Affiliate programs usually are one of the exceptional tools for companies that require enhancing sales but unfortunately hanging on a hook of a tight budget. Affiliate programs are useful and helpful when they are performance based which means companies will only pay affiliate marketers only when they make sales. However, handling such type of programs can be huge and operational expenses can fastly add up.
In this post, we are providing 5 discrete steps that will help marketing managers in running an efficient and cost affordable affiliate programs.
1. Know your affiliates before you hire
Once your program goes live, you can see a pool of affiliates. Of course, it would be so tempting just to hire all of them and watch how they increase your revenue but in reality, it doesn’t work that way. Before you even hire them, you need to spend some quality time researching your affiliates and making sure that they are legitimate.
Nowadays, it has become more than common to experience fraudulent activities especially in affiliate programs and the reason behind this is because affiliate manager didn’t take enough time to research his or her affiliates.
Check if any one of your affiliates has an active website and how it is related to the kind of product you are selling. This kind of research will assist in minimizing fraud and also saves you money.
While researching your affiliates before hiring them, do not take them off the list just because they do not have enough experience. Most of the affiliates come under any of these categories: Thin, regular, and super. Thin affiliates are the ones who have just begun the journey. The rest two categories are kind of experienced ones, with the super affiliates at the top of the list.
Even though the affiliate who falls into the super category will certainly expect higher compensation from your program, you should not think that the less experienced affiliates are of no use. It is only by using all of the categories that you will benefit the most out of your program.
2. At times, a few is better than more
Other than having affiliates with various levels of experience and expertise, it is essential to take into consideration that more does not always mean better. Usually, some loyal affiliates will perform better than various other affiliates who do not have any kind of relationship with either your program or brand.
When you are operating an affiliate program that is on a tight budget, the fewer affiliates you have to handle and keep tabs on, the simpler it is to focus on other things and best use the money available.
However, it is going to take some time to build strong relationships with online publishers. getting touch with the periods orphan will assist in expediting the whole process. Proper communication is vital to reduce the amount of management and resources you need to utilize in making your program to run just the way it should, and keeping you within your budget limits.
3. Get the right, cost effective affiliate management software
The software you utilize can have a drastic impact on the overall expenses of your affiliate program. Most of the time, affiliate commissions do not become a concern because they will be supported by the sale of products or the acquisition of a concrete prospect, paying for the software utilized to handle the program can be much easier to justify.
However, marketing manager requires the right set of tools to handle an affiliate marketing program. There is a hell of a lot of software that is available on the market, some are even made to integrate directly with your affiliate commission payment service to make sure that the affiliates are paid in the right way. But management can be handled without difficulty software programs.
4. Find the right payout service
Paying affiliates for the work they did is not an easy task and especially when you have too many numbers of affiliates. Just the way you find the right affiliate program software, you should also find which affiliate commission payment service is best for your business and your affiliate program.
Make it clear what you are expecting and your budget restrictions with the payment processing agency. This will assist you in finding out what kind of service is cost effective for you and how the final payment of your affiliates will impact your program.
5. Track everything
One of the bad things that affiliate marketing programs can easily be influenced by is fraud. If you are operating your affiliate program within your budget stipulations then you cannot allow any of your money to go waste.
Of course, all kinds of legitimate affiliate sale certainly warrant pay commission, it is essential to ensure that the sales were made in accordance with the given rules and norms that you provided to all affiliates. Tracking all such sales and affiliate information can assist you in finding which affiliates should get exactly how much commission and which ones should not get any.
By tracking all of your affiliate sales, you can definitely find the non-legitimate activities such as affiliates utilizing fake leads or stolen debit or credit cards to make the purchases. Such type of fraudulent activities can easily bring your budget down within no time.
Before you even realize it, you would have utilized all your funds paying commission to all the non-legitimate affiliates who did not do anything in your affiliate program. The closer you keep an eye on all sales that were made by affiliate marketers, the easier it is to find when an affiliate is indeed getting legitimate leads that assist your affiliate program in accomplishing its goals.
Let us know if you have any other tips that can help our fellow affiliate managers in effectively managing their affiliate program.
