How affiliate marketers can improve their cost per acquisition

Thanks to technology, businesses now have a wide array of data at their disposal. With that data, affiliate marketers can now measure not only page views and clicks, but conversions, which is when a customer performs an action such as a purchase, subscription or download. The connection between the amount of conversions and the resources it takes to launch and run an advertising campaign is a quantifiable figure known as the “cost per acquisition” metric.

This article focuses on how affiliate marketers can more efficiently deliver new customers, and gives strategies to improve their cost per acquisition:

Build outstanding landing pages and test, test, test

If a business is suffering from low conversion rates, it could mean that the landing pages need some optimization. 

Building landing pages is a science of its own, and the usual divide between the marketing and the design team certainly doesn’t help. This is why it’s important to constantly try new designs, review results, and continually make changes until your conversion rates are at their most effective.  

Here are a few things to keep in mind when optimizing landing pages:

• Make sure the forms and calls to action stand out from the rest of the page
• Don’t ask too many questions or have too many fields in the forms
• Don’t overload the page with creatives
• Keep the word count low, and focus on your benefits

Narrow down customer segments

Truly understanding the visitors that frequent your site, especially the ones that convert, is the first step towards developing effective browsing experiences that generate revenue. 

Regardless of the business vertical, geography, or age group, the marketing team should prioritize developing the ability to target its ideal customers as laser-like as possible. The more detailed the understanding of the target audience, the more specific digital ads and content can be. The more detailed the content, the more relevant the message is to the ideal customer. The targeting of the right audience can then be refined further by flagging and removing fake conversions that skew marketing traffic data. 

By removing fake conversions, the marketing team can then focus on uncovering real buyer patterns to better further develop digital campaigns and efficiently use the budget to target real audiences and effectively increase conversions. 

Customizable and dynamic landing pages

After identifying your most important marketing segments, the next step is to establish personalized customer experiences with dynamic or tailor-made content. This means creating customized landing pages, website content, copy, and creatives that speak directly to the potential customer. Some examples would be:

• First time visitors: welcome them to the website, offer a discount code, and suggest products or content to review and educate.
• Returning visitors:  remind returning visitors of their previous browsing history, offer new suggestions for further education or show off most recent developments.
• Geolocation: this is when marketers use a visitor’s IP address to suggest products, offers or actions based on their geolocation. These could also be landing pages using a specific language, currency or limited time holiday offers depending on the calendar year.
• Source-Dependent: this is when visitors arrive to the site through a friend referral, using a specific device (such as a new iPhone), through a social media platform or specific affiliate site. Recognizing the visitors’ source and tailoring landing pages accordingly is important to influence what could trigger the conversion

Monitor buyer patterns

By knowing exactly when, where, and how most conversions take place, marketing teams can focus their efforts on the right buyer segments, at the right time, via the right sources. Analyzing historical data allows marketers to uncover crucial buyer patterns.

These patterns can change over time, and can unfortunately also be heavily skewed by fraudulent conversions. However, removing fake conversions and blocking their sources, allows marketers to work with clean data and predict buyer patterns accurately — which in turns allows the team to expertly tailor digital ads or content that trigger conversions.

How does an anti-fraud solution fit into the strategy?

Affiliate marketing increases the scale, reach, and engagement of any marketing campaign, ultimately boosting conversion rates and, in turn, lowering the cost per acquisition. But with all opportunity, there comes a risk, in this case the risk translates into a recurring financial loss due to the various ways in which sophisticated fraud sneaks into your funnels.    

No matter where your organization is in its affiliate marketing journey, there is always room for improvement with laser-focused ads and content, as well as powerful traffic analysis tools. To see just how much solutions like Opticks can boost your performance and protect your digital marketing budget, contact us.

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