Entering a new vertical is an exciting adventure. Whether you want to diversify your campaign portfolio, shift to a new niche that is more to your liking, or test your marketing prowess and find new hidden gems, new verticals can help you break out the affiliate marketing routine.
The more verticals you excel in, the more robust your marketing strategy is. Think about it, you get more protection from external events and updates. Plus, each vertical is an additional revenue stream, so the more you have, the merrier.
True, the devil is in the details, but we have some dedicated articles in our blog: Finances, Sweepstakes, eCommerce, and Dating. We’ll go through reconnaissance stages, weighing whether you should enter, picking the offer, and top it all with a compilation of tips & hints.
Reconnaissance Starts with Reading
Via: Freepik
You have got to read, a lot. The RollerAds blog is a solid pick to learn about Finance, Dating, Sweepstakes, Utilities, eCommerce, and other verticals. However, blogs are just the tip of the iceberg, as there are tons of informative sources: news portals, podcasts, YouTube videos, forums, etc.
Explore the ad networks. Pay a visit to their blogs and read 3rd-party sources, like Afflift. Ad networks specialize in different ad formats, and not all of them might suit your vertical. Moreover, some types of offers might be forbidden.
Finally, ad networks might have hidden features, some of which work better for certain verticals. For instance, RollerAds provides Auto-generated creatives for Software & Utilities, enabling you to set up a profitable campaign in less than 60 seconds.
Spying for In-Depth Insights
Spy tools help to extract field-tested insights. Reading open sources of information is the first step, which is more about theory. For more practical insights, you need a dedicated spy tool or use our Creatives library instead. Access it as an advertiser via your dashboard.
Spy tools and Creatives library help to filter creatives by impression, click, CTR, GEO, vertical, language, device, etc. This should give you an approximate idea of what the best-performing creatives look like, depending on geography. Head-on comparison of creatives also suggests top GEOs and devices, but this is a rough approximation, which must be elaborated on later down the road.
Deciding Pro or Contra
Now, you should have enough data to consider entering a new vertical. But by this point, you might have a few objections standing in your way to profit. What should you do?
Conduct a SWOT analysis, by writing down the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats for your vertical of choice.
Strengths:
- Existing expertise: how can you leverage your current knowledge of affiliate marketing?
- Established networks: are there any existing partners, who can help enter a new vertical?
- Analytical tools: what are the tools and metrics to assess the potential profit of the new vertical?
- Ad creation skills: how to use your existing media creation experience for a new vertical?
- Adaptability: what are the strengths that can help us enter a new vertical?
Weaknesses:
- Lack of industry knowledge: what gaps exist in your understanding of the new vertical, and how might these hinder progress?
- Limited resources: how might budget constraints or resource limitations impact the exploration of a new vertical?
- Limited network connections: what challenges arise from not having established relationships or partnerships specific to the new vertical?
- Ad expertise: in what areas of media creation or subject expertise are you lacking, and how might this affect your ability to resonate with the target audience?
- Risk aversion: how might a reluctance to take risks or experiment with new approaches hinder success in entering a new vertical?
Opportunities:
- Market demand: are there any specific needs or pain points?
- Niche specialization: are there any lucrative niches to promote specialized offers?
- Emerging trends: are there any disruptive technologies and innovations being adopted?
- Strategic partnerships: are there any prospects available to partner with easily?
- Diversification of revenue streams: how can new vertical help to stabilize and increase your profit generation?
Threats:
- Competition: how intense is the competition within the new vertical, and what are the risks?
- Market saturation: how stuffed is the market already?
- Regulatory challenges: are there any laws being adopted that might hinder the performance?
- Technological disruptions: how do the aforementioned disruptive technologies mess with profit generation?
- Consumer skepticism: will it be easy to break through consumer mistrust? Why or why not?
Find a way to compensate for weaknesses and threats and capitalize on strengths and opportunities. Otherwise, try another niche or stick to your current vertical.
Picking an Offer
When choosing an offer, utilize platforms like OfferVault to explore available affiliate offers, ensuring they are both relevant to your audience and come from reputable merchants. Remember the reconnaissance stage, where you explored ad networks? It’s time to do the same for the affiliate networks.
Read reviews, and assess the commission structure, considering factors such as commission rates and cookie durations to maximize potential earnings.
Don’t go for the offers with the highest payouts. As a rule of thumb, higher payouts are either offset with low CR or straight-up shaving, when the commissions are not paid in full.
Additionally, check for available marketing materials and merchant support to aid in promoting the offer effectively. Finally, test different offers and strategies, tracking performance to optimize your campaigns for success.
Remember that the same offer might be promoted by several affiliate networks. You can split-test them and see which one delivers better results. Most of the ad networks provide the info on average daily clicks per GEO, ad format, bid model, etc. Register your account and click on the Rates tab to get an idea of how much traffic you can generate.
Ideally, you need an offer with some good feedback, which hasn’t been run for too long. No feedback means no idea of how it performs. And old reviews in abundance might imply that the offer can be outdated. Still, every case is unique and there is no way to guarantee anything without A/B testing.
Miscellaneous Suggestions
Unless you’re entering affiliate marketing for the first time, keep the old campaigns running, so that they finance your new endeavor. Even if your new vertical doesn’t pan out, it should give you experience either to try again or to implement new approaches into your current niche of choice.
Complement your entry with event-marketing. Red-letter days benefit almost every vertical, and users are more forgiving during the events.
If you’re using pre-landers, optimize them using PageSpeed Insights. This tool ensures your web pages open in a reasonable time, improving your chances of scoring the target action.
Use Kepios and Country Comparison Tool. Both of them help to understand your audience better. The former provides data on age, gender, social media preferences, etc. The latter is useful to understand local culture and preferences, so that you can design your creatives better.
A/B test continuously. Split-testing is important, but in case of entering a new vertical, it’s vital. Data insights direct you where to go, which is crucial when you have no proper understanding of how the vertical works.
Conclusion
Venturing into a new vertical in affiliate marketing can be both exhilarating and rewarding. It’s akin to embarking on an adventure into uncharted territory, where every step brings new challenges and opportunities. By conducting thorough research, leveraging available resources, and capitalizing on your strengths, you can navigate the landscape with confidence and unlock the potential for success.
Remember to stay adaptable and open-minded, continuously testing and iterating your strategies to optimize performance. While the journey may be filled with obstacles and uncertainties, it also offers the promise of growth, learning, and financial reward.
So, are you ready to embark on this exciting expedition? Register to commence your exploration. Contact us if you need any help, and let the adventure begin!
