You can divide a campaign’s life cycle in to three phases:
1. Creating the campaign.
2. Optimising the campaign.
3. Doing nothing, scratching your balls, watching the campaign.
What about a fourth phase?
4. Thinking about the campaign.
There’s a novel proposal.
What if you could trade just one day of watching the campaign for one day of extra preparation?
Not robotic preparation.
Here’s what I don’t suggest you do during that extra day:
1. Design more banners.
2. Create more landers.
3. Write more copy.
In fact, the only thing I would do in that extra day is walk away from the computer, turn off Spotify and think about what you’re launching.
I’ve had days as an affiliate -- too many days -- where I’ll be sat at my desk dealing with a constant barrage of Skype messages, emails, new offer notifications and temptations to trade one project for the next.
The end result is that I will create a campaign before I’ve had time to actually think about it.
That sounds stupid, but it’s pretty easy to do.
Recognise this process?
You discover an offer, you hear that it’s performing well, you realise you already have a landing page that *might* work for it, and oh look, you have a bunch of banners that can be recycled from 2010. They’re slightly off-topic, but what does it matter? If you get a conversion, you can always go back and tighten them up.
In twenty minutes, you've launched a fresh campaign using a motley crew of creative materials that were already at your disposal — some of them yours, most of them somebody else's.
And then you forget about it.
Until the campaign gets approved.
And the traffic starts to filter through.
Naturally, at this point it makes perfect sense that you should drop everything and place full attention in watching the campaign.
Maybe the next morning you’ll wake up and start optimising it.
Mindlessly.
On a good day, it might even feel like real work.
But there’s something missing.
The process of thought.
Without stopping to think about each step in the creative process, we end up passing off a series of mini-bodge jobs as our 9-5.
We muddle banners and LPs with offers that they were never designed for. Then we wonder why they don’t work.
Worst of all, we might not even bother.
Our affiliate manager tells us that an offer is such hot-doggy-on-sauce that we don’t even bother to sell it with a landing page. We launch it naked.
When it (predictably) fails to break even, we call it quits.
"It didn’t show enough potential” is the excuse we use to justify this laziness to ourselves.
And yet the reality is something different.
In order for a campaign to show its potential, it has to be planned correctly. It has to be given a fighting chance.
I stumbled across a banner yesterday linking an Indian girl (playing with her titties) to a mainstream Chinese dating site.
Either some affiliate out there had a nervous breakdown, or more likely, somebody got lazy, thought to himself “She’s Asian Enough" + "I'll save time ‘cause I already have this banner", and ran with it anyway.
No doubt he will have justified this laziness to himself as time saved looking for a signal.
"If it converts, I’ll go back and source some actual Chinese women."
But of course, it never does, so he never will.
You need only crack open a window in WhatRunsWhere to see how prevalent this half-baked marketing actually is.
What’s the solution?
I have 2 suggestions.
1) Create a checklist to be followed for every single campaign you launch.
This should cover everything from corresponding with your affiliate manager, to the technical research, to the angle creation, to the copy, to the sourcing of images, to the actual setup.
If you have a rigid checklist of steps, you are less likely to commit the sin of saying “This will do for now” to a half-baked banner, or “A free iPad sounds like a free iPhone, what’s the fucking difference?” to a sloppy-sell lander.
Create your checklist and stick to it.
Refuse to launch a campaign that hasn't passed through the system.
Note: This is the first step to compartmentalising your business in such a way that it can be outsourced or handed to somebody else to do on your behalf.
2) As part of your checklist, add an extra step: SLEEP ON IT.
I am firmly of the belief that one good sleep can turn a good idea in to a great one.
If you allow yourself the privilege of disconnecting and thinking about your campaign — or even not thinking about it — time will bring new perspective.
You can launch in the morning with all bases covered.
This might not lead to a winning campaign, but it will steer you clear of the icebergs that can sink one without a trace.
I know it's difficult.
We tend to feel too busy to let up. Either from legitimate work, or from social media distractions.
The idea of taking time out to improve our chances of success doesn't sit well.
And yet, if you're not thinking clearly, your chances are already hindered.
A methodical system approach might feel less productive, at the start.
But in the long term, it's much more effective than a scattergun emitting loud campaign farts throughout the day.
Finch all of your shit is top notch man, you've been keeping it up for a long while - major respect.
Due diligence, thought, and research ahead definitely pays off.
I have my own version of this checklist for my own campaigns.
Things i feel are necessary to test which will determine if the offer is worth pursuing. I think this checklist can be different for everyone depending on the type of offers and traffic you work with, but the checklist none the less is important.
I know i can always tweak the angle and CTR, which in turn increase profit...
So my main checklist component is testing working offers the way others are making them work. From there i come up with my own angles+copy, and then banners/landers to match the angles.
EX:
If a lot of people are making dating offers work on EXO with a rules landing page. I'll test this way first with my own traffic sources. If i see potential, i then put in my time. Launching a campaign with unique angles from scratch has proven not to be an efficient method for me for 80% of the offers i run. Sometimes i can tell an offer is worth the time off launch.
^Yeah unfortunately there's no model for acquiring the 'sixth sense' that many affiliates rely on.
Being able to tell if an offer is worth the time is one of those skills that is damn near impossible to describe to somebody just getting started.
Gets easier with experience and exposure to a vertical though!