Affiliate Marketing is not cheap advertising
As if you didn’t know it! But I thought it always helps to reiterate ‘quotable quotes’ like these from somebody like the President of LinkShare, Steve Denton. This article on InternetRetailer.com, that largely based its story on Shawn Collins’ Affstat 2006 Report, explores how affiliate marketing has become a mainstream marketing channel for online retailers, accounting for almost 30% of sales revenues generated for some companies. This figure seems consistent with the numbers from a recent study by Shop.org on how internet retailers approach marketing for the holiday shopping season.
The article once again highlights how important it is for effective and regular communication between an affiliate manager and an affiliate and how an affiliate really needs to be managed like a part of the merchant’s sales force (albeit, commission-only sales force). Affiliate managers are better off focusing on identifying, recruiting and retaining high quality affiliates than simply trying to build a team of large number of affiliates, not only because of the threat to the company’s brand due to unscrupulous affiliates but also due to the increased norms for accountability.
Many an affiliate program fails because the merchant doesn’t dedicate enough resources to this channel or hires the wrong kind of affiliates. As Denton is quoted saying in the article, “If you are looking at at it as cheap advertising, that’s what you’re going to get.”
