Serial entrepreneur Segun Ketiku in recent interview discusses career journey, business innovation plans and digital success.
How did you enter the affiliate marketing industry, and what pivotal moments shaped your journey in this dynamic industry?
At an early age, I desired to make money online in a legitimate way without doing online fraud, so at the cyber cafe around 2006 or so, I came across an ad online on how to make money online and I bought an E-book and that’s the first time I came across anything called Affiliate Marketing and that was I pursued it and the rest they say is history.
For newcomers to affiliate marketing, what are the fundamental steps you recommend for a successful start in this space?
I believe anyone with an open mind and eager to learn will go far in the affiliate marketing industry. I would also advise that you must have curiosity, do consistent research, test new angles every day and never forget to always optimize.
In your extensive experience, what challenges have you observed businesses facing in implementing effective affiliate marketing programs, and how can these be overcome?
The most common challenge will be accurate data tracking, most businesses don’t want to invest in getting the right attribution tools and without data, you can barely do anything with affiliate marketing.
Also, many businesses are trying to implement their strategies by themselves when they do not know about affiliate marketing meanwhile they could higher an affiliate manager or consult an affiliate marketing agency, thereby saving themselves a whole lot of stress.
From a strategic standpoint, what factors should businesses consider when selecting affiliates to ensure mutually beneficial and lasting partnerships?
The most important I would advise businesses to consider in their affiliate partnership selection would be mutual value alignment and value addition. Secondly, would be credibility, Sadly all that glitters is not gold, the affiliate industry is still riddled with lots of fraudulent affiliates.
As a seasoned marketer, how do you see the relationship between content marketing and affiliate strategies, and what role does community-building play in this ecosystem?
There is a popular saying that content is king, that saying will forever be true because as an affiliate marketer, content marketing is part of your marketing strategy, from your ad copies to your presell pages, and sales funnels, without the right content in place all your effort will amount to nothing, so I would say the relationship is pari passu and community building is the blood of the ecosystem.
As the Head of Partnership & User Acquisition in previous roles, how do you approach building and managing successful client affiliate programs?
We carefully consider the brand’s goal whether it’s acquiring new users or increasing LTV’s, because without a goal in mind we are going to achieve nothing. After which we conduct an extensive research that helps us to build out an affiliate marketing plan, carefully select an affiliate marketing network to use for the program, affiliate payment schedule, types of affiliates that’s suited for this program and we ultimately go after them and recruit them to get started with promotion.
Looking back on your career, can you share a standout moment where innovative affiliate marketing strategies directly contributed to substantial business growth?
I would say the point where I was invited to work on the DigitalVirgio VAS campaign across Africa. VAS marketing is an uncharted territory for me but I knew that if Affiliate marketing could work in another industry, then it could work anywhere else, so was opportuned to create a go-to-market strategy for the brand and we were able to acquire up to 5,000 – 10,000 new subscribers every week thereby leading to exponential coverage for the brand and their services.
In your current role, what milestones and achievements are you aiming for soon, and how do you foresee contributing to the evolution of affiliate marketing practices?
I would like to help at least 10,000 new brands to launch their first affiliate marketing program.
I would like to explore role of AI in affiliate marketing and how it can be leveraged. So those are priorities right now
What, in your opinion, are the top skills and qualities that affiliate marketers should develop to thrive in an ever-evolving and competitive industry?
I would say resilience, adaptability and innovation are top skills for anyone in the ever-changing world of affiliate marketing.
With the landscape constantly changing, what trends do you anticipate shaping the future of affiliate marketing, and how can marketers stay adaptable and ahead of the curve?
Accurate data tracking and analysis will continue to see constant changes and improvement. So I will say stay abreast of the major attribution models of the top ads companies like Facebook and Google ads. Also don’t let go of AI in affiliate marketing, it’s going to take over.
