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.
1 comments:
Good explanation and easy read. I have used Biocompare but haven't received the kind of leads I expected so far.
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