Affiliate marketing is not just about hiring few affiliate partners who can lend their support in the promotional activities of the business but includes various activities that are required to be done on a daily basis. The affiliate partners are required to place the parent website’s link(s) on various platforms such as the website or even social media platforms in addition to any other places that suit the purpose. The best places to place such links are those where there is high traffic coming in and the chances of people interacting with them are high enough to expect the returns from the same.
The affiliate partners are expected to go creative and come up with new ideas for business promotion which can be adopted and implemented along with the mainstream business promotion activities. An affiliate partner need not do much but certainly requires it to be done in an efficient and careful manner in tandem with the other affiliate partners of the main company. It is often said that an affiliate marketer is lucky to afford to take rest after placing the business links on the suitable platforms and patiently wait for the visitors to see it and take action which gets them converted into leads and finally the customer who closes the sales cycle. But it is not that easy to achieve that million dollar target with only this simple activity done online.
An affiliate marketer needs to be vigilant about the activities that are done by the visitors online. Only then can they employ the strategy in its full potential. There are many advantages of affiliate marketing such as the marketer needs not to invest a heavy amount to start the business activity. He neither needs to invest a lot of time in managing the same as everything can be performed online from the comfort of his home.
About the Company
About the CompanyDirect Flights is an Australia based travel company that offers online discount service (travel). It offers myriad services ranging from hotel booking, flight booking and destination fun activities. The website of Direct Flights International shows profitable travel packages on a daily basis to its valued visitors. It has become a one stop destination for travelling people who are in need to know about the flight availability as well as the other relevant things such as hotels to stay in. It has gained good popularity in Australia and has high scope of improvement as well in the near future.
Business Objectives of Direct Flights International
The business objective of Direct Flights International was to streamline its affiliate marketing program. The company wanted high quality web traffic which could result in increase in the number of sales. It understood that there is no point in simply attracting huge traffic if it was of low quality. The company wanted to focus on Australian customers only. It joined hands with many affiliates operating locally such as www.checkmystats.com.au and www.clixgalore.com.au.
One of the major problems faced by the company was that the activities of the affiliate partners were of the parasitic nature. This means that one affiliate used to remove the cookie of another affiliate partner with its own resulting in poor results. Secondly, there was no proper scheme to choose the affiliate partners and they were allowed to work for it without any prior checking on them. They were accepted at random. The creative approach of the affiliates was also not worth appreciating as it didn’t bring in any major recognisable improvement in the sales of the company. The company soon realised that there must be quality check on the same before involving them in the affiliate marketing strategy.
Strategies Adopted By Direct Flights
After carefully reviewing the entire affiliate marketing strategy, the company executed the following steps in order to achieve its goals. The steps are listed below:
- Parasitic activities of the affiliates were checked by removing them from the list itself. This cleaning campaign proved to be beneficial for the company.
- Affiliate partners were asked to use properly designed creative platforms for business popularity. Only the well designed ones were then executed for the purpose.
- The affiliate partners were manually chosen with great care unlike the previous automatic system for the same. This helped a lot in checking the quality of the service that can be expected from the affiliate partners if they are chosen to serve the company.
- Not continuing with the network that is not working at all. This saved the company from various hassles and potential loss in the future.
- The appropriate keywords were used to attract the right affiliate partners for the company. The travel related sites were asked to become affiliate partners of the company. The marketing agency hired by the company was quite successful in hiring the affiliate partners who had great potential for success.
Results
The results obtained by the company are worthy of big round of applause. The smart marketing strategy when executed in a professional manner brought in the desired results. It saved thousands of dollars that were earlier spent in giving away the commission to the affiliate partners whose services were not of good quality and who were indulging in malpractices. The company was greatly satisfied with the efforts of the marketing agency that it hired.
Learnings
Affiliate marketing is not a wonder in itself and demands high degree of caution and vision to earn the desired rewards. The company set an example for others to follow in not just its own industry but other industries as well. A properly executed affiliate marketing strategy is worth a million dollar return as it cuts down the expenses to a huge extent even in the initial stages of the campaign. The affiliate partners need to be chosen with care and must be asked to work on a set agenda though with creative freedom. The tasks can be assigned to them and a coordination plan must be put in place in case of more than one affiliate partners are involved.
