Guest Blog - Sanjit Atwal from Digital Animal: Scaled Digital Strategy Is Inherently Product (and User) Led

As we get closer to the adoption of web 3.0 you will start to see more use of the term ‘Big Data’. Like all de-jour terms ‘Big Data’ will mean different things to different people but, for the purposes of this article, we will focus specifically on e-commerce trends and the problems facing mature advertisers looking to grow their online business.

Anyone with experience of the affiliate market from an advertiser/agency/network-side will be have their own ideas on how to get more sales through the channel. Having worked on over 50 affiliate programmes myself I know that anywhere from 50-90% of the sales will be coming from around 20 or so partners. All great news if you’re hitting your targets. But what happens when your growth starts to slow? And it will slow. It’s as inevitable as Google updating their algorithm or eating too much over Christmas. Be it because of seasonality or consumer trends or just low traffic, online sales through affiliate do at some point plateau. So, where then do you go then to achieve the CEO’s 25% year on year growth targets without making half your staff redundant...? Assuming you like the guys you’ve hired, there are three other options:

• Work to grow the existing sales you are getting from the top 20 (or so..) partners
• Look to grow the other hundred (or so...) partners on the programme (otherwise known as the long-tail)
• Recruit new partners onto the programme

Of course, any affiliate marketing professional can tell you that all of the above avenues should be engaged. However, each has its own pro’s and con’s.

At Digital Animal we have been working to solve this problem whilst addressing the core issue at hand - users are the ones that make up the sales numbers...not affiliates. And users aren’t buying a brand. They are buying products that they need in their lives for whatever reason.

Digital Animal technology offers users the opportunity to recommend a product to a friend through 335 different types of social media and to be rewarded for the action (be it a sale, lead, click or sign-up). Essentially this means we are allowing brands to build a new eco-system of ‘micro-affiliates’.

Why does this work? Well, users are 90% more likely to purchase a product online if it has been recommended to them by a friend (Econsultancy Internet Compendium 2009). And it is working...from each friend recommendation, we are seeing eleven new users returning to the advertiser’s site.

By using product data feeds to feature the product information and drive user recommendations through shared online relationships, advertisers can now extend their virtual sales teams beyond traditional publishing sites to the end-users themselves.

Pretty much all innovative performance strategies I have seen over the last 12 months have been feed-driven. It’s a fundamental growth strategy and essential to scaling your digital strategy through many channels.

It is unfortunate then, that still so many advertisers have feeds that fall below the necessary quality or, as I have seen with more than one world-renowned brand, no feed at all. It’s like doing the weekly shop without a trolly. You’ll be able to walk away with a few items...but you could have had the whole isle. I’ll tell you what. You keep your feed up-to-date and I’ll stop using the term ‘de-jour’ in my articles...

About the author:

Sanjit is Managing Partner at investment accelerator Combusta, Commercial Director at Digital Animal, Founder of Social Media consultancy Eagle5Fox7 and a lecturer for the Digital Marketing Institute.

Originally from a creative background, Sanjit has worked across film, press, magazines, radio, local government, digital, mobile and social media in a variety of commercial and strategic senior leadership positions. Having created and managed digital strategy for some of the biggest name advertisers in the world, Sanjit has a wealth of experience in monetization techniques and user trends. A self-confessed technology and social media junky, Sanjit is passionate about creating and advising the most cutting edge of start-up projects. Clients Sanjit has worked with include: Dell, British Gas, lastminute.com, Apple, RBS, Nike, Expedia, Hotels.com, Mothercare, Kelkoo, eBookers, Thomas Cook, Nectar, Groupon, Natwest, Hertz, Tesco.com. 

Email: Sanjit.Atwal@DigitalAnimal.com

Follow on Twitter: @SanjitAtwal