By Wacek Warszawa

YNOT – Whether you’re new to affiliate marketing or an experienced professional, lowering your acquisition costs and increasing your return on investment will be high on your agenda. Here are some insider tips for lowering acquisition costs.

1. Use centralized tracking to gather trusted data.

As an affiliate marketer, you could be receiving traffic from multiple sources at any given time. Without a centralized location to allow you to receive data about conversions from each traffic source, you may experience duplicate conversions — in other words, you may end up paying for the same conversion twice. By using a centralized tracking tool, you can increase transparency and gather consistent, trusted data. This will allow you to better analyze your data to help you increase conversions, ultimately increasing return on investment.

2. Test, test and test some more.

There really is no point to your marketing efforts if you’re not testing to determine what’s effective. Consider using A/B testing and multivariate testing (MVT) to analyze page elements. You can test anything from copy to the order and/or positioning of your registration form to colours and images. MVT will allow you to test as many elements as you like. Even when you’ve optimized your campaigns, remember: Never stop testing. There’s always room for improvement.

3. Remember that what works for one traffic source won’t necessarily work for another.

Different traffic sources perform in different ways for different brands. Avoid spending a lot of money on poor-converting traffic by not making assumptions that lead to buying large volumes of traffic from one source. Always ensure you have a test budget. When you have used your test budget to work out where to place your spend, and you know where you can achieve a good conversion rate, then up your spend.

4. Find your niche. Understand it. Master it.

If you’re driving traffic for a particular niche, you need to understand it to get a good conversion rate. Understanding a niche requires gaining in-depth knowledge of a market. If you’re marketing to foot fetishists, for example, you need to understand what that community seeks; what turns them on and what turns them off. What’s attractive? What’s offensive? You may find imagery works best when shot from a particular angle, with specific colors or “atmosphere.” Understanding your market in intimate detail could be the difference between achieving a conversion and having a user bounce.

5. Don’t be afraid to move on.

This rule doesn’t apply only to dating! If a brand, product or traffic source doesn’t convert for you despite extensive testing, don’t be afraid to try another. That can be difficult if you’re collaborating on a project, but sometimes you have to be ruthless. Listen to others in the field — people who know their industry and have demonstrated success at what they do — and consider their opinion before you make a judgment call.

Wacek Warszawa is head of acquisitions at WhiteLabelDating.com, where he oversees the operation of multimillion-dollar global campaigns. With more than 16 years experience in affiliate marketing, Warszawa is responsible for growth of the company’s key brands across multiple territories.

WhiteLabelDating.com is happy to help affiliates figure out niches and craft marketing campaigns. Members of the team will be available for face-to-face meetings during all three European tradeshows taking place during September.