Well, today we had our Equator seminar in Affiliate Marketing, and I think it has pretty much demystified the whole concept for me.

It’s not just horrendous looking landing pages with vaguely related links and banners plastered across it - No! It’s variety of methods and techniques, that don’t just sell things to you, but promote brand awareness, provide useful content, offer discounts and I’m sure all sorts of other things, but mainly increases traffic and sales for the merchant, while providing a benefit to the user. So let’s see if I can remember the basics!

• It’s a long term strategy. Short term campaigns won’t work and will discourage affiliates from wanting to work on it.
• It can work well in conjunction with PPC and SEO, as well as on it’s own. Each method can feed into each other to make the whole marketing strategy more successful.
• No win, no fee! It’s low risk to the merchant, as, if a sale isn’t made then the affiliate doesn’t get paid.
• You have to communicate. The more an affiliate knows about the brand and what other promotions are going on, then the easier it is for them to get more sales for the client.
• Different methods, different affiliates. There are thousands of affiliates out there, around 25% of them are part time. They all have different methods of promotion, including personal interest sites, PPC, SEO, loyalty and reward sites and emails.
• Make it worth it. For affiliates to want to work on a programme it needs to be desirable, so it’s important that the merchant has a good product, as well as good brand and affiliate reputations. Competitive commision rates, reasonable periods for the user to purchase after visiting, functional sites with no or few drop off points such as telephone numbers as well as reliable tracking will all help to get affiliates interested.

Well hopefully I’ve covered some of the important basics, and managed to get most of it reasonably accurate, and anyway I look forward for the next marketing seminar to fill me in on the next big topic.