Affiliate marketing involves affiliates promoting a brand's products and only getting paid a commission when a sale is made. It is a large industry worth billions. Affiliate networks help track affiliate activity and payments for most brands that do not have their own tracking technology. Using an affiliate agency can help when a campaign is large, traffic volumes are high, multiple networks or regions are involved, or optimization is needed. Proper communication, listening to affiliates, providing the right creative assets and data, and preventing duplicate payments are some tips for success. Affiliate marketing's goal should be reaching incremental sales through affiliates rather than cannibalizing own efforts.

1. Affiliate Marketing(making the money)

4. What the heck is affiliate marketing? Worth £38,000,000,000 in sales in the UK (Econsultancy) Performance based marketing activity Very close to the sales side of the business Affiliates only paid when they generate a sale/lead Affiliates payments only made when a threshold is reached. Not for everyone; B2B, for example.

5. Example: Titan Books

8. When do you need an agency When your campaign is large and complex enough When your volume of traffic is high Two or more networks Two or more regions When you want to coordinate your affiliate marketing with other marketing channels When you need to optimise the channel Quick case study: Cloggs saw affiliate conversion rate improve by x9.5 over 12 months by moving agencies

9. Problems to watch out for Affiliates misrepresenting your brand or products Think about the FSA, Unfair Trading Act and other regulations Delays on payments to affiliates Lead leakages Do you have your contact us phone number on your site? Cannibalisation of sales Why pay for anything you don’t have to?

10. 76% of affiliates think they are better digital marketers than the brands they work with. - Bigmouthmedia survey

11. Reach Marketing Affiliate marketing must avoid cannibalisation and must focus on incremental sales. Affiliates should bring those sales/leads you could not have reached through your own marketing efforts. Affiliates should save those sales/leads you would have lost otherwise. Loyalty and cashback sites have a key role to play here.

12. Reach Marketing

13. Top Tip One: Conversions You don’t need to pay your affiliates more in order to get more activity from them.

14. Top Tip Two: Communication The single most important thing the marketing manager and agency can do right/wrong Understand how affiliates communicate Understand what they need For example, Benefit from ruling the natural Google results by filling the first page of results with you and your affiliates

15. Top Tip Three - Listen Especially after a launch Twitter: “Learning about A4U and the #A4UExpo at @CIM_East”

16. Top Tip Four – Data and Creatives Banner sizes that work for bloggers Stable product feeds

17. Top Tip Five – De-Duplication Don’t pay twice – easier said than done Monday: Shopper clicks on your PPC ad for Product X Wednesday: Shopper researches Product X, reads an affiliate page and clicks through to your product page Friday: Shopper uses a brand search to return to your site and buys Product X. Is that a paid search or an affiliate sale?

18. Affiliate marketing tomorrow

19. andrew@bigmouthmedia.com http://slidesha.re/cim-aff Thanks!