Affiliate marketing is a young man’s game. Whereas just a few years ago it was a job mostly suited to people trying to make a few commission sales in their spare time it has become for many today not only a full time job but a way of life. And with the offline world fighting back against the low prices found online the competition will only get tougher.
The affiliate publisher is a strange person. Equal parts telemarketer, editorialist and old time door-to-door salesman make publishers the workhorses of the internet marketing trade. And yet in some cases you’re not looking for workhorses but for stallions instead. Sometimes the number of sales is not as important as the quality of the sales in products and amount spent. This is especially a thing in limited series high value goods. In marketing terms, the average order value is the main thing to look out for rather than the conversion rate or fixed commission. So how do you configure and prepare your partners for a campaign targeting specific customers?
As always your affiliate program agency can be tremendously helpful in this case as they can identify and help select the best affiliates for your proposed campaign or outreach. They can also come up with a sale plan with you and provide all sorts of useful insight.
Offering a larger commission for AOV over a certain threshold might act as extra incentive for publishers to reach out and get clicks through to the merchant website though extra incentives are rarely successful.
Instead you might try diversifying your market. Several affiliate networks offer over-seas support in several European countries and Australia. Perhaps exposure to a different market and a new set of foreign language publishers might offset the extra costs from expanding.
Another strategy for drawing in larger purchases, especially in the case of higher value goods and services (like properties or antiques) is to use an affiliate network that allows affiliate partners to contact others about your product on the telephone. Sure this might sound dangerously close to the good work that a telemarketer does but sometimes its worth it.
Perhaps the best-tried and tested method of increasing AOV is through heavy social media exposure. A whopping 60% of affiliates use social networks to promote products in addition to their own websites and it allows your products and services to attain a considerably larger audience through the ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ of your partners. Your affiliate manager should make sure that the method is working, that you are reaching your intended audience and that no EdgeRank (or similar) shenanigans are stifling your outreach.
Affiliate marketing is still growing on a yearly basis but, with competition getting tougher in the Internet marketing world perhaps it is high time that it becomes more professional as well, better at reaching out directly to the type of potential client who isn’t a miser.
