Hello all,

We have been talking (sorry for the silence for months) about Online Marketing effectiveness and how Marketing Strategies are accountable and measurable. Let us go a bit into detail and describe a structure of Affiliate Marketing Plan.

We know that loads of online businesses are using Affiliate Marketing and it is the major marketing tool for business success.

So as a big supporter and believer in making things simple and structured, here goes my proposal of how Affiliate Marketing Plan may look like (by the time of writing I am working for an online gambling business, so it can surely affect some details).

Ok, we apply the model of Marketing Strategy and Plan, proposed by Chartered Institute of Marketing and go particularly for an Affiliate part of it.
We assume we are talking about one product (either poker, or casino, or sportsbook) and one country (we would need to make further adjustments and modify the Plan from country to country).

The main criteria to bear in mind when you fill this in is to make sure it is timed, realistic and achievable and, what's the most important, measurable in terms of linking to the business needs.

1. Current Situation - Research:
- competitors;
- existing affiliates;
- trends on the market;
- fill in the Boston matrix to determine where to go;
- set up the current grounds for Affiliate Programme, including key selling points.
All this should give an idea what are the opportunities.

2. Defining - Goals:
We need to define the SMART Goals that reflect the business needs:
- sales - Player Acquisition?
- revenues - Revenues from Player Quality?
- traffic - Increased Brand Awareness.
Make it measurable!

3. Marketing Strategy
We use the opportunities defined in step 1 to develop strategies to achieve the goals defined in step 2:
- bold strategic points to be developed;
- describe the targeting;
- describe the positioning and branding.
We bear in mind that we can use in-house technologies and affiliate networks (Income Access, eGaming-Profit, DGM-UK, etc) for Acquisition and Retention parts of teh Strategy.

4. Marketing Mix
There are many issues to consider whilst designing a proper Marketing Plan using a standard mix and they are as follows:

Product
- Technology
- Support
- Promotional package
- Affiliate staff (experiences and customer-centric managers)
- Fraud management
- Terms and Conditions / Restrictions

Promotion
- Cold leads
- SEM
- Organic traffic, SEO
- PR
- Social Media
- Conferences
- Affiliate forum
- Affiliate blog
- Affiliate Programme sales presentation
- Tools (Syntryx, HitPath)
- Internal communication with Affiliates (e-mailings)
- Promotions to motivate Affiliates

Price
- Affiliate compensation: decide on the plan - CPA, Revenue Share, Hybrid, etc

Place
- Set-up
- Optimize lead funnel (landing pages)

5. Resources and Budget - a good idea to start with a 1 year operational plan?!

6. Measurement
ROI - isn't it what we are all striving for?

The plan is optimally short and descriptive and proven to structure all the affiliate marketing efforts and leave some time for creativity and innovations for a skilled marketer.

Please should you have any comments and suggestions do not hesitate!

e-Mail me NOW or use the Comment feature below please