The best way to market products and reach out to new audiences for a small e-commerce business is through affiliate marketing. The reason is that there are virtually no risks involved in setting up an affiliate marketing program, when compared to launching a marketing campaign. Since pay is based on performance, businesses don’t have to pay for advertisements that aren’t bringing them any sales.
However, successful of any affiliate marketing campaign depends entirely on how it is managed.
If you are an e-commerce platform and are looking to launch an affiliate marketing program soon, then here are a few tips that will help you manage it effectively:
Focusing on a Niche
Focusing on all internet users at once is a big mistake. The key to succeeding in an affiliate marketing program is to focus on a niche.
The advantage of doing so is that it’s easier to find effective affiliates. Bloggers who are focused on a niche also boast a decent following, and their followers tend to trust them more than they do bloggers who are promoting products randomly. Therefore, for e-commerce platforms, it is better to find affiliates that are focused on a particular product or service.
Tracking Where the Affiliates are Advertising
If your business is investing in SEM, then you have to be very careful where your affiliates are advertising your products. The last thing you want to do is have your website competing with the websites of your affiliates on the same keywords.
This would mean that you are not only hurting your own SEO efforts, but paying commission on sales that should have been generated through your own website.
Tracking Daily Performance
Affiliate websites can sometimes be very unreliable, which is why you must measure the performance of each affiliate on a daily basis.
You must be able to compare the data being provided by the affiliates with the data you have gathered. You will find that certain affiliates aren’t really profitable, even though they are generating a high number of sales. An affiliate bringing in 15 new profitable customers daily is more valuable than the one generates 500 sales on low margins.
Investing in Long-term relationships
You should be looking to establish long-term relationships with your affiliates. Once you analyze the data you have gathered, you will be able to distinguish the affiliates that are most profitable and the ones that are costing you more money than they are bringing in.
You should be looking to let go of the non-profitable ones and seek to establish long-term relationships with the ones that are really valuable. If you are able to do that, you could generate almost 25% of your sales through affiliate marketing only.
Be Patient
Just like SEO, building a successful affiliate marketing program takes time. You would need to try different offers and different products, in order to find out what works with each of the affiliates.
Therefore, let the affiliate marketing take its time and grow and don’t just give up on it so easily.
About Us
LeadDyno is an affiliate marketing network that designs affiliate tracking solutions for the online business community. We have developed several affiliate marketing tools that provide merchants and their affiliates with plenty of useful features and tools to get the most from their affiliate marketing campaigns.
To learn more about us and our affiliate tracking software, call 1-888-340-6425 or email at [email protected].
