(This post is co-authored by Mr Sanjeev Kumar, Co-founder of Affnet media (a leading affiliate agency based in Gurgaon https://affnetmedia.com/)
Affiliate Marketing is a very useful, cost effective and a ‘must’ way to bring growth in any startup brand. Every internet consumer space organization is using them.
This article tell you that how you can leverage Affiliates or in other words what all are the services of a affiliate that a brand can use
What are the services provided by Affiliates & How they do?
Broadly affiliates can provide you these 4 services/campaigns
Note :- Before I move on & explain each point in detail, one thing I want to highlight here is that Affiliates do all the above services in 2 ways :-
1) Black box campaigns
2) White box campaigns
I will explain these later on
1) Affiliate partners can provide you traffic on your website. You can see the hike in traffic in Analytics and can be tracked by UTM parameters. One word of caution is that lots of times, Affiliates provide bot traffic or junk traffic. So brands can put some KPIs also like 10% of the traffic would register.
Do check the traffic bounce rate, pages per session, session time, geography/location of traffic etc. parameters to judge the quality.
The commercial model can be cost per visit or a fixed cost.
2) Affiliates can also provide you app downloads. This can be tracked back in any attribution analytics like appsflyer, branch etc. Here also one word of caution is – Beware of frauds.
Brands can put slab based KPIs linked to commercials like
e.g. for a KPI of signup, if X = Rs.10, then for 100 downloads if a brand achieve 1-3 signups, affiliate will get Rs.1,000 (100*10).
If affiliate achieves 5 signups, then brand will pay Rs. 1,500 (1.5*10*100)
Note:- Always see that your download counter should increase in Google play store console as well. If the attribution tool is showing you download numbers & Play store console is not showing those numbers then some ‘Fishy’ activity is done by Affiliate
3) Affiliates can also provide you leads e.g. real estate, holidays, insurance, credit cards, loans etc. companies can leverage that easily. Commercials can be set on fixed CPL or dynamic CPL like for an international holiday lead one can pay higher price as compared to domestic holidays.
Do remember to ‘Qualify’ the lead properly. Meaning that the lead is genuine & really interested in your product/service & not a fake one.
4) Affiliates are widely used to provide bookings/order/conversions from your website or app. In other words affiliates also work on CPA (cost per acquisition) commercial model. This is also known as revenue share model or CPS (cost per sale) model.
In this affiliates are required to give the final conversions & traffic, app downloads are the byproduct of this which is typically free of cost.
The bookings can be tracked either from analytics or attribution tool or through the UTM parameters. Remember these tracking are not flawless & there are some reservations of them. To combat that brands also track based on coupon usage e.g. a special coupon like ‘AFFI20’ can be created for a particular affiliate & can be tracked. This gives you flawless results with least possibility of frauds.
Note:- If you are tracking from analytics, attribution or UTM there are chances of fraud in which affiliates ‘EATS’ your organic bookings. So keep a very careful eye
“Expert Corner by Mr. Sanjeev Kumar, Co-Founder Affnet media: Services of an Affiliate are always depends on requirements of advertiser/Startup. Affiliate Marketing can also act like Performance Marketing where advertiser pays to the affiliate as per performance only. A Right Affiliate Network can fulfill all such requirements using right inventory and right media”
Advertisers should monitor the performance of the affiliate campaign continuously to minimize the frauds. They should keep an eye on Bounce Rate, Conversion Rate, IP address, Location, User Addresses, eMail ids, internal KPIs etc. In case of any suspicious traffic or activity, they should immediate block the source/affiliate or get the same optimized. There are several Fraud Detections tools also available in the market such as P360, MFilterit etc.
Affnet Media Uses FraudLogix by Tune as fraud detection tool which is in-build in their tracking platform, which detects the bot/fraud traffic accurately and immediately block the source. With this we save safeguard our clients fully. Also we have Robust technology which can track the impression, clicks, leads and sales live in the system. A Robust Tracking system is very much required for campaign optimization and ROI calculation.
How Affiliates do all of the above services
Above are strategies that Affiliates adopt but they perform these strategies in 2 ways:-
1) Black box campaigns :- In this the brand or the advertiser is not known of the ‘WHERE’ the campaign is running. They only track the output. Advertisers are kept in dark (hence the name Black box) as in how the desired results are achieved. Chances of fraud are very high in this way. Cost gets considerably low here
2) White box campaigns :- This is just opposite of the above. Here the advertiser know ‘WHERE’ the campaign is being run by Affiliate to achieve the desired output. e.g. they might send the screenshots of the social campaigns or show real time feed of the display campaigns that is being run. Here also the chances of fraud are there but less than the above one.
Expert Corner by Mr. Sanjeev Kumar, Co-Founder Affnet media: It is advisable for the advertisers to have a clear & transparent view of the campaigns. We at affnet, publishes an automated daily report which tells our clients about the exact KPIs of all the campaigns.
Why to go with Affiliates rather than social media campaigns?
In digital marketing, every strategy has pros & cons. Social media & affiliates are 2 widely used channels by startups. Let’s hear this from the expert only.
Expert Corner by Mr. Sanjeev Kumar, Co-Founder Affnet media: Instead of using huge marketing budget or adding a big marketing agency, a smart startup can simply tie-up with an affiliate and pay him as per the performance. Given are benefits of tie-up with affiliates:-
– No Risk Advertising:- Affiliate Marketing also known for Performance where advertisers pay as per performance. Hence Affiliate marketing is No Risk Advertising.
– Quick Results:- Affiliate marketing shows results very quickly as compare to other marketing activities like social
– Wide Reach- Through Affiliate marketing advertisers can target the users which are difficult through other marketing activities
– No Restriction:- There are some categories which are ban to promote through Google or social channels. But through Affiliate marketing those categories (Such as Gambling etc) can be promoted easily.
Affnet Media which is a rapidly growing digital cum affiliate marketing company has pool of more than 10k affiliates who can help such start-ups to achieve their requirements.
How to cheery pick the perfect Affiliate out of thousands?
A big question in front of a new startup is how to pick & choose an affiliate partner who can deliver the required results in the best cost with no frauds. Let’s see what expert has to say here
Expert Corner by Mr. Sanjeev Kumar, Co-Founder Affnet media: Brands may consider these points while section of right Affiliate Marketing Agency:-
a) Market Reputation:- Brands should check or review the market reputation of the Agency. They can use Glassdoor, ask for reference or Google reviews
b) Reach:- Brands should also check the reach of the Agency. Agency having maximum number of Affiliates can provide good exposure/Brand Awareness and conversions to the brands.
c) Inventory Types:- Brands should not rely on one or two type of inventories. They should consider the agency having various type of inventory solutions such as – Coupon/Deal, eMailer, SMS/whatsapp, Native, Social, Push etc.
d) Transparency:- Brands should consider Agencies who can provide transparency in terms of Visibility, Inventory, Dashboard, pricing, fraud detection etc.
Affnet Media as a growing affiliate marketing agency that can fulfill all such requirements. Affnet Media is always committed to the world class experience to their advertisers with complete transparency.
Closing note
I would really suggest all the start ups to go for affiliate marketing campaigns with a hawk’s eye on all the performance KPIs. If one has robust internal tracking system, affiliate marketing can be quite fruitful. A good affiliate agency can really help in increasing traffic, getting more leads, app downloads & orders/bookings. One should settle for a viable commercial model with the agency.
In case of any more doubt or any help required, plz touch base with me at priyangagarwal@gmail.com and 8527254995.
