3 Practical Affiliate Marketing Tips for Life Science Marketers

If you are just starting out with Affiliate marketing then make sure you understand these two acronyms very clearly CPA and CPC. Because these will be the numbers you will live and breathe by when running your affiliate marketing campaigns. Remembering these can be quite daunting so check out my post on commonly used acronyms here.

In Affiliate marketing other publishers and websites promote your business and earn a commission from a sale promoting the product. Let’s say you advertise your product on eBay so if someone clicked on the link and then purchases the product, eBay will get a percentage of the profit. Amazon, Etsy etc. are examples of affiliate programs. Loyalty or coupon code websites are good example of Affiliate marketing. AdSense by Google is also a form of affiliate marketing commonly used by bloggers and websites.

Why people choose affiliate marketing?

The reason people go for affiliate marketing is because these third party sellers get way more traffic than your website. Let’s say, you a brand new website, product page or a microsite and you are new to digital marketing game. In that case, initially getting more than 10K visitors a day might be an uphill climb. In that situation affiliate marketing can come in handy given the fact that you have budget for it.

Powerful affiliate marketing websites are still in their infancy in the life science or biotech market compared to retail industry. Most of the websites used by life science marketers are journals or comparison search engines to list their products and generate leads. It falls more in the category of display advertising rather than affiliate marketing. The reason for the lag is heavy regulation in the industry. But still there are websites, like Biocompare who can send targeted leads to you.

Three tips for a successful affiliate marketing campaign

1.      Transparency & Measurability: According to Forrester Research, total spend for affiliate marketing will cross $4.5 billion, accounting for the 3rd largest marketing budget right after pay-per-click (PPC) and email. But despite high dollar amount, many of us forget to effectively measure the success and effectiveness of the affiliate marketing program. This is something I learned the hard way too. Almost all the affiliate networks have their own way of reporting the CPCs and CTRs. Besides, some of them reluctantly admit that there could be bot clicks. Therefore, it is very important to have a common yard stick or a tool that standardizes reporting through all of them.

In short, invest in a tool to monitor it. If you can’t get a media monitoring software then make sure to set a monthly campaign report in Google analytics for all your affiliate networks.

2.      Select your affiliate partners with care: As with all digital marketing campaigns, targeting is always important. But it becomes even more critical when you are choosing your affiliate network. Ask how well do they profile their visitors? Always ask about the demographics and details of the traffic the affiliate is receiving for example- Do more Key Opinion leaders visit that site or is it more of young researches and technicians?

3.      Check competition thoroughly: See how many of your competitors are advertising on that space. A little bit of competition is always good but make sure that your competitors don’t outsmart you on that platform. Exhaust all means to get to know the target networks well.

So, how has your experience been so far with affiliate marketing? Comment in the below section and share your thoughts.