Marketing as a subject comprises of everything from digital marketing to out-of-home advertising, including models such as McCarthy’s Marketing Mix and Porter’s Five Forces.
All the while the idea of brand collaborations seems to have been lost within these theories and practices. Why is that? Is it because it is simply not a useful marketing technique?
Sadly, for years affiliate marketing has been seen as the poor relation of the digital advertising family.
Tracking networks and technology companies typically selling the channel as a no-frills, “no-win no-fee” way to pad out marketing plans.
UK affiliate marketing has gone a long way since its inception. It has become more mainstream, and altogether more complex.
And regardless of all the challenges, it now offers (both advertisers and publishers) more opportunities than ever.
The ‘rise of mobile’ has been a hot topic in online for years; however, at the start of 2012 it’s beginning to feel like mobile marketing has finally arrived as a channel worth shouting about both in terms of viability and, more importantly for the bottom line, profitability.
More and more consumers are using smartphones and mobile devices to access content. A whopping 42% of the UK mobile users now operate on a smart phone and 51% have browsed the internet on their mobile devices in the past week.
While 65% of mobile owners routinely use their mobile devices to find businesses for in-store purchases (Source: Google, 2011) a significant 13% of UK consumers have actually made a purchase via a mobile, with a further 19% having used their mobile to compare prices and look at product reviews while out shopping.
This shift in consumer behaviour is having a dramatic impact on the affiliate sector, which has proved in the past to be a perfect testing ground for more innovative advertising models.
With advertisers increasingly investing in viable mobile commerce sites, publishers are utilising the platform as another avenue for increasing revenue.
With this in mind, what steps should advertisers and publishers be taking to increase affiliate traffic and drive revenue through a mobile platform?
Back in 2008 I thought fractional attribution was a complete solution but after the last four years working with brands, my opinion has changed.
I have discovered that while this method is not entirely without merit, it is disappointingly limited and doesn’t do much to help a marketer re-allocate spend meaningfully.
In 2008 Microsoft said ‘the company can now provide a scientifically based standard showing how well different media affect an eventual conversion’, this was engagement mapping, a classic example of fractional attribution and what have we learnt from it?
My take on it is that user interface sliders and shiny bubble graphs are sexy but technology has to do more than look good, it must synthesise, it can’t just echo back what you tell it.
It’s important to try and learn about the successes and failures of your marketing spend, this is how we build successful programmes. Attribution analysis should enable you to examine the empirical value of your media and reallocate your spend accordingly.
The most common misconceptions surrounding attribution are that it’s not really technically or practically possible and that you already need a fixed idea of how your individual digital channels contribute to make it worthwhile.
Both are exactly that, misconceptions.
It’s important for advertisers to think about the long tail within their affiliate marketing strategy, and possibly even more so in 2012 as publisher models have changed dramatically.
What was once considered an industry of people ‘setting up shop’ on their kitchen table is now a multi-million pound market as we have seen the growth of affiliate corporations which are set to continue to dominate the market.
While is big money to be made by affiliates due to the rise of voucher code sites and cash back sites as well as the more traditional content-led sites, there is still an abundance of smaller affiliates with a niche audience that brands can tap into.
Here are some tips on making the most of these long tail sites…
Affiliate marketing is a staple line in any marketer’s budget and has been for years; but as budgets get tighter the sector is innovating and introducing more services to boost ROI and really prove its worth.
The good thing about the affiliate sector is that performance marketing is based on one principle, the conversion of traffic to leads or sales, meaning a marketer only pays for what is achieved, it’s a no-risk investment.
However, it does have its limitations. Previously all sales had to be tracked online to ensure the sale was attributed to the affiliate channel, but things are changing.
We purchase products in many ways and performance marketing has developed to reflect this. For example, a phone sale.
Skimlinks provides a simple affiliate marketing tool which allows publishers to earn money from affiliate links with a minimum of effort.
I’ve been talking to Skimlinks CEO and co-founder Alicia Navarro…
If you’re an affiliate in the United States, there’s a good chance you’re not sleeping very well these days.
States continue to wage war against major online retailers, leaving some affiliates cut off from the affiliate programs that they depend on for income. And new battles look set to break out in some of the largest, most important states.
Some have argued that the stalwart search engine Ask Jeeves could become illegal in the UK after September.
I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not going to offer any legal observations, but there does seem to be an issue with some interesting adverts in the search engine…
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