Affiliate Tips: Make the Most of Your Digital Marketing Channels
28-08-2017
In order to build a solid digital marketing strategy, you have to evaluate your current marketing channels. If you’ve already done your research on your target audience and identified your overarching goals as a digital marketer, it’s time that you reevaluate your current marketing channels to see what’s working and what’s not. As with any other industry, being lean and focused is better than being spread too thin. If you’re looking to step up your game as an Affiliate, start by analysing the following channels:
Affiliate Marketing Channel #1: Owned Media
The first digital marketing vehicle we will discuss is owned media. Owned media refers to the online assets that you own, including but not limited to your websites (landing pages included), social channels, blog posts, images, hosting sites, and any other form of media that you have full control over. Even if you’ve posted on Medium or another third-party site, that content would still count as owned media.
Consider all of the digital assets that you own and how well they have been performing; or, rather, how well you have been able to keep up with all of them. Sometimes, the most difficult aspect of Affiliate Marketing is creating enough content to satisfy all of your digital channels. As you might know, SEO is an ongoing marketing strategy that requires constant upkeep. We will take a wild guess that much of your owned online platforms have been optimised for SEO, so altogether, it must take an incredible amount of time. The most practical and effective step for you to take is to analyse the amount of time you pour into each channel and the ROI that you received from each one. If a particular marketing channel isn’t pulling in as much return as you initially thought, re-allocate that time towards a different channel instead. The merit of owned media is that it’s yours to test, so feel free to make the appropriate optimisations to reach your overarching goals.
Affiliate Marketing Channel #2: Earned Media
The next type of media is called earned media, which includes backlinks, word-of-mouth recommendations, social referrals, guest posts, PR, and any other type of exposure that you’ve earned. Earned media counts toward your overall credibility as a brand because it’s essentially a form of review on your services. If more people share your content on their platforms, Google might rank your website higher and more consumers will be attracted to what you have to offer.
The goal should always be to gain more earned media. Although this form of media is more difficult to obtain because it is almost completely out of your control, you can take the appropriate steps to invite more visitors and influencers to share and recommend your product. One straightforward way is to simply pitch your content. Start by writing an extremely helpful article on your industry subject. Next, pitch it to authority blogs and other legitimate sources for the chance to get featured on their website/social platforms. Whether or not you enjoy pitching your content, it is absolutely necessary in the process of increasing your earned media. Who knows? You might receive the traffic breakthrough that you’ve always dreamt of just because of one important backlink!
Affiliate Marketing Channel #3: Paid Media
Finally, we will briefly discuss paid media. As the name suggests, paid media is any and all exposure that you have to pay for. This includes offline as well as online media, such as billboards, display ads, Google AdWords, paid social recommendations, native advertising, and more.
We recommend that you look into paid media because it can potentially be quite profitable, if you know where to advertise. The trick with paid ads, however, is that you have to be extremely careful when determining which platform allows for which types of ads. Google AdWords, for example, has banned paid search ads for certain industries. Facebook and Instagram has announced the same thing.
Once you’ve evaluated these different media streams and rated them according to their effectiveness and your current time management abilities, you will have a much more effective lead generation experience. To get more insights from your different marketing channels, use T DOT UK’s lead tracking and analytics. Sign up to become an Affiliate today for the full look on our helpful platform!
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