Affiliate Marketing Teams need distinctive skills to grow campaigns effectively. This article lists the vital skills every online marketing team must have.
Over the past few years, we have evaluated over thousands of businesses and worked with some of the finest affiliate marketing teams in the world. Our analysis has found a pattern of how such teams are put together and how the variety of skill sets become one of the most critical aspects of business.
Today, I am going to list down ten most important skills every Affiliate Marketing Team should have:
#1. Web Designing & Development: The designated people in the Affiliate Marketing Team who design the marketing campaigns, must be able to create visuals that sell and represent the brand at the same time.
Generally the Web Development tasks are outsourced in many businesses however; even in those scenarios, the team member who manages the outsourced design tasks, must be capable of judging the quality of the design and should have a general overview of what you are looking for.
#2. Search Engine Optimization: SEO is widely believed to support only paid searches, particularly when it comes to search engines like Google. Being familiar with SEO helps your team to strategically insert relevant keywords on certain website pages.
The price of a paid search is commonly influenced by the factor known as the Quality Score; the higher the score is, the cheaper the ad will be.
It is purely dependent on the keywords how relevant the ad is for any search query that people will type in and the page of the website people land on. A nicely done SEO results in cheaper ads.
#3. Analyzing Data Effectively: To know your customers deeply and scale up quick campaigns; it is important for your team to:
- Track what websites people visited before coming to your website
- Understand how they behave once they land on your website
Whether your team knows how to use Advanced Google Analytics or can retrieve data using some other third party tools; Data Analysis is always required to measure performance and optimize campaigns.
#4. Programming: If your business is operating from multiple physical locations and through ecommerce; a minimum of basic programming skills is essential for your team.
Consider the situation when you need a programmer to automatically insert the name of the closest city on some landing page and all you have is the IP address of the website visitor.
On the other hand, if your landing pages load faster, the conversion rate automatically goes up. While some ads are better in leading to conversions than others, the landing page is what actually converts at the end.
#5. Social Media Management: It is quintessential for your teams to integrate the organic presence of your brand with paid campaigns. Potential customers might visit Facebook pages, Twitter profiles and other social media pages before they are likely to make a purchasing decision.
#6. Familiarity with Google AdWords and Bing: Paid search is top priority for many businesses which serve the existing demands in the market. Serving demand in real-time is the base of digital marketing and a must know for affiliate marketers.
People actively searching for a product or service, are still much more likely to purchase than others who are passively exposed to an ad.
#7. Competent Project Management: The recent study reveals that the size of online marketing teams has significantly increased in last 5 years. You can often see a team of over 100 people working on an account or campaigns for one single platform.
Online Marketers possessing a lot of experience in campaign creation, will surely have one more way to take their career to the next step by keeping those large and specialized teams on track.
#8. Knowing the many facets of Content Marketing: You must have heard the phrase “Content is King”. In past few years, content marketers were often confused with professional copy writers.
Today, Content marketing involves much more than just writing; say for example, it also includes Infomercials, Infographics, Podcasts and Videos.
In addition to all that, content marketers are also expected to be familiar with the best practices to distribute the content which means your team must also touch upon the field of online PR.
#9. Visionary: Whether it is a small businesses or one of the largest advertising platforms like Bing Ads; everything your marketing team should do, has to fit into the bigger picture of your company.
If your team members can see beyond short term goals and understand long term repercussions of affiliate marketing activities; they can help in your decisions about scaling the business.
#10. Pro-activeness: And finally, your team should be able to carry out experiments with ad strategies, develop fresh and innovative ideas, jump on trends and explore new sales funnels.
Most advertising platforms boost traffic during beta phases and after the launch of new tools. If your team stays on top of updates, you get the first mover advantage as soon as those tools become available.
The Bottom Line:
Whether you are working towards a goal of generating leads, making sale conversions or increasing brand awareness; the key objective of any Affiliate Marketing Team is to significantly scale up results. With the above skill sets, your team can help you beat your competitors instantly.
