In previous articles, PASA has introduced how Better Collective, a leading affiliate marketer that acquired 500,000 users in a single event in the gambling industry, made a fortune in the affiliate marketing sector.
Currently, in the online gambling industry, affiliate marketing has become an important channel for many operators to acquire users and increase revenue.
Through affiliate marketing, gambling operators can expand their user base in a results-oriented manner by collaborating with third-party promoters. Because affiliate marketing is results-oriented, operators can more effectively control their advertising spending ratio, making it the preferred choice for gambling operators' advertising campaigns.
However, successful affiliate marketing is not achieved overnight; it requires careful planning, comprehensive execution, and continuous optimization.
In this article, PASA will detail how gambling operators can start from scratch to create their own affiliate marketing department and discuss the best practices for each key step, ultimately generating a steady stream of customers for their platform.
How to carry out affiliate marketing?
First, before starting affiliate marketing, we need to understand its basic principles:
Affiliate marketing is a commission-based promotion model where promoters (gambling advertising companies) earn commissions by selling the products of operators (gambling operators) to acquire users.
These commissions are usually based on user registration, deposits, or betting behavior, generally depending on the amount of commission.
Operators can obtain high-quality traffic through affiliate marketing, and the income of promoters is directly related to the promotional results, thus allowing operators to control advertising ROI very well.
Once an affiliate marketing collaboration is established, operators need to provide promoters with unique promotional links and advertising materials to track and measure their promotional effects.
And use tracking and analysis tools to monitor the promotional effects of affiliate members, calculate commissions, and analyze overall advertising performance.
The final clear commission structure (such as pay-per-action CPA, pay-per-click CPC, or pay-per-sale CPS) is key to affiliate marketing—this choice depends on each operator's focus. If the commission structure is CPS, i.e., users deposit and bet on the platform as advertising effects, then the corresponding commission will also be relatively expensive.
PASA divides the common problems every operator using affiliate marketing will encounter into three major steps:
First step, after understanding the mechanism of affiliate marketing, operators should immediately establish their own marketing department and find talent.
After establishing the marketing department, it is important to ensure that traffic comes from multiple channels, falling into each operator's platform. Any marketing cooperation should be approached with an open attitude, not putting all eggs in one basket, ensuring there is always a channel that can bring stable customer flow to the platform.
Of course, here PASA mainly focuses on cooperation with affiliate marketing.
First, affiliate marketing partners will use the operator's money to attract traffic. When our budget is insufficient, we can first choose a CPA or CPC commission structure, i.e., consuming commission per action or per click.
Generally, this type of commission structure requires a lower budget, suitable for gambling operators with insufficient marketing budgets, and the effect depends more on the platform's own attractiveness to users.
After users click into the platform's website, if our welcome page is not enough to convert users to deposit and bet, then this marketing campaign is declared a failure.
Also, during the marketing process, if any problems arise, it is necessary to inform the promoters in time. Otherwise, this will lead to unnecessary expenses and deterioration of the partnership.
The personnel configuration of the operator's marketing department is also very important. Although in affiliate marketing, partners are decisive, tasks like technical settings and for tracking and improving effects are necessary to double the marketing results.
Typically, roles like a manager responsible for managing and optimizing affiliate relationships, ensuring affiliates receive necessary support and incentives.
A data analyst focused on analyzing marketing data, identifying trends, and optimizing marketing effects.
A content creator responsible for creating high-quality advertising materials, articles, blogs, and other promotional content.
The above positions are essential.
The minimum monthly budget required for the maintenance department is $10,000, which is basically the industry average. For a big brand, the monthly cost can increase to $100,000.
The second step is to start formulating a suitable affiliate marketing strategy for the platform.
Operators need to develop a comprehensive strategy to ensure that affiliate marketing activities align with overall business goals, and of course, the amount of budget will likely influence whether the strategy can be successfully implemented.
The strategic goals mainly include several aspects:
First, set marketing goals, determine short-term and long-term goals for affiliate marketing, such as the number of new users per month, market share growth, or revenue targets.
And target the market and corresponding potential users, and customize marketing strategies according to market demands, targeting suitable affiliate marketing partners.
If necessary, research competitors' affiliate marketing strategies, identify their strengths and weaknesses, and perhaps find overlooked target users.
Of course, budget planning is most important. PASA mentioned earlier the situation of low budgets, and if there is no budget limit, then according to the analysis of target users and target markets, targeted placements will certainly yield better results.
The third step, choose suitable affiliate marketing partners and jointly optimize marketing effects.
First, we need to ensure that operators themselves can accurately track the promotional activities of affiliate members and generate detailed reports, so as to understand the promotional effects in real time, such as:
1. Real-time total statistics are very important, especially for partners. Ad optimization and the quality and cost of traffic directly depend on this.
2. Customized segmented statistics—more detailed data. For example, how many paid targets are needed for advertising effects to achieve a cumulative bet of $10 by customers. This helps operators manage subsequent marketing goals and budgets.
3. Platform and advertising interface usability, everything loads quickly and runs smoothly, to ensure that users are not affected by other factors in marketing effects.
At the same time, manage the tools for distributing advertising materials well, making it convenient for partners to use and promote, and filter out effective advertising materials, eliminating ineffective ones. These are all preparations that we, as operators, must complete.
When everything is ready, the most important step is to recruit strong affiliate marketing partners.
Generally, many operators build connections and recruit potential affiliate members by participating in industry events and conferences. Or through social media and email, promote the affiliate program to potential members, attracting them to join.
Of course, there are also financially strong operators who directly offer competitive commission structures and flexible payment methods to attract high-quality affiliate members. In such cases where affiliate members flock, the operator's screening ability is further tested.
Because higher rates do not always mean more revenue. Many factors ultimately affect earnings, from the introduction of traffic by partners, to optimization, to conversion.
When suitable partners are recruited, the performance of affiliate members and the optimization of advertising materials are the most decisive factors for the success or failure of marketing effects.
Operators must do two things:
1. When affiliate members perform excellently, provide additional incentives; for poorly performing affiliate members, adjust strategies or terminate cooperation in a timely manner.
2. Continuously optimize advertising materials based on promotional effects and feedback, including optimization of the operator's own platform, to improve marketing conversion rates and user engagement on the platform.
Creating a successful affiliate marketing department for gambling operators is a complex but promising task.
From understanding the basic principles of affiliate marketing, to formulating clear strategies, recruiting and training teams, recruiting affiliate members, to managing and optimizing marketing activities, each step requires careful planning and execution by operators.
Conclusion
Beyond affiliate marketing, operators also need to focus on more different marketing methods, such as social media marketing. For some operators, it may not be very clear to distinguish between social media marketing and affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is almost exclusively used to bring traffic to brand websites to complete transactions, which can be understood as sales for operators. Brands do not pay promoters for brand awareness or proactive users.
In social media marketing, common influencers and opinion leaders focus more on content creation when promoting brands, products, or services, enhancing the credibility, authenticity, and sustainable inbound traffic of advertisers, and advertisers do not pay for each resulting traffic.
As all internet users are turning their attention to social media, consumers are now increasingly "relying on" others to help them make purchasing decisions.
Such as popular stars, topical figures, professionals in certain fields, etc., their comments and recommendations have a wide influence and appeal.
Therefore, the new marketing model of affiliate marketing + social media marketing will unleash greater energy for operators: the former brings direct revenue, while the latter has great potential in promoting brand information and awareness. By combining the two, a broader audience can be reached, thereby generating a greater ROI.
We look forward to discussing more unique insights about affiliate marketing with our readers and invite you to follow the global iGaming leader's outbound information platform PASA for more firsthand industry information on getting rich.
Welcome to subscribe to the official PASA channel: https://t.me/PASAIGHYJL
