Affiliate Marketing in a Recession

27th
OCT

Posted by Michael under Affiliate Marketing, Business Growth

If you’re involved in Affiliate Marketing (AM) which is where your business ‘rewards’ affiliates for each visitor (or preferably customer) brought to your site by an affiliate’s marketing efforts, the latest economic news confirms that this is a good time to review your strategy.

The continuing recession in the UK means that sticking with what you’ve been doing before is not likely to be the best option for your business and its long-term growth. There are several steps all affiliate marketing people should be taking:

1) Review the Return On Investment (ROI) on everything you do – not just AM but all aspects of your spend – does the Pay Per Click (PPC) income exceed that spent on direct advertising? Do you know whether affiliates are returning more or less in the current economic climate – and do you know whether refining your campaign could increase your return?
2) Examine Search Engine Optimisation related to AM too. How long does it take to get a new site profitable and would that investment be better spent in more AM? It can take up to six months to monetise a new site, and that’s a long lag when cash is tight.
3) Reconsider what business you are in – the hardest hit industries in the current recession appear to be housing, consumer electronics, high-end furniture and foreign travel – but many of these businesses can be rebranded. For example, a personal computer or smartphone allows a consumer to do more comparison shopping, therefore saving money, or to apply for jobs as they appear on site, so they are at the front of the queue if they’re seeking employment. This moves a computer from ‘consumer electronics’ to ‘personal finance assistant’ and looking at your AM allows you to rebrand your goods as those things that people still need when they are cutting back on expenses.
4) Consider your support network – which is the first thing that tends to go when times are hard. Who has helped you in the past? Who can you help along the way? Having resources to support you and people you support as they start out means that you are in a more robust position: you hear good and bad news earlier, you get input from a wide range of people and if things go horribly wrong you have a career path and a bunch of people who can prove you were worth working with. If things go brilliantly well, you’ve got a great bunch of mates to have celebrate with – in either case, it’s easier to start your network now, in the tough times, because faint-hearted folk will be leaving all forms of entrepreneurship and that means the strong and visionary will be staying in the game, and those are the ones you want to associate with.
5) Make contacts work for you – think about buying in email lists, using social networking groups and link building and all forms of networking that can be converted to solid contacts to help you keep moving forward.

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