Innovations, automation, machine learning and AI are being hyped. And there is a good reason for this. Many of the solutions enabled today seem to be drawn straight from science fiction. The potential for disruption and innovation seems almost boundless. This perspective applies to affiliate marketing as well. As the industry has matured, it goes hand-in-hand with the innovations. Should the affiliate marketers take them seriously, or sticking with basics is right?
Head to Automation
Innovative technologies started to hit affiliate marketing several years ago, when the solutions existed on the market failed to keep up with the time and requirements of the industry players. That was a very important stage of the affiliate marketing evolution, which, initially, touched upon the explosion of innovations around affiliate trackers.
It goes without saying, that affiliates need reliable, real-time and clear measurements of their advertising campaigns. How many Internet users are turning into leads? Who of them are turning into buyers? How much do these buyers spend? All this and much more information is required to decide whether you need either to scale-up on the segments that work well, or to optimize the campaign for those who aren’t converting into sales. But now everything has become more complicated and the features of modern platforms go far beyond those of just measuring the metrics. Today you can leverage best technologies, as well as automate a bulk of processes in affiliate marketing.
Formula of Success
The formula is simple: the higher the automation rate is, the fewer personnel you need, the higher production rate you receive and the more accurate your analytics is. All this reduces your costs as well as gives you extra advantages over your competitors. With the abundance of developing technologies, automation is no longer a problem: all you need is to choose the right software that meets your business requirements and goals. Here are the examples how to use affiliate marketing automation tools to influence your overall goals:
- Automate the process of pulling offers. CPAPI helps you to avoid manual work transferring the data from the advertisers to the tracking platform. It imports all the offers automatically just within few minutes.
- Maximize profit. In the world of this huge amount of data, we need something more than just collecting it. We need to know what to do with it and which decisions to make. AI-based technology, SmartLink automatically selects the offers which will get the traffic with maximized ROI.
- Stop pulling dead and non-working offers. AffiliTest is a smart affiliate tracking links validate system that scans each offer for its workability and reports you about non-working ones. Within a few seconds, you either receive a holistic overview of the tracking link destination pass, or get a proper report, if the offer is invalid.
As you can see, affiliate marketing automation can give you a clear competitive edge. By making automation the rule, and not the exception, you can streamline your affiliate marketing efforts, and focus your affiliate managers on what really matters.
Automation is Key. Is it?
Using the most cutting-edge technologies and automation tools is great. But they are not a panacea for your business. They do not substitute your affiliate manager or diminish the essence of building good relationship with your partners. Automation is about taking care of the repetitive and routine tasks, so your affiliate marketing team can focus on adding value where the human component can make or break an affiliate program.
Even small businesses that do not consider themselves innovative and disruptive can have tremendous payoffs in affiliate marketing simply by sticking with basics. Here are seven suggestions you can apply to your own business:
Think long-term
Building a long-term strategy is vital for any business. If you don’t see where you are going, how will you get there? Thus, set the goals, define the metrics to track and measure your results accordingly.
Be flexible
Making plans is good. Being able to adapt to the situation is better. The industry is changing so fast. What was relevant and creative yesterday doesn’t seem so lucrative today, and will be an ancient tomorrow. If you do not want to be an outsider, make sure you keep up with the industry requirements.
Mine your customers’ needs
Simplicity is genius. However, a lot of companies do not even ask, or more importantly, listen to their customers’ opinions and needs. Missed opportunity, I would say. Your clients are such an amazing source of information! If you don’t know what to start with, start with complaints.
Visit affiliate marketing events
The role of networking and building up trusting relations has always been important. While visiting professional events in the affiliate marketing industry, you have a unique opportunity to meet your actual and potential partners and introduce yourself as a professional in the sphere. If you haven’t decided what events you need to attend in 2018, here is a list of most relevant affiliate marketing events endorsed by the leaders of the industry. You are welcome.
Keep an eye on your competitors
Competitive analysis is crucial, especially when it comes to deciding upon your primary strategy for future developing. You may need to have a look at the main players though not to leave anything out of account.
Be Jack-of-all-trades
I am not implying that you have to be an expert in writing coded scripts and etc. What you really need is to have a basic understanding of the technologies and technicalities involved in affiliate marketing industry.
Test what works for you
Be open to everything new, test and measure what works and what doesn’t, and choose the best!
