Remember my Competitive Intelligence at the Service of Affiliate Program Managers article at Search Engine People which appeared there back in May of this year? If you didn’t see it yet, that would be a good place to start before continuing reading this post… If, however, you did read it you know that — when spying on competing affiliate programs — among the “affiliate program & related performance” things to analyze I recommend looking at “best-performing creatives” and “wording of text links”.

Affiliates, don’t turn away from this post! You need this too. After all, by understanding what works best for other publishers in any given affiliate program you can better optimize your own campaigns.

Well, things aren’t that straightforward with banners and text links. Savvy affiliates and program managers know that not all banner (or text links) statistics should be taken at face value.

Here’s a perfect example I’ve recently spotted:

See the significant EPC difference between banner #1 and banner #2? No, it’s not because the first banner performs that much better. In fact, they are nearly identical (they’re animated banners, and the second frames, which you don’t see, are just a little different). The reason for this overinflated banner EPC is as simple as this: the first banner is higher on the list and easier for affiliates — who don’t necessarily want to use the banner itself but just need to quickly pick up an affiliate code!! — to use. Same often applies to text links (unless you’re comparing deep-linked ones).

As mentioned above, this is an important factor to grasp both for affiliates (not to make wrong conclusions), and for affiliate program managers (who, while engaging in competitive intelligence tasks, may make wrong conclusions as well). Do analyze what works best for others, but do keep in mind that not everything you see there (i.e. with banner and text links’ performance stats) it to be trusted as 100% accurate analytics.

When running an affiliate program on a tight budget you inevitably face a challenging reality: good tools normally cost good money. You, on the other hand, may not necessarily have enough to invest into all of the paid tools you may need. Do not despair! There is a number of great tools out there that are available for your use at no cost. Of course, you do not want to depend only on the free ones (and have a number of robust ones that you do pay for), but it is useful to know which good ones are free.

Here’s my alphabetical list of 10 such tools (all of which I myself use on a daily basis):

1. Facebook — if you haven’t done so already, create a fan page for your affiliate program (and use it as a part of your affiliate communication channel)

2. Forums — use affiliate marketing forums (like ABestWeb and Affiliate Summit’s forum in the US, or affiliates4u in the UK) to participate in the community and gently get the word about your affiliate program out

3. Google — yes, the search engine! you can use it to find potential affiliates (when there’s no contact info on the prospect’s site, use Who.is to pull it up)

4. Google Alerts — use it to monitor what competing affiliate programs are doing, as well as for recruitment of new affiliates

5. Google Website Optimizer — use it for testing and optimization of your affiliate landing pages

6. iTrademarkBidding — monitor affiliate violations of your paid search rules and restrictions

7. Omgili — use it to monitor what’s being said about you affiliate program, your brand(s) and your competitors in forums and other online communities

8. Quantcast — analyze the volume and type traffic your prospective affiliates get (for a better picture always use it together with Compete.com‘s data)

9. Twitter — monitor it to spot prospective affiliates (use both Twitter Search, and tools like TweetDeck for streamlining the monitoring process)

10. WordPress — if you don’t already have it, start an affiliate program support blog on it (I personally prefer the self-hosted solution; hence, the link to the .org site)

Have fun exploring these free tools, and if I haven’t mentioned a great tool that can help affiliate program managers in their day-to-day tasks of affiliate recruitment and monitoring, competitive intelligence and program optimization, please do chime in with your suggestions using the “Comments” field below. ↓

From all definitions of “competitive intelligence” that I have seen I like Christopher West’s best of all. He eloquently defined it as “the process by which companies inform themselves about every aspect of their rivals’ activities and performance” (Competitive Intelligence, p. 12).

There are multiple tools to monitor your competitors, but this post isn’t about them. Many of these tools have official Twitter accounts, and those don’t cost a penny to follow (unlike the access to full versions of the tools).

Today I’d like to bring you Twitter account of the top 5 competitive intelligence tools out there. These are:

1. Compete — Competitive intelligence solutions for digital marketing professionals. By the way, they have an excellent affiliate program too.
   
2. comScore — Global source of digital market intelligence and a popular measurement service.
3. Experian Hitwise — The latest Internet usage and search data from Experian Hitwise in the US and Canada
4. Quantcast — The world’s first open audience measurement service, free to both publishers and marketers.
5. Alexa — Official Twitter account of the company. I wish they were tweeting more though.

Have I missed a good one you follow on the topic? If so, I’d highly appreciate you mention it in the “Comments” area under this post.

Have you noticed how Compete.com is positioning itself now? Here’s a screenshot I’ve just taken (emphasis, of course, mine):

This is, actually, not too surprising to see. What is surprising thought is that competitive intelligence and link building tools have taken so long to start selling themselves as powerful affiliate recruitment tools. They are actually really great for this. You can easily find the more popular websites in your niche (either by keywords, or by links to your direct competitors, or simply by weight in this or that vertical), and approach them with proposals to join your affiliate program. If you aren’t using any of them for this, you should.

Related posts:

• 5 Free Tools to Help You Find Affiliates
• Improve Affiliate Recruitment with Google Alerts
• How to Recruit Affiliates

You’ve made a decision to start an affiliate program, decided on the tracking platform to use, and now you’re facing multiple questions, one of which may be worded this way: How do I put together best possible banners for affiliates to use for my program?

To a great extent, this question has already been answered in the following articles of mine:

• What Size Banners Should an Affiliate Program Have?
• 10 Mistakes to Avoid While Creating Affiliate Banners
• What Size Should Affiliate Banner Files Be?
• Examples of Affiliate Banners

However, there is one thing that I haven’t yet talked about. It’s a secret that affiliate program managers do not tend to share. I will, but let’s begin with a definition:

…competitive intelligence involves monitoring the company’s competitive environment, including customers, competitors, political and legal developments (regulations and laws), and social forces… The two main tasks are the collection and the analysis of intelligence. (Coombs, 2008, PSI Handbook of Business Security, pp. 217-218 / bold font and italics mine).

Employing the competitive intelligence approach is extremely helpful throughout the whole process of affiliate program management, and the affiliate program setup stage is a perfect time to start. It will help you build a competitive affiliate program, and one of the fronts on which you want to stay competitive is the creative front.

Open an affiliate account with the affiliate networks on which your competitors run their affiliate programs. Many affiliate networks allow affiliates to sort affiliate programs’ links by EPC (which normally stands for average affiliate earnings on 100 clicks on a link). Analyze the wording, and the design of your competitors’ best performing links, and when once you’ve gotten a clear idea of what works well for them, write down the text and design ideas you want to experiment with. This should give you good information to start with, but never stop experimenting (read: split-testing) and improving the quality of your affiliate creatives. This will be of benefit both to you as an advertiser, and to your affiliates.