Affiliate marketing is one of the most rewarding niches in digital marketing because it allows businesses to scale their sales through partnerships. However, a lot of marketers struggle with traffic management. Putting off effective traffic management can burn a budget, decrease ROI, and even offer other potential opportunities. But, if you know what the obstacles are and how to solve them, then affiliate marketing becomes a lot easier.
The Struggle With Old Systems
A large part of affiliate marketers use outdated systems or old tools which makes it very difficult to manage campaigns. They also lack critical components like real-time data processing and automation which is really needed in today’s world.
Marketers are reluctant to use new tools because they feel as though the cost of upgrading is too high. Others find it simply easier to use inadequate systems, while a few do not understand how their tools hinder the performance of the campaign.
Consequences of Outdated Tools
Time-consuming, labor-intensive, and error-prone tasks like allocation of traffic and management of leads can result from outdated tools.
Other campaigns experience slower completion of tasks with minimal opportunities to scale up.
Example
Picture an old tool where real time bid adjustment is impossible. Your competitors have modern systems which allow them to reallocate means to budget their more efficient ad systems. They will be able to outrank you and simply remove the optimization opportunities, while you suffer.
How to Go About it
- Evaluate Your Existing Tools and Their Shortcomings: Create a list of all your traffic management activities and the tools you use and what you feel are their constraints.
- Switch to Newer Systems: Purchase systems and processes that have self service, automated reporting, and are scalable. Such as, systems that have an API integration for enhanced workflows.
- Notice This: Companies such as Adidas incurred a shift in referral management by migrating to newer affiliate platforms like Impact or Partnerize, which allows automation and advanced analytics, increasing output and efficiency of campaign management.
Fighting With Fragmentation Issues
As an affiliate marketer, it is almost a norm to use multiple applications for campaign tracking, lead management, and performance evaluation. Unfortunately, these tools do not interface with each other, leading to information gaps and poor productivity.
Why Does It Happen Fragmentation?
People use a variety of tools for different problems without consideration as to how they work together. This just leads to:
- Unproductive time spent wasting different sources of information to extract data.
- Unreliable information owing to the varying data from different softwares.
What Is The Effect of Fragmentation?
Consolidating the data manually takes up a significant amount of time and is very prone to mistakes.
Slow data insights keeps marketers from acting rapidly to make decisions.
Example
A marketer puts together separate tools for tracking like Google Analytics, campaign management with Everflow and CRM with HubSpot. Since these technologies have no direct connection, there are bound to be inconsistencies. For example, if there are variances between how campaigns are tracked in the CRM and how they are monitored in the tracking gadget, it will be crucial to determine what campaigns are responsible for converting the leads.
Steps In Order To Solve It
- Combine The Applications: Go for platforms that provide multiple features including tracking, analysis, and campaign management. For example, Tune is a comprehensive affiliate marketing application that does everything.
- Apply Integration Features: If combining tools is not possible, systems like Zapier or Make can connect various applications, allowing for efficient data flow.
- Example: Initially, Airbnb employed a variety of disjointed tools, but over time, they started using an integrated platform which helped in centralizing analytics and achieving data consistency across different marketing channels.
Hypernet offers a solution to this problem because it combines traffic monitoring, client card, and analytic reporting in one interface. Additionally, users can integrate with other systems through API without any disruptions. Marketers eliminate the need for manual data merging, while gaining enhanced reporting and faster workflows for actionable decisions.
Lack of Automation
When it comes to affiliate marketing, automation is very important because it aids in performing tasks like traffic distribution, lead selection, and performance monitoring. If automation is not utilized, marketers will spend too much manual effort which is not scalable and campaign effective.
Effect on Campaigns with Manual Processes
- Slow execution of multi-step processes.
- Failure to capitalize on allocating traffic in real time.
- Inability to scale campaigns.
Example
A performance marketer does a manual bid adjustment for his affiliate traffic sources. In the meantime while they are adjusting their bids, competitors with automated systems are already adjusting their campaigns which puts them ahead in the competition.
Steps to Introduce Automation
- Take Baby Steps: Focus on the areas where the most time is wasted, like reporting or traffic management.
- Use Systems with Built-In Automation: Automated traffic distribution and fraud detection are available with Voluum.
- Case Example: Amazon has a sophisticated high-level automation tool for its vast affiliate program which helps to ensure that traffic is sent and directed to the converting products.
Tools like FunnelFlux have empowered marketers to control how they distribute traffic based on the behavior of visitors and so improve conversion rates.
The Problem With Not Reporting On Time
Inaccurate reporting means nothing when the business requires an update on frauds playing around in the campaign, or fully functioning ones that are not e performaning . Any gap in the reports makes it extremely difficult for marketers’ to efficiently utilize the campaign.
What Leads To This
The online tools available to most marketers do not in any way serve their purpose because there is absolutely no real-time analytics available. Fragmented tools cause the combination of data from multiple tools at one time to be massively late thus so do their insights.
Effects of Late Reporting
A marketer will never be able to gain the edge on campaigns that are time sensitive and in turn utilize them successfully.
Take for an example a marketer that is managing a Black Friday campaign that has a source that produces a lot of traffic. In the absence of effective reporting, they’re only able to see this other issue after the campaign is through, leading to major losses.
How To Fix This
Some of the tools operated by the firm, such Coca-Cola, who uses tableau, Hypernet, or even create RAT, do enable up to the second reporting, thus enabling the user to change parameters of their campaigns while they’re active allowing for improvement.
The Problem Of Fraud Traffic
Affiliate marketing has a single persistent problem – fake traffic like bots clicks and low-quality leads. This problem, as is clear, only complicates budgets and campaign performances, making analytics inaccurate.
Various Types Of Fraud Provider Traffic
- Bot Clicks: Clicks that add no value but inflate metrics.
- Click Farms: People whom, for money, simulate fake clicks and leads to alter the results of the campaigns.
Effect On The World
Wasted money on ads results in lower ROI from the fake traffic.
Advertisers are building strained business relationships due to expectations of higher quality leads than delivered.
Fraud Prevention Measures
- Advanced Tools: Tools like Adjust and Traffic Guard are great for detection of advanced fraud and provide strong defences.
- Traffic Audits: Keeping checks on traffic sources and continuously monitoring for any suspicious activities.
- Example: In a study, a specific e-commerce company uncovered a publisher with claims of targeting ads but was found to be providing bot traffic of 40%. This helped the company save great sums that would have otherwise been wasted on ads.
Conclusion
Ignoring these challenges can negatively impact campaign success and ROI but modern solutions can solve these issues. These solutions can include system consolidation, protection against fraud, automating repetitive processes, and real-time updates. Such techniques can greatly help affiliate marketers transform these obstacles into benefits.
The likes of Adidas, Amazon, and Coca Cola have overcome such challenges by investing in advanced technologies and streamlined processes. Platforms, such as Hypernet, provide an all in one solution that combines automation, analytics, and fraud protection in a single interface. Request a demo today to see how these tools can transform your affiliate marketing efforts.
