Ignore the Longtail at your Peril

Following on from Chris Frost’s recent blog post discussing advertisers removing affiliates from their campaigns, Client Strategist at Affiliate Window, Matt Swan, looks at how ignoring longtail affiliates could be a risky strategy.

Why ignoring your longtail affiliates could be a risky strategy
An increasingly common question posed by advertisers running affiliate campaigns is what value having hundreds, or even thousands, of dormant affiliates on their programme offers.

It’s a topic that has become increasingly relevant with a number of merchants removing inactive affiliates from their campaigns.

While there are a number of reasons for working with a smaller number of partners such as to ensure brand protection, there is a great deal of value that can also be derived by developing the longtail.

A key objective for driving incremental growth for an affiliate campaign should be development of as wide an affiliate base as possible. While top performing affiliates are able to deliver significant sales volume, the Holy Grail is ensuring an affiliate programme offers both breadth and depth of coverage.

Also advertisers shouldn’t necessarily be completely focused on volume, it’s also about the value different affiliates add. The best fit and most professional sites that would reflect best for an advertiser brand may fall well outside their top ten affiliate list.

By growing the longtail, the natural focus on a programme’s top ten affiliates is reduced and advertisers can look beyond incentivised traffic to the wealth of promotional methods available to them.

A typical affiliate campaign will be made up of the top performing affiliates and then a larger base of affiliates who are able to deliver a handful of sales each month. Individually these affiliates do not count for a significant proportion of sales, but combined they could collectively be classed as a top performing affiliate.

Whilst discussion has been dominated over the past couple of years by incentivised traffic there has been a significant growth in longtail affiliates. It is probably inevitable so much focus has been on cashback and voucher code traffic because these affiliates have taken affiliate marketing mainstream, giving context to advertisers about who their affiliates really are.

The affiliate landscape has changed significantly over the past few years. There has been a shift in the promotional type of affiliates since the inception of affiliate marketing (How promotional methods have changed). These changes have been brought about by advances in technology, more sophisticated browser behaviour as well as the consequences of the economic downturn. Additionally the way users interact with the internet has changed over time, impacting on a typical purchasing cycle.

In the past, affiliates have needed deep pockets to carry out an extensive PPC campaign to drive traffic or have needed the technical expertise to develop sites and integrate product feeds. Advances in technologies have made the affiliate channel more accessible. It is now easier for new affiliates to enter the channel with the development of third party applications that allow for longtail affiliates to monetise their sites effectively without having to develop the tools themselves.

With so many products to promote, it is possible for affiliates to focus on a particular niche and add value by creating sites with unique content and product reviews. By cultivating affiliates such as these, affiliate managers are able to increase the productivity of the longtail.

An interesting sector to look at regarding longtail growth is the mobile sector. The reliance on the top ten affiliates has decreased considerably over the past four years. It is also a sector where a number of new tools are available to affiliates.

Top ten as indicated by the blue column, the longtail by the red, traced annually from 2007 (first set of data) to 2010.

In 2007 the top 10 affiliates across the mobile campaigns run by Digital Window were contributing around 65% of all sales. This has decreased gradually year on year. Last year, the longtail outperformed the Top 10 affiliates slightly, accounting for just over half of the sales.
As these figures show, advertisers who don’t invest in growing the longtail could be missing out on fantastic opportunities to add true incremental growth to their campaigns. It is important the longtail of any campaign is embraced – today’s longtail affiliate could be one of tomorrow’s top ten affiliates.

Matt Swan
Client Strategist

This entry was posted by Lisa on Wednesday, February 9th, 2011 at 11:31 am and is filed under AWin Advice, Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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