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By Alex Cramer
Affiliate marketing is pretty simple, right? You throw a link to your website on another website and then go play Xbox and wait for the money to roll in. Easy.
Until it’s not.
Sure there are hundreds of thousands of different affiliates that you could potentially partner with, but a large percentage of those are either inactive, ineffective or don’t make sense for your brand. But with so many options to choose from, how do you know the good from the bad?
When Advertise Purple builds out an affiliate network for your business, we’re considering hundreds of different metrics, variables and data points to determine which affiliates are built to sell products like yours, and which ones couldn’t sell ice cream during a heatwave.
These are just a few of the factors that can impact the success of an affiliate.
High-End Emails
When’s the last time your impulse bought a 4k TV? Or ordered a diamond ring on a whim?
For most people, the answer is probably never. When the purchase price of anything gets into the four figures range, we tend to slow down, consider our options, read reviews and bargain shop for the best prices and deals.
It could easily take a month or two from the time a shopper knows they want to buy something expensive to when they finally select a product and make a purchase. That means you need to stay in touch with your buyer and keep your product top of mind as they slowly move down the sales funnel.
If you’re selling high-priced products, being able to reach out to shoppers after they’ve expressed an interest but haven’t made a purchase is going to be key to pushing up your conversion rate.
That’s why you need to focus on affiliates that have an effective strategy for collecting emails and avoid those that don’t.
High-Quality Images
It’s not breaking news to say that high-quality images and videos are a good way for affiliates to market your product. However, Google just added another reason why you want to work with affiliates that know how to create strong visual content.
A December 2021 update to their ranking system, now gives preferred placement to review websites that feature well-made and original videos and pictures as a part of their product reviews.
Essentially, Google is rewarding websites that don’t just tell you which products are good but go to the trouble to show you as well, so prioritize affiliates that know how to create strong visual assets.
Build Around an Identity
Can you remember the last time you set foot on a car lot? Did you just cringe a little? That’s probably because you remember the feeling of a desperate, hungry-eyed salesman aggressively pushing features you weren’t interested in and cars you couldn’t afford. The experience is bad because you know that they’re acting in their best interest, not yours.
Traditional advertising has lost its effectiveness because instinctively we know that when we’re aggressively being sold something, it’s not for our benefit. That’s also why you should avoid any affiliate that feels like its entire reason for existing is to push sales.
Any good affiliate website needs to establish trust and credibility with its audience before it can turn them into buyers. They need to be viewed as a trusted source for information and guidance and not just an online shopping mall.
Sites like Wirecutter and CNET are effective because they make you feel like you are being given advice that’s for your benefit and not being pushed on a sale that’s for theirs.
Spread the Links
Typically, we expect to see an affiliate link in reviews, product comparisons or best-of lists. But if that’s the only place you find your product is getting placement, then you’re definitely missing out on sales.
Every consumer experiences your affiliate’s website in their own way, which means you want your link to be embedded in multiple places, such as video content, social media sites, emails, resource pages and banner ads. A well-designed affiliate site should give your buyer multiple opportunities to find your link and not just bury it in a single article.
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“I think I could do this on my own,” is something that we hear from a lot of prospective clients when we’re discussing launching an affiliate campaign with them. And here’s the thing, maybe you could. An agency brings a lot of knowledge, connections and advantages to your brand, but it’s definitely not impossible for you to run your own campaign.
But consider the list above, and know that it represents just a small fraction of the hundreds of different ways we evaluate and select the affiliates that we add to your program.
Could you figure it out yourself? Given enough time, energy and resources….maybe. But if you want to connect with the right affiliates on day one of your campaign, then Advertise Purple can show you how.
