Affiliate Marketing Plan Structure

Hello all,

We have been talking (sorry for the silence for months) about Online Marketing effectiveness and how Marketing Strategies are accountable and measurable. Let us go a bit into detail and describe a structure of Affiliate Marketing Plan.

We know that loads of online businesses are using Affiliate Marketing and it is the major marketing tool for business success.

So as a big supporter and believer in making things simple and structured, here goes my proposal of how Affiliate Marketing Plan may look like (by the time of writing I am working for an online gambling business, so it can surely affect some details).

Ok, we apply the model of Marketing Strategy and Plan, proposed by Chartered Institute of Marketing and go particularly for an Affiliate part of it.
We assume we are talking about one product (either poker, or casino, or sportsbook) and one country (we would need to make further adjustments and modify the Plan from country to country).

The main criteria to bear in mind when you fill this in is to make sure it is timed, realistic and achievable and, what's the most important, measurable in terms of linking to the business needs.

1. Current Situation - Research:
- competitors;
- existing affiliates;
- trends on the market;
- fill in the Boston matrix to determine where to go;
- set up the current grounds for Affiliate Programme, including key selling points.
All this should give an idea what are the opportunities.

2. Defining - Goals:
We need to define the SMART Goals that reflect the business needs:
- sales - Player Acquisition?
- revenues - Revenues from Player Quality?
- traffic - Increased Brand Awareness.
Make it measurable!

3. Marketing Strategy
We use the opportunities defined in step 1 to develop strategies to achieve the goals defined in step 2:
- bold strategic points to be developed;
- describe the targeting;
- describe the positioning and branding.
We bear in mind that we can use in-house technologies and affiliate networks (Income Access, eGaming-Profit, DGM-UK, etc) for Acquisition and Retention parts of teh Strategy.

4. Marketing Mix
There are many issues to consider whilst designing a proper Marketing Plan using a standard mix and they are as follows:

Product
- Technology
- Support
- Promotional package
- Affiliate staff (experiences and customer-centric managers)
- Fraud management
- Terms and Conditions / Restrictions

Promotion
- Cold leads
- SEM
- Organic traffic, SEO
- PR
- Social Media
- Conferences
- Affiliate forum
- Affiliate blog
- Affiliate Programme sales presentation
- Tools (Syntryx, HitPath)
- Internal communication with Affiliates (e-mailings)
- Promotions to motivate Affiliates

Price
- Affiliate compensation: decide on the plan - CPA, Revenue Share, Hybrid, etc

Place
- Set-up
- Optimize lead funnel (landing pages)

5. Resources and Budget - a good idea to start with a 1 year operational plan?!

6. Measurement
ROI - isn't it what we are all striving for?

The plan is optimally short and descriptive and proven to structure all the affiliate marketing efforts and leave some time for creativity and innovations for a skilled marketer.

Please should you have any comments and suggestions do not hesitate!

e-Mail me NOW or use the Comment feature below please

New Affiliate Programme Launch

Hi everyone!

It has been shamefully empty here as I was very busy being involved with a few affiliate marketing and acquisition projects.

I am still very much involved in affiliate marketing and wider acquisition and would like to share a very top-level approach how to tackle the project of creating an affiliate programme from the scratch.

As an example we take a competitor of airbnb.com - a peer to peer holiday rentals, where you can rent out your room/flat or house to somebody for a day, week or more and all the negotiations, approvals and transactions are being carried over peer to peer as well (so to speak Customer to Customer C2C model).
The business model is quite simple with the Site taking 6-12% of guest fee paid through the site.

So having set media buying, SEM and other performance marketing (acquisition) models it is time to set Affiliate Marketing Programme. Here we go.

Current situation
- No affiliate marketing as such
- Competition: direct competitor offers 40% revenue share (cost per sale) on guest fees (which are 6-12% from the booked property cost)
- a need for Research: we need to understand wider competitor landscape, who are existing travel/property affiliates and current state of affairs on the promotions/deals and needs of those affiliates (determining the capacity of the affiliate channel would also mean we understand if this project is actually feasible from the commercial standpoint - weather our total costs are not higher than the expected revenue from the affiliate channel).

Objectives
1. Quite obviously: successful setup, launch and operation of Affiliate Programme to attract new guests
2. Profitability: ensure minimal risk, increased stability and business sustainability from affiliate channel as opposed to more volatile SEM and Media channels.
3. Ensuring increased brand awareness and consistency.

Strategy
1. Defining business model - revenue share seems to be initially the best option, though research should show whether pay per qualified lead or purchase could be viable and even more attractive to increase profitability. Key consideration that needs to be simulated according to various commission plans and scenarios, backed by the research.
2. Defining key selling points for the programme (using product's key selling points).
3. Decision about the platform - own, outsourced, no exclusivity via affiliate networks.
4. Decision about affiliate management - own or outsourced.
5. Marketing Communication / Promotion strategy for affiliates - set of tools available and technical/creative implementation.
6. Define KPIs for the launch and implementation: new customers (guests), revenue per customer, total revenues.

Plan and timelines
Plan would vary depending on the strategic choices that are stated above.
Plan would also include specific initiatives on:
- affiliates recruitment
- affiliate activation and optimisation
- marketing communication campaigns management, including tools and creatives
- introducing acquisition promotions
- analysis of commission plans and its development.

Control and Measurement
Weekly/monthly measurement according to set KPIs. Maintaining strong control over Terms and Conditions to prevent from fraud, illegal promotion methods and other legal issues. Re-evaluation of performance and modifications to the plan.

I will stop right here, because further assumptions without doing a proper research would not do me any favours.

What do you think?

Marketing vs Sales: a conflict can be resolved? Online marketing prospective

Just a few thoughts about a usual conflict between Marketing and Sales departments.

Have been thinking about a way to resolve it from the online marketing prospective.

Ok, first things first. The conflict arises when marketing sets up the targets quantified by the number of leads and then sales dept basically starts working with leads, but only with the ones who qualified (by various criteria that was set up by the business).
So from the marketing prospective narrowing down the targetting would result in lesser amounts of leads and thus lesser efficiency and underachievements.
And from the sales dept prospective only qualified leads would convert into sales (lets say real money and revenue).

So basically the answer to the conflict resolution is pretty obvious: to find a way how to turn a big number of leads into qualified ones. So we do have a second group of leads which was disqualified for some rational criteria.

Now we have a solution to educate our disqualified leads for sales department. One of the things I have leant from different SEM and affiliate campains would be to develop a brand new landing page based on the analysis what is the discrepancy point between qualified and the largest disqualified group.

Can we say this landing page nurturing project can really work or you can suggest another tactical marketing tool to be used in turning disqualified leads into qualified (the more percentage to be converted the better of course)?

Considerations on affiliate programmes: in-house or outsourced

In lieu for a preparation for a panel discussion here goes a few considerations on affiliate platforms: in-house or outsourced?!

My overall gaming experience includes managing marketing campaigns and affiliates for a poker school, online casino and now for one of the leading online poker and online casino operators. During that time I had been working directly with affiliates via simple tracking platform, via proprietary platforms and via the network - Income Access.

Generally speaking, the question is purely about business models employed and marketing strategies.
Marketers should take this into account when making this decision and four major principles would be lock-in, efficiencies, innovation and complementarity.
It creates value for affiliate channel and drives a decision whether those platforms should be in-house or outsourced.
Same with affiliates - they need to recognise how it is more beneficial for them - how do they create more value for themselves (receive it from direct relationship or via managed outsourced solution).

In example
a) let's take a gaming affiliate who purely concentrates on promoting online poker in France. Are there any other offers that he is interested in? No. Where is the competitive advantage here for an affiliate network - there is almost none, with a dozen of operators affiliate can effectively manage relationships himself.
b) if we take affiliate who is promoting multi-sector programmes it becomes obvious that he cannot effectively manage and communicate with hundred affiliate managers and for there sake of efficiency and technical tracking innovations, and also complementarity he is to work through the network.
Operators should acknowledge this and decide on the most effective strategy for themselves depending on the business (and business models).

So in example of my current employer - there is not so much need for us to go through networks for poker (being longstanding in-house programme), but if we are talking about UK online casino and other territories where it is legal then I would be more than prepared to discuss network opportunities to get greater access to affiliate pool and save effort and budget on affiliate recruitment.

Taking about the costs it is worth mentioning that own in-house programme would impose mostly fixed costs, whereas outsourced would carry on mostly variable costs based on number or volume of sales.

That means that the operators - newcomers would face a barrier to create their own platforms because of high fixed costs and also time for recruiting affiliates for it (that would be generally even bigger cost because it would require talented affiliate managers to sell the porhramme already packed with promotions and other selling points as competitive advantages).