The world of igaming affiliation has become much more crowded and competitive, meaning that finding the right places to focus your efforts has become more important than ever. Corey Padveen gives his perspective on the most important strategies to reach the right customers.
Affiliate marketing has become a crowded space. As the market for online casinos, poker, bingo, slots and sports betting has expanded, so too have the affiliates operating in the space in an effort to build a business around driving traffic.
Today, getting started as an affiliate means more than just running ads and sending emails to acquired lists. Now, building your reach and engagement with content holds the key. But where should you be putting your focus, and what are some of the strategies you need to keep top of mind in order to succeed as an affiliate?
Value-adding content
The first and most overarching component that needs to remain in your sights is the creation of value-adding content. Sharing links and bonuses might have been enough when enriched content wasn’t as prevalent an element on the internet, but today it simply will not cut it. You need to think about how your content will provide some sort of benefit to your audience. Some of the most successful affiliates operate as review sites or provide betting tips. Others find success in operating as news networks or opinion factories.
Whatever you choose to share, you need to think about it in terms of intrinsic value. The bonuses and affiliate deals should come second to building audience loyalty through content.
Engage directly on social
It might sound overly simplistic, but one of the best ways to start increasing your engagement as an affiliate is by directly engaging. While creating and sharing content is key, engagement should be considered an equal partner to those efforts. Engagement is the easiest way to build a rapport.
And while you won’t necessarily be able to engage with every member of your audience as you grow, the fact that you are making the effort and providing a personal extension of your content to the human side will not go unnoticed.
Build reach with video
Video content is not only significantly more engaging than other media types, it is also largely prioritised in feeds across a variety of channels. Over the past few years, the spotlight has shifted from written content to graphics and now to video, both in short and long formats.
Naturally, the immediacy and ease of engagement with short-form video like that found on TikTok can be useful in building your audience, but as it grows, long-form will closely tie in to the value that you create for the audience that follows you along. That is why a key to the overall content strategy you implement needs to be thinking holistically. Everything needs to be intertwined in order to serve outsiders, new visitors and loyal patrons. Video clips and subscriber content are an excellent way to appeal to all three demographics.
Keep promotional content subtle
If your expectation is that flooding your fans’ feeds and inboxes with promotional content will yield better results – a sort of ‘quantity over quality’ approach – you’ll be left sorely disappointed and will soon find both your audience size and engagement rates plummet. Promotional content certainly has a time and place, but when it comes to affiliates, it is surely not in short supply.
Think first about how your promotional content can tie in to the value-adding content you are creating, then build out from there. The promotions themselves should meld seamlessly with whatever thesis initially attracts the audience you are trying to engage. You might be surprised to find that in doing so, you build loyalty and trust and see your conversions increase without a need to dramatically increase your acquisition costs – but that’s not to say there won’t be acquisition costs.
Be willing to spend
As the level of noise across media channels has increased, so too has the necessity to pay your way into the conversation. I’m not suggesting that organic content has no hope; it does and it can be your greatest asset. But a willingness to invest in your growth by promoting the content that you feel will resonate best with your target audience can help accelerate the process.
As your audience grows, so too should your understanding of its members. Take the time to analyse your audience’s tastes and preferences, and invest in promoting the content that most appeals to them and similar prospects.
If it were easy to find success as an affiliate, everyone would be doing it. The process of creating valuable content as well as cultivating and nurturing a growing audience takes time and attention. But if your goal is to build your affiliate business, these are steps that you need to consider at every turn. It will not be long before you see the fruits of these labours.