Everything is set up for you, and you’re finally ready to promote offers… But wait!

How do you know which offer to run?

Here are some questions you to need to ask yourself before you begin pushing offers to your affiliate marketing campaign.

What vertical do you want to run in?

If you’re having trouble deciding on the vertical, try asking yourself these questions.

• Are you looking to make fast money or are you looking to make a steady income throughout the year?
• How much time do you have to invest to see returns?
• Are you following the current market trends?
• How much capital do you have to work with?

Some verticals are seasonal, while others can run steadily through the year. Example: Dating offers can be run all year long, while Nutra offers are more seasonal. Think of all the diet fads you’ve seen through the years. It’s excellent to run those trend offers while it’s the new hot thing, but it will not sustain its popularity through the years to come. It’s important to stay current with market trends.

Also, consider your budget. Pay Per Sale (PPS) offers require a larger budget than Cost Per Lead (CPL) offers. It’s helpful to have the answers to the questions above before choosing a vertical.

Seasonal offers= quick money.  

Yearlong offers require= time and energy

CPL= Less money

PPS= More money

Who is your target audience?

Once you’ve decided on the vertical, it’s time to understand your target audience. Are you targeting males? Females? Younger? Older? Do you have a specific geographic location you’re targeting?

What’s fun about affiliate marketing is you’ll quickly learn how your target audience can run within similar verticals. Dating can run with CAMS; finance can run with technology… you get the idea. You don’t have to be tied down to only one specific vertical, which opens the door to the endless possibility for money and growth.

Next, where are you getting your traffic?

We’re almost ready to choose an offer, but we still have one more question to answer. Where is your traffic coming from? Are you promoting offers through email marketing? Social media? Or do you prefer displaying banners?

Where your traffic comes from is an indicator on which offer to promote. Why? Let’s say you have social traffic, but you want to promote an email offer because you heard through different sources it’s performing well. Social and email are two different traffic sources, which means different flows and ultimately a different audience. The offer may not perform the same for you as it did for the email traffic.

That is where A/B testing comes into play.

What is A/B testing?

It means you’re taking offer A and offer B and split testing them against one another. For instance, you would take the offer mentioned above (top-performing offer for email) and test it against an offer more designed for social traffic, and whichever one outperforms the other stays in your marketing campaign.

What’s that old saying? “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Don’t just focus on testing one offer at a time it’s important to test multiple offers.

If all else fails, speak with your affiliate manager. Their job is to guide you and help you in deciding the best possible offer to run.

By: Lauren Van Sloten