How do I create an affiliation campaign?

Affiliation has become a ubiquitous phenomenon. The Internet is full of them. What are the mechanics of using affiliation properly? And how do you roll out an affiliation campaign?

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What is affiliation?

Definition of affiliation

Affiliation is a practice launched in the United States by Amazon in 1996. It is a partnership between :

• on the one hand, the advertiser website, also known as the affiliator, whose aim is to promote its products, services or brand.
• on the other hand, the publisher website, also known as the affiliate, whose aim is to bring sales, registrations or traffic to the affiliator.

Affiliate profit-sharing

The goodwill relationship is based on the principle of profit-sharing: the affiliate receives a commission based on his or her contribution. This principle has become a cornerstone of the digital sector. Popular with pure players, it is at the heart of their strategy. As far as publishers are concerned, it is what enables bloggers in particular to monetise their sites.

The different reciprocity schemes for affiliation campaigns

Three units of measurement stand out:

• CPA: Cost Per Action, based on the number of clicks. These clicks may, for example, have resulted in the acquisition of a new customer or the placing of an order.
• CPC: Cost Per Click, also known as double click or CPV (Cost Per Visitor). The basis here is extended to include all the traffic generated by the link.
• CPL: Cost Per Lead, for links that lead visitors to sign up to a mailing list, answer online questions or fill in a form.

Using affiliation for your business

The objectives of an affiliation campaign

For advertisers, the mechanisms made possible by affiliation provide a relevant response to a number of challenges, such as :

• getting known ;
• promoting your expertise
• generating new leads
• reaching out to prospective customers
• winning new customers.

An attractive cost-opportunity ratio

For the advertiser, the return on investment (ROI) of an affiliation campaign is immediately high, since it generates very few costs and is based on quantified variables. It is therefore an excellent way of promoting your website while seeking to maximise your conversion rate.

The affiliation link and its many forms

The affiliation link can be a text link or a visual. Your affiliates can talk about you in an article or on a page on their site, or through display media such as advertising banners and web inserts.

How do you set up an affiliation campaign?

To take advantage of the traffic that your affiliates will bring you, you need to launch your affiliation programme. The aim is to make yourself known to qualified publishers, in order to launch a "social media" strategy. You then become an advertiser.

Affiliation with Google

On Google, the paid referencing system, as opposed to natural referencing (SEO for Search Engine Optimization), is based on sponsored links. Using targeted keywords and Google Analytics, for example, you can climb to the top of the search engine pages. This is known as SEA: Search Engine Advertising. You can supplement this Adwords campaign with affiliation campaigns. This is known as SEM: Search Engine Marketing.

Platform affiliation

On Google, however, you will quickly come up against your own limits. Even more so if your organisation is a marketing agency. As complexity increases, with hybrid remuneration models for example, or a growing number of affiliates, you will feel the need to switch to a dedicated management tool. There are various affiliate programme management platforms: Zanox, for example, or NetAffiliation.

However, three professional affiliation platforms stand out clearly on the market:

• AdVibe: is an easy-to-use solution. It requires no software installation. Powerful, it can manage large volumes of data. Subtle in its configuration, it allows you to programme your operations over time with time limits.

• Effinity Marketing Technologies: a real asset when it comes to tracking. The solution makes it possible to trace Internet users' journeys in detail. As for remuneration methods, you can easily manage complex rules. You can distinguish actions by product category or sales channel, for example.

• Affilae: this is undoubtedly the easiest interface to get to grips with. Its attributive layer provides an advanced analytical reading of the impact of the different levers used in your web marketing campaigns.

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Top 3 affiliation platforms

Affiliation is a real resource for online marketing, whether for promoting your website or developing your brand awareness. Its benefits can be measured in terms of click-through rates, which are easier to quantify than online advertising policies.

Inserted on a site, a blog, a mailing or a landing page, the affiliate link, if managed via a quality affiliation platform, provides good metrics for evaluating your conversion rates.