Affiliate marketing is a “growing industry” in Asia, particularly in three key markets—Chinese speaking markets, Japan, and Southeast Asia. And to succeed in these markets, operators and their affiliate partners need to take into consideration some key strategies such as having the right team and localization, among others.
“They have to, first, have the right team. They have to localize their site. They have to know their competitors, and they have to understand how to work with affiliates,” Dov Allin, CEO of Marketing Cross Media, tells CalvinAyre.com. “It’s not really what you offer to your players, how you attract your affiliates to work with them for the long term and with trust.”
He adds, “If you see like Japan, we have a lot of websites really focused on the design for Japanese [market] and also the payment solution, the bonus, all these kinds of little details and how to target which player do you want to target.”
Setting up an affiliate platform not only involves thinking about the fundamentals of an affiliate program, according to Allin. It’s also important to understand the regional differences, particularly in Asia, assess the key strategies needed for an online campaign to succeed.
In Southeast Asia, for instance, affiliates are composed of one or two people trying to get traffic. This is why, Allin says, “They have to have skills and knowledge in SEO first to understand what are their competitor because it’s not Google who will rank your site, it’s more your competitors.”
A difficulty that many affiliates often face is receiving money from their partner operators. This is where Marketing Cross Media comes in, according to Allin.
“My company is here to be more like an umbrella, and we provide the deals on the affiliates,” he explains. “We’re like an umbrella, we will talk to the operator for them, and the stuff they cannot do we will do it for them. It’s like a partnership and a mix of the work.”
