So lately most of my topics on this blog have been about affiliate marketing, and that’s not because I’m any kind of super affiliate but because affiliate marketing is just a fun topic. And a while back I posted about how affililates can turn the tables on the traffic lulls that occur in seasonal affiliate niches by expanding their programs and skills during these lulls, so during this seasons lull I decided to expand my affiliate marketing skills from a pure content strategy to the PPC strategy.
PPC Affiliate Marketing
I never really took PPC affiliate marketing too seriously, and the few times I tried it I simply pushed a boat load of traffic to a content page and watched my ROI take a nose dive. But lately I’ve taken a stronger interest in developing affiliate marketing strategies, it’s just something Internet marketers should understand, and I thought I’d try running a few PPC affiliate campaigns the proper way. The first thing I did was find the right products, and for me those products were items that were being discounted over the holiday shopping season because I thought the discounts could be presented as an extra buying incentive to the consumer. Then came major research to determine product competition and demand. And once I chose my products I created numerous versions of call-to-action landing pages, numerous versions for A/B testing. For me creating landing pages is the fun part because I get to pretend I’m a creative developer and nobody is around to tell me my creative sucks. Then of course once everything was uploaded online I created my PPC ads.
So after two consecutive fifteen hour days I had several thoroughly researched PPC affiliate campaigns of diverse niches across several networks and independent programs ready for launch.
Campaign Launch
So I launched this entire campaign the Friday before Thanksgiving. I had a decent CTR to my landing pages but my bounce rates at the landing pages were very high, so I spent most of my Friday optimizing the campaign. Late Friday night I still had no conversions but was feeling confident in my efforts.
Saturday morning I was extremely excited to see several conversions had happened overnight and I had an EPC of something like 700, I knew the EPC would drop to something more realistic but I also knew I had nailed this thing on my first try, and so I decided to take a break from it all and enjoy my weekend while the conversions roll in. I walked around all weekend with a warm fuzzy feeling inside because I knew I was onto something that was seriously profitable, and as all affiliate marketers do, while I was away from the computer all weekend, in my mind I was secretly planning how to scale my new PPC affiliate campaigns for greater profit.
Conversion Diversion
I logged in Monday morning with great anticipation and high expectations, but my mood soon changed to great disappointment. No conversions. I thought to myself, “self…don’t worry because you know from experience there are trends in the consumers’ buying habits and this is just that”. But the next day nothing, and nothing again. I was distracted from everything else in life, including Thanksgiving. It was conversion diversion. My affiliate campaign of 700 EPC was tanking and I couldn’t think of anything but optimizing this campaign to be profitable. “What happened? “Where did I go wrong? Stupid consumer wouldn’t know a good deal if it landed in his lap. These merchants are scrubbing.”
Then I read this post that Johnathon Volk wrote about traffic slowing on holidays and I came to my senses. Shopping trends are just that…trends. Depending on the industry consumers buying habits rise and fall on certain days of week, seasons, and holidays. I already knew this and as a search marketer with a strong focus on ROI and margins, I always placed more focus on my campaigns during certain periods. That’s why we use scheduling and day parting. So now that I realize these trends affect affiliates too I intend to enjoy my holiday rather than worry about conversions or anything else affiliate.
While there is no real moral to this post except that you can always expect to see buying trends on your affiliate campaigns and it may take months or even a year to spot those trends, so don’t panic, but instead enjoy your holiday.
Zapsky.com: Holiday Trends – Slow Traffic – Negative Impact on Affiliate Marketers
