transparent conditions of participation in the partner program. If you run campaigns in the efficiency model, i.e., CPS or CPL, set attractive commissions.
By getting partners by yourself, be prepared to devote time to contact and a higher entry barrier, especially in the case of opinion-forming portals or well-known bloggers.
Prepare processes
Analyze all processes that may occur on the line Your company – partner company – customer. Review carefully how the individual stages proceed: from the first contact with a partner to the sale of your product to the end customer. Ask questions about the course, look for problems that may interfere with the sale of the product, and then the answers and solutions. The better everything you have thought out, the later the process will be shorter. Choose the right affiliate management software that will help you control the processes in your affiliate marketing program.
Motivate
The initial motivation of the partners to sell your product will be high. The new item on offer is a lot of enthusiasm, which weakens over time. How to stimulate him when building relationships is not enough? When your partner network is large enough to earn on itself, organizing partner competitions is a good practice. It is also motivating to get a bigger commission on sales by setting a target.
Prepare various advertising tools
Partners need graphics in optimal sizes to match their website. Otherwise, they won’t use them. Therefore, when designing banners, take into account the most popular dimensions, and also use various graphics to check which ones sell best.
Specify the product
Only a well-defined, attractive product will be interesting for Partners. There is nothing to cheat – Partners join the program because they want to earn. Preferably a lot and quickly. And this can only be if your product is attractive to the end customer. The more attractive the product, the less commission you can offer to your partner. What would you prefer – to have a product in the portfolio of your store, for the sale of which you will get a high commission, but no one will buy it, or a product that is attractive to customers, it sells easily, develops quickly, but you get a lower commission for it? In fact, you’ll be happier with the second option.
Search and let yourself be found
Online store, so that it can maintain sales liquidity, it must not only communicate with regular customers but constantly acquire new ones. Reaching valuable potential customers, especially if you do not have sufficient financial resources and knowledge, can be very difficult.
In addition, to spend a lot of time and money, blogs, portals, social media, and advertising require proper communication and implementation of the chosen strategy. We can do it better or worse alone or through an affiliate network. Thanks to the second option, our ads and promotions will reach a large number of users most often associated with our industry.
The affiliate network has experience in conducting such activities and will be able to choose communication channels and publishers better. Bloggers and web portals will put banners and links to promotions and describe the store’s products, encouraging shopping.
The store will gain new customers and increase sales, and the only cost will be a pre-determined sales commission. Publishers always care about the best possible positioning of the article and reaching as many readers as possible interested in a particular product. This means that with little expenditure on the part of the company, the recommendation of stores and promotion of individual products goes to many recipients from various sources.
This article is contributed by guest author on techsplace.com.
