Affiliate Marketing Meaning

What Pay for Affiliate And Influencer Marketing

Throughout the past three months, with COVID-19 as a likely catalyst, influencers have been in trade publications frequently for perceived drama pertaining to seemingly abrupt changes to the long-standing affiliate marketing programs.

Journalists covering the space sought to understand the fallout between affiliate programs and influencers, campaign suspensions, and shifting compensation models.

But as with everything in our space, understanding the truth is more dynamic than what may originally meet the eye.

Evolution can be seen in retail marketers’ collective shift toward diversified programs and away from last-click overreliance.

At the same time, influencers are responding to slashed upfront campaign fees by migrating to pay-for-outcome compensation models.

These factors come together to seed a new relationship.

Over the last twenty years, affiliate marketing was heavily dominated by the last-click coupon and loyalty publishers.

But the affiliate marketing model made it too hard to assess the value of content creators and allocate compensation for their role in achieving a brand’s desired engagement—whether it

Affiliate technology was originally built to attribute compensation on the last click.

So for a long time, this system afforded no earning opportunity for influencers, simply because they were often the introducer touchpoint in the consumer journey.

As a result, the popular fixed fee monetization and commercial the strategy around the creator marketplace were primarily developed as a defense mechanism.

For the dynamics between retail marketers and influencers to take hold, the affiliate industry needed to accelerate its evolution, to develop a way to prescribe value based on any given

influencer’s explicit role in the consumer journey on the path to purchase, whether it be the introduction or something more mid-funnel.

The industry also needed to develop technology for precision influencer discovery, so that brands could find the right influencers based on specific attributes.

The welcome and collective move of brands and influencers toward pay-for-outcome models bode well.

Now that affiliate technology is evolving beyond last-click publishers, there are opportunities for more sophisticated monetization.

According to Pepper jam’s weekly indexing, over the last two months, content publishers, like influencers, have realized year-over-year gains not only in revenue performance but also in their percentage share

And brands are responding—by investing more on a variable compensation basis, upwards of 127% year-over-year.

With measured and proven performance, affiliate tools are finally a real option for influencers—they present an opportunity for high-level compensation for playing a measurable role in the ultimate conversion.

Combined with other recent events like brands dumping their fixed-fee campaigns, this technology evolution within affiliate marketing has created an environment for influencers to readily embrace the pay-for-outcome model.

Influencers certainly felt the impact of recent budget cuts, but there’s been a palpable realization that they can offset these losses with alternative revenue streams, like affiliates.

The trend of this toward performance pay for models has persisted week to week, and we feel that this position as a primary sales and marketing channel will stick

after the pandemic, having been put to the test during the most challenging of times.

The Growth Of Media (Publisher's use of Affiliate Marketing – What You Need To Know

As many of us performance marketers will know, the growth of media publishers through affiliate marketing has been a much-discussed topic for the last few years. But precisely how can brands engage with media publishers, both large and small, that use affiliate marketing?

Looking at publishers such as Buzz feed may lead affiliate marketers to believe Amazon dominates this content space. However, this does not mean Buzz feed is not open to working with specific brands; H&M and Feel Unique have also benefited from their editorials. Brands who fall under the categories of fashion, beauty, household and even niche sites such as Wicked uncle and Prezzybox can benefit from their ability to highlight certain products with innate credibility and longevity that cannot be matched.

Engaging with media publishers, large and small

Larger media sources such as Marie Claire and Hearst Magazine Group also work within the affiliate space, this is important to evaluate as part of any affiliate strategy as they have specific demographics which can be accessed via multiple mediums on a CPA model. Due to their size and scale, they are a very efficient way to promote content whilst also driving sales. It is possible to access their user-bases via their content-rich websites, newsletters, and their social media outlets on a risk-free model encouraging both the brand and the media outlet to maximize ROI in a way that has never been possible before. Due to their level of brand recognition, the conversion rates are higher and the consumers are more trusting, for example, Good Housekeeping can also provide their seal of approval to products.

Using this to amplify any affiliate strategy will increase conversion rates significantly. Engagement, which is naturally hard to measure within affiliate tracking systems, is also a significant KPI. The lifetime value is a key consideration when evaluating any campaign’s success with media publishers.

Don’t discount smaller media publishers which may usually be considered as content publishers as there is very little difference between media and content publishers once they get large enough. Getting in early will make all the difference when negotiating commissions and building up the relationship. These publishers work very well for specific audience targeting and have an engaged and high-quality user-base such as with Weather2Travel.Com.

How brands can make the most of affiliate marketing

When working with media publishers, it is important to identify all those who work on an affiliate model and precisely how they go about doing this. Larger editorial sites will usually work directly with brands and sign-up to their affiliate tracking network. Some media publishers, however, have plugged in solutions such as Daily Mail’s solution with Global Savings Group.

Incentives are also an important consideration, does the publisher have any minimum commissions or do they only promote best-in-market offers. Ensure incentives align with the overall objective and have a profitable ROI.

A clear objective is essential

Finally, as with any affiliate strategy, it is important to have a clear objective – such as obtaining new customers or driving sales of a specific category or product. It is essential that this objective is shared and agreed on with the publisher with measurable KPIs that will ensure the best outcome is achieved. This, along with the points above, are all vitally important to consider to ensure your brand is making the most out of affiliate marketing.

Interview With Campbell SEO

Glasgow, Scotland, June 22, 2020 (Wired Release): Craig Campbell is as experienced as they come when it comes to SEO and Digital Marketing with 18 years of experience and has been around the block starting out working from home as a freelancer to building up his own successful digital marketing agency and has gone on to forge a successful affiliate marketing career too.

The Craig Campbell SEO brand is out there, he regularly talks at conferences and in recent times he gave away his online SEO course completely FREE to help those on lockdown put their time to better use and I thought it was time to find out more about Craig Campbell and asked him some questions about how he got to where he is today and what made him make those choices.

Q: I have watched many of your talks where you say you don't like dealing with clients, why is that?

Listen there is no real issue with working with clients as such, of course, we have all experienced the difficult clients and yes that can be painful, but you can set up processes and have people in place to deal with that if required. I just feel that for my own personality type having run an agency for many years that I wanted to go and build up businesses myself rather than work for clients. My theory here is, if you're that good at SEO why would you be making other people a fortune and not using these skills to build up your own assets?

Q: You regularly talk about Black Hat Tactics and seem to get varied feedback as a result what is your take on that?

I don't always talk about black hat tactics, people see what they want to see, for many years I’ve done webinars with SEMRush on all kinds of stuff including some very basic webinars on how to use the tool itself. I’ve done way more webinars and conferences on generic stuff than I have on any black hat stuff.

But people enjoy the black hat side if you want to call it that, its more creative and more about thinking outside the box and of course people will react and talk about this more than a basic talk on say “ keyword research “ but because I talk about black hat doesn’t mean I go around spamming sites. I think any clever SEO out there will fully understand SEO, whether that is on-page, tech, or off-page SEO, and understand the risks and rewards that can be gained by implementing whatever tactics. There are a time and a place to use certain tactics. What I want to do is make sure people understand the other side more and become more aware of what’s going on.

In terms of feedback, people have the right to an opinion, I have the right to mine and that’s that, I don’t bother too much about any negative feedback at all, there is always someone with something to say online, whether your doing SEO or you post a picture of your garden someone will come along and try and be negative about it. Such is the life you just keep going and move on.

Q: We all see a lot of negativity towards people who speak at conferences, on webinars or have a big social presence. I don’t think Id like to do it, the negativity puts me off, what words of advice do you have to someone who does want to put themselves out there?

I’d say go for it if you feel you have something to offer then why let any negative people put you off, it can be annoying at the start but you kind of learn to just ignore and block or let people have fun with it. I’ve seen many speakers get abuse at some time or another which is a shame as they are not paid to put up with that crap, they are out there trying to help and give value to others and for people to have an issue with that is beyond me.

But people are entitled to their opinion and will give it to you, regardless of whether you ask for it or not but the truth is there are a lot more good people than bad out there. I’d run with it I wouldn’t let anyone put me off.

Q: Affiliate Marketing, can you explain why you choose to go down that route?

Well I didn’t give it too much thought as such, you start this career not knowing what your doing, before you know it you have clients, next thing is you have 3 members of staff and have become a business owner. You then find yourself thinking clients are the only way you can make money and scale but when you open your eyes and see other smart people they are doing a whole bunch of different stuff.

So as someone in the industry, who was passionate about SEO, how else could I make money, the simple solutions were guiding people to tools, software, hosting and so on so it was a natural progression for me, it wasn’t something I sat around thinking about. I earned a decent amount via affiliate and thought If I spend more time on this then that money will grow and it did.

Q: For someone new to the industry who are the ideal people to follow to increase your knowledge?

Well me of course, Nah just kidding, but I do have a free course out there and a YouTube channel with a ton of useful info. But the top guys are everywhere and I don’t want to name them all as I’d be here forever.

Matthew Woodward was the one I followed a lot as I was an agency and he was living the high life as an affiliate with his old monthly earnings report and to this day he is rolling out good stuff a handful of others are Kyle Roof, Gael Breton, Matt Dignity, Nathan Gotch who are well-known figures and out there.

But there are guys who are off the radar, for example, we all think we are the top guys in our own country but I've been to masterminds in other countries and one was over in Poland where Polish Dooley, I can't even say his real name is absolutely killing it as an affiliate and some of the tricks this whole crowd were talking about was next level. That event was SEO Regis by Robert Niechciał and Damien Sałkowski who are also very smart people and worth following, but the point being is all of this whole crowd were all very successful people and had tricks like you wouldn’t believe, but none of them are public speakers and don’t appear on webinars. They are the guys who go to events and sit up the back that no one notices.

Another an event I spoke at was NFG Rock stars, this was a 200 person event, VIP type thing more like a mastermind and it was over in the US. I’d known a handful of them from speaking at other events but again similar to Poland I was mind blown with guys like Holly Starks, Jordan Pearce, Steven Kang, Mike Steffens, Terry Samuels, Dori Friend, Clint Butler and guys like that.

Again some are well known, some not so well known, but there’s a good starting point thereof people to follow, but don’t always look to the big names there are guys there who are in the trenches killing it. At NFG Rock stars there was as much quality attending the event as there was speaking.

So go to these types of events, it keeps you at the top of your game, plus none of us know everything and you need to remember that.

Q: Any tips on how yours growing your YouTube audience, that's impressive the numbers you are doing on there.

Well I do feel the quality of content is good, but I would say that, but the main key to ranking on YouTube is the engagement metrics but people will only engage with good content, so that has to be the main part is getting the content right. Because of our industry, it's easy for me to roll out a bunch of tutorials on SEO. I was lucky that anyone who signed up to my FREE SEO course was asked to sign up to the YouTube channel and 40k people signed up for the free course and in that id guess a good 20k of them are subscribers now.

But tips to accelerate things would be, use paid ads on Facebook to get sign-ups, use micro workers to improve engagement such as how long your videos are viewed for, comments likes, and all of that stuff. A video watched in full with engagement will always rank better than one that gets watched for a few seconds.

But overall I have a big mailing list, a good organic social following so by the time I put content out it naturally gets a lot of views, but topping that up with paid ads and some micro-workers are really working well for me right now.

Q: Your releasing a link building course on your YouTube channel when is that out?

It's out on Monday the 22nd of June where I will upload a video per day and show people over a period of time all of the link building tricks I know, it will start very basic but each day it will get more advanced and ill keep going until i run out of tricks. So there will be a lot of value there and you can go away and do all of this stuff yourself so it will give a lot of value to the community.

Q: What’s next for Craig Campbell SEO?

I will just keep doing what I’m doing, I'm earning a living and enjoying how things are going for now so just a lot more of the same from me, keep looking for opportunities to learn and develop and keep making money online.

A huge thanks to Craig Campbell for answering my questions as honestly as he could if you want to follow Craig have a look at his website www.Craigcampbellseo.Com Or you can find him on YouTube.