What Every Affiliate Marketing Manager Needs

Be it planning, strategising, forging and maintaining long term relations, name it and there is surely an Affiliate Marketing Manager out there who does it all. Affiliate marketing is a practice that started in the mid-90s has proved nothing but more fruitful with every passing year. The job primarily involves managing publishers (affiliates/associates) on behalf of the advertiser. Contrary to some beliefs which suggested that affiliate programs are dead investments, the industry is expected to generate over $8 billion by 2022. The vast business scope of the industry has allowed for both small and big firms to benefit from it. Here is a small list of essential sets of skills and tools one needs to make it in this field.

Data-Driven Implementation

Affiliate marketing works primarily on CPA (Cost per Action) basis. The leads generated through these methods often comprise only a third of overall sales. This means that the key to an effective outcome would be to strike a balance between critical path methods and CPA according to the requirements of the advertiser.

Know Your Product

It always helps to know more about the product you are pushing. May it be about the existing customer base, sales patterns, seasonality, competitors or plain general knowledge about the industry can help solve problems more readily and efficiently.

Planning

More often than not, an affiliate would do a better job with more time on their hands. A smart manager adjusts for uncertainties so as to not miss crucial days that deliver high ROIs. This also allows one to allocate resources for product reviews and promotions. The need to optimize the calendar is paramount to avoid unwarranted risks and delays.

Recruit The Right Talent

It is a fact that an affiliate at the end of the day works for what makes them money and understanding their need and audience can deem crucial in picking an affiliate that works for you. Given the extremely creative ways employed by some of these affiliates, it doesn’t hurt to constantly be on recruiting mode rather than be satisfied with the status quo. It pays to spend money on relevant marketing tools to efficiently manage affiliates and track one’s progress. This could make all the difference in actually impacting sales and losing money in the cracks.

Diversification
It is important to diversify your partner pool to ensure you get results from all corners. An affiliate is likely to be more interested in making one-off deals on high-value products than converting dozens of clients for small margins. This will also provide more flexibility in pushing various products to the right people.

Proactivity

Making the affiliates’ jobs easier encourages them to work with you and put your product first. This could involve timely delivery of updated creatives, pre-orders, newsletters and promotional material. Staying on top of these developments can aid in distinguishing oneself from competitors providing them an edge to succeed.

Maintaining Relationships

One reason why many successful product developers themselves operate as affiliates is because the job creates ample spaces for networking. People who have been successful at running affiliate programs have often credited the success to maintaining great relations with partners and fellow managers. After all, how can one make a sale if they cannot gain the trust and confidence of the customer.

In all, affiliate markets seem far from saturated as netizens open new spaces and create more opportunity for growth. Although certain methods have undergone a tremendous change just like the internet itself has, the core tenets of being an affiliate manager barely have. In this age, an upcoming manager is expected to keep up with the constant change and deliver. Millennials in this regard seem to have a brilliant opportunity at hand to capitalize on the flourishing demand for such roles.