Making affiliate marketing a sustainable channel for sales and marketing

As online advertising budgets continue to grow in order to meet the increasing trend in consumers’ online media consumption, affiliate marketing is ideally placed to feature ever more prominently on the advertising radar.

Whilst search undoubtedly remains the first step in many online marketing strategies, the cost effectiveness of affiliate marketing has attracted online marketers who are serious about optimizing the return on investment (ROI) opportunities presented by the internet.

Brand budget spend on TV, newspapers and magazines have been reduced as marketing and finance directors demand more accountability from key advertising suppliers, putting performance marketing, and affiliate marketing in particular, under the spotlight.

The online advertising industry is seeing increasing interest from advertisers and agencies; and improved professionalism amongst networks and publishers have made affiliate marketing a highly attractive element to the online sales and marketing mix.

Undeniably, affiliate marketing has come a long way over recent years, but what does the future hold? In order to ensure its sustainability and future growth in such a fast-paced environment, there are several issues which must be addressed.

In-house v. affiliate network?

Affiliate networks provide access to robust, independent tracking for an affiliate programme rather than an in-house programme which relies on a software solution to provide the tracking. Networks not only take the bulk of the administrative work out of the advertiser’s hands, but also offer the opportunity to tap into the expertise of their account management services an make sure the affiliate programme performance is optimised.

Networks live and breathe affiliate marketing and keep abreast of new developments, trends and functionality within the industry that advertisers would be hard pushed to keep on top of themselves. Publishers also prefer to work with networks rather than deal with multiple advertisers. Affiliate networks enable publishers to fill their inventory quickly and easily via access to a wide range of advertiser affiliate programmes through one contact point.

Bringing advertisers and publishers together

Building strong relationships between advertisers and publishers is fundamental to accelerating affiliate programme performance but can be all-consuming and requires a lot of commitment. This is where professional client service teams and affiliate forums can step in to motivate the affiliates, allowing them to objectively critique programme performance and optimize settings for success.

Selling it to the board

Ultimately the overriding benefit of the affiliate marketing model lies in its ability to generate cost-effective results. The performance based cost per acquisition (CPA) model allows advertisers to pay for their advertising only when it generates actual results. Herein lies the greatest argument for online evangelists looking to secure additional budgets for affiliate marketing from senior level budget holders. Affiliate marketing should naturally form part of an advertiser’s sales - rather than marketing – budget, and it is a long-term sales channel designed to generate direct response.