Marketing Priorities: Does Affiliate Marketing Come First?

[akorff]

If I'm launching a new business/product, should I focus on affiliate marketing immediately? Of course, there will be a buffer period of a few weeks while we work out any immediate infrastructure issues, but once we have things running relatively smooth (and I know it will never be fully smooth) and we can actually come up for air and decide where to put our marketing resources and time, how soon should we start on affiliate marketing?

The reason I ask is that it just seems like a Catch-22. No matter how great our product is, I don't feel we can attract much affiliate interest if we are an unknown, but, of course, affiliate marketing will help us shed that "unknown" status.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi akorff,

This is my strong recommendation. Infrastructure issues aside, you don't know how well your site will convert until you get a lot of targeted traffic to it. And you should not start an affiliate program until you do conversion testing and optimization. This thread has more detailed info.

http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5...t-affiliate-program-til-you-do.html#post35441

 

[akorff]

Thanks Linda, cool article. Actually that was more or less my game plan. Step 1 was to see what type of conversions we can get on own own, plus I wanted to see what our retention rates are (because it's a monthly service).

I admit I probably won't fill out the affiliate paperwork and pay myself, but psychologically I can see where that would be a good idea.

Thanks, once again, Linda for your stellar advice.

-Aaron

 

[Linda Buquet]

You're welcome Aaron

 

[WeWatch]

Timing is everything

Linda,

Your information couldn't have arrived at a more opportune time. We are ready to roll-out a new service and the entire time we have been focused on getting some top name affiliates to market it for us.

Your examples and details are awesome!

You may have saved us from total disaster.

Thank you.

As we build out our list and start our PPC campaign, would it be beneficial to the forum here to provide all the details of our efforts? Almost like Twitter but I would provide all details, what we write, what we modified, what works, what didn't (maybe more importantly) and our success along the way.

You let me know and I'd be more than happy to provide the details as we are just starting our marketing after months and months of product development.

Thank you again.

 

[akorff]

Personally, I would love to see that, especially since I'll be travelling similar roads at the same time.

I can't promise that I will also post all the details here, but I will post a lot of the details to my blog.

-Aaron

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi WeWatch,

Welcome to 5 Star. Thanks for offering to do that. There are lots of issues I need to consider that you aren't aware of, so I need to think about it. But again, thanks for offering.