I honestly can’t believe we are almost in September. My evenings are starting to fill up with my kids extra curricular school activities, back to school shopping and picking tomatoes and corn out of the garden and hoping my butternut squash turns out ok.
All those things trip a trigger in my mind and make me realize the 4th quarter is here. It’s now time to get ready for the marathon that is the holiday season and ensure that all our programs are ready to rock and roll.
We use a process we call the Affiliate Assessment and Success Roadmap, you can learn more about this service here, and we teach this in our My Affiliate Coach affiliate manager coaching and training program. It is such an important aspect of managing an affiliate program.
How can you get to where you want to go, without first knowing where you are now?
Assessing your affiliate program is vital as we head into the last part of the year. Why?
- knowing where your program stands will provide you with an objective picture of the items you need to work on to reach your goals for 2010
- it’s incredibly hard to create a plan for the 4th qtr if you haven’t looked at all aspects of your affiliate program
- self evaluation is vital in continuing to improve your own performance, advance your career and is important in a process of life long learning
Here are a few things you should assess this month to get ready for the big push, as we call it:
- your creative – do you have current banners and text links, do you have old ones sitting out there, are you scheduling updates for the season?
- affiliate performance – retail organizations call this “same store sales”, but it is a concept you need to look at here. How are the affiliates you have performing compared to last year? I’ll be writing more about this next week.
- consumer promotions
- affiliate promotions
- distribution of top sellers and categories
That’s a real short list. We cover over 20 distinct areas of each affiliate program we manage to determine what needs to be worked, where the opportunities for increase are and exactly what we need to do to reach our goals.
What say you?
