These are the top 10 traits of successful performance-based affiliate marketing teams.
Trait #1: Be Crystal Clear On Your Desired Business Outcome
Is your goal stable and calculated growth or fast profit? Here are questions to consider:
- How many Leads or Sales do you want to generate per day/month/quarter?
- What revenue or profit targets do you have, each day? each month?
- What type of business are you wanting to build?
- Have you clearly defined your unit economics?
- How quickly can you break even with operating expenses?
Trait #2: Be Competitively Aware of Your Competitive Landscape
Are you willing to take highly calculated risks and can carve your own path in your own niche? Can you learn fast and pivot quickly in your targeted industry? Here are questions to consider:
- Do you know the names of your top 10 competitors?
- Have you closely assess their strengths, weaknesses, methods, and practices?
- Are you regularly monitoring them to understand their every strategic and operational move?
Trait #3: Track All Conversions and Data Diligently
Are you tracking basic conversion metrics and full funnel metrics? Here are questions to consider:
- Are you tracking all micro and macro conversions?
- Are you feeding all conversions back to your ad account or tracker?
- Are you reporting on conversions and staying on top of funnel performance?
- Do you have dedicated personnel to help with routine tasks?
Trait #4: Establish a Strong Operational Foundation
Do you have the necessary operational teams and processes to support sales and revenue growth? Consider these questions.
- Do you have systems and standard operating procedures in place that eliminate chaos and randomness from your operation?
- Does your backend support scaling?
- Do you have sufficient capacity to drive huge traffic volumes?
- Do you need to outsource task or routine based operations?
Trait #5: Maintain ROI & Profit Focus
Are you profit or revenue driven?
- Are you constantly monitoring your gross and profit margins?
- Are you aware of your least profitable campaigns?
- Are you focusing your efforts and energy on positive ROI campaigns?
- Are you giving your experiments sufficient time and resources to draw a conclusion?
- Did you allow time for the algorithm to optimize and hit your targeted CPA?
Trait #6: Double Down on Your Winners
Are you turning losing into winning campaigns? Are you scaling your winning campaigns?
- Did you clearly identifying and scaling your winning campaigns?
- Are you maximizing the total available ad spend?
- Are you channeling your resources into profitable and growth based campaigns?
Trait #7: Become a Deep Specialist In Your Niche or Geo
Are you a jack-of-all-trades or a king-of-one in your niche? Double down on your niche and dominate the competition.
- Do you know more about your niche/geo than the rest of your industry?
- Would you benefit more from being a specialist in your field or a generalist?
- Could you negotiate higher payouts and offers?
- What would it take for you to become the top 3 in your field?
Trait #8: Expand Into New Geographies or Markets, Carefully
Study local competitors and adapt creatives, copy and landing pages to new markets. Translate campaigns to other languages and scale quickly into new territories.
- Why do you want to expand into new markets?
- Have you fully exhausted the revenue and profit potential in your local market?
- Are you aware of the barriers and differences in new territories and markets?
- Are you equipped with the infrastructure to handle new geos?
Trait #9: Master A Specific Campaign Type For Your Traffic Source
Stay active and profitable on each type of campaign launched. Specialize in a primary type of campaign.
- Have you spent hundreds of hours mastering a campaign type?
- Which campaign type is best for your niche?
- Which campaign type have you spent the most amount of time on and understand better than your competitors?
Trait #10: Build for Sustainability & Long Term
Are you looking for a quick buck or a quick million bucks? Be prepared for the long-term and yield consistent cash generating campaigns.
- Do you have back up plans in place for downtime or unexpected events?
- Do you have systems in place for early-detection of faults and issues?
- Are you building an asset or operation that can be handed off to an operator?
Whatever you dream of, you can build, with the right people, team, and structure. Set your goals high and you can build a successful and sustainable performance marketing media buying team for search arbitrage and feed monetization!