Affiliate Marketing: How to measure your success?

One of the advantages of digital marketing is having the ability to quantify how well we are doing with some campaigns. One strategy that can be employed is affiliate marketing. This type of model involves a partnership between a trader and a mediator and their audience. It is not easy to implement but has many advantages. If we implement measurement of certain parameters we will know exactly what is working with our affiliates and what is not. Find out what they are below.

Affiliate marketing what is it?

Affiliate marketing is a digital marketing strategy. In it, a seller contacts a person who has an audience to offer that audience products or services. An agreement or kind of partnership is formed between the seller and the mediator to pay for the contact he makes with the audience. Of course, this cannot be done for any audience.

Before you make an affiliate marketing deal, you have to think about whether that person’s audience is right for your business. When you’re looking for a site to do affiliate marketing with, you’ll need to think about your target market. If the audience on that site doesn’t match your target market, even a busy blog is useless if what you sell is software and that site does makeup reviews.

On the other hand, you also want to partner with someone who has a good reputation and you should give them all the tools to help them maintain it. There are a lot of controversial people online, looking for someone who has built trust with their audience, if everyone talks about people who give what to talk about but can cause you a public relations problem rather than help you sell. On the other hand, audiences like to know when there is affiliate marketing on the content they consume, let your partner be transparent with them.

Finally, you need to be clear about what kind of deal you’re going to make with your partner. How are you going to pay him? There are several ways to do affiliate marketing and these define how fees will be paid to your partner.

Types of affiliate marketing

There are many types of affiliate marketing. They are classified according to what the audience wants to do when learning about our company through a mediator. When the potential client fulfills the action it is what generates fees for the mediator. Here are some examples:

• Pay per click: This is one of the most common types of affiliate marketing. It is when you send an affiliate link to the partner that you must include in your content and your audience clicks on the link to make a profit for it.
• Payment by sale: In this case, the mediator would win only by the sales made from the buyers who arrive through their website. This makes your investment in affiliate marketing much safer.
• Payment for «click out»: This option is similar to the first one although there has to be a certain permanence of the customer on your website, so to speak: it must make a second click on your site. It is not enough that I go to your site but also explore it.
• Payment per installation: If you are looking for a client to download software or extension, this is the option for you. As with the Pay-For-Sale option, it will only generate fees if the customer agrees to install what you offer.
• Payment by lead: This option is also very good, especially if you sell a service or something that should be personalized. In this case, fees will be generated if the client contacts you directly.
• Payment by enrollment: Similar to the installation option, this case is for those who want the customer to enroll in something on your website. You will only pay for the traffic that comes from your affiliate partner.

No matter what type of affiliate marketing deal you make, you’re going to need to be on the lookout for some indicators that you need be on the lookout to see if your campaign is being effective.

Metrics to keep in mind

In the world of digital marketing, metrics are indicators that give you valuable information. There are metrics for all kinds of parameters and campaigns, for example in social media campaigns you’ll want to know how many people go to your website from your profile or how many new likes you’ve gotten in a month. In the case of affiliate marketing, there are many details you will want to measure to ensure that it is working as you want and that it has been a good investment.

Here are some of them:

1. Clicks: This is the most basic thing to quantify when you have an affiliate marketing campaign. It will tell you how much traffic is coming to your page through your affiliate links. In turn, if the number of clicks is high but the amount of conversion of sales is low, it may be indicating a market segmentation problem.
2. Amount of sales: Compare this to the number of clicks that will tell you how many people have become your customers. In turn, it is an indicator for later measuring the gains that have come from the affiliate strategy.
3. Conversions: If more than selling you want them to download something or subscribe to your page, you need to measure whether that action is being fulfilled. That’s why it’s important to keep a record of whether the action you want is taking place.
4. Increased earnings: Is there an increase in earnings directly related to affiliate marketing? Yes or no and what percentage represents your winnings. You must establish a measurement period (one month, one week, two weeks…) and be aware of the impact from the beginning.
5. Cost per click and cost per sale: Now, it’s not all about how much you earn, but how much it costs. Is your affiliate marketing campaign being profitable? You may have a lot of new customers and you’re selling a lot but a good percentage will go on paying for affiliate marketing costs. See how much each click and each sale costs you in relation to your growth.
6. The number of new buyers and new leads: Is affiliate marketing giving you new customers or has it put you in touch with people interested in your business? If so, it is very good, maybe it is not a goal that you have set yourself at first but it is important to pay attention to it.
7. Percentage of active affiliates: Most likely you have more than one affiliate and over time they will be several. Most likely, some pages will no longer be in operation or articles will no longer have the same traffic. That’s why it’s important to measure how many of them are active and generate income for you.
8. Top affiliates and their earnings: to have a good balance in the investment, it is important that you also measure, from your best affiliates, how many profits are being made.
9. Increase in earnings over time by affiliate program: Over time, you’re going to have to compare month to month or year to year how your affiliate marketing is going. Let’s say this point is the same as #4 but in longer periods.

Being aware of all these indicators is not easy. You need to handle the data with a lot of intelligence to understand the results you’re getting as well as the costs. If your company is large enough, you may be able to invest in a program that helps you gather this information and organize it.

Here are some metrics tracker options that have options for affiliate marketing:

• Affise: This is software specialized in tracking for affiliate marketing. It allows you to manage, optimize and customize your campaigns and your indicators. In turn, it provides comparative reports as well as more than fifty data compilations. They also have a free trial that you can access right away. Try Affise here.
• Voluum: It is a tracking tool for all types of ads, from banners to affiliate marketing. The attractive thing is that it allows you to analyze everything from one place. You’ll be able to know where the traffic you’re getting is coming from, what strategies are working, what isn’t, and how to optimize for better results. Try Voluum here.
• Tapfiliate: This tool specializes in affiliate marketing. Something very attractive is that it allows you to create strategies to become affiliates. In addition to allowing you to manage your affiliates, it has options to automate your partnerships as well as to track the success of your campaigns. You can try it for free for 15 days. Learn more about Tapfiliate here.

Conclusions

Affiliate marketing is a digital marketing strategy that associates trade with a mediator. Through the mediator’s website, the audience will learn about the trader’s products or services and thus become potential customers. An affiliate can earn per click, per sales, per downloads or subscriptions, everything depends on the type of deal. In all cases, the trader must keep a record of different indicators to know if his campaign is being successful. You can use various software and tools to automate your work.

Have you done affiliate marketing? What has been your experience? Tell us in the comments.