Treat networks like your second sales team
Building good relationships with affiliates is essential and often the reason why many merchants decide to manage their affiliate marketing in house.
By Martina Mercer
Consider these facts:
• Nearly half of affiliates bring over £5000 per month to their merchants, an increase of 20% in 2 years.
• A third of affiliates now send over twenty thousand visitors to merchant websites every month.
For instance a great affiliate will be in high demand, often taking six months to reply to your request to partner with them. This is because they have a good reputation for promoting brands effectively while ensuring their site always evolves with fresh new content that is valuable to the reader.
On the other end of the scale, there are affiliates that do nothing. They will place your banner on site, yet let their own content go stale. Stale content is not considered valuable by google and so search engine conversions will drop and your sales will lead to next to nothing.
As well as these generating no leads at all, they can also damage your reputation.
Social media and affiliates
As affiliate marketing increases in popularity alongside social media marketing, many affiliates are now using LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to promote their websites and their merchants. This can have an incredible effect however you do need to keep a close eye on advertising that bears your brand. Some tactics could be seen as SPAM which would further damage your reputation.
Your new sales team
Although not in house you should view your affiliates as your new sales team. They need motivation, incentives and they need to respect your brand in order to promote your products well.
Hiring and firing
To gain affiliates you may have to offer a commission tier structure. You will also have to explain why they should choose you above the competition. You can offer exclusive codes that they can promote as being on their site only. You may also have to bite the bullet initially to tempt them in with a high commission.
Throughout the hiring (or acquiring ) process, make sure you keep correspondence personal, resist the urge to send out thousands of generic emails to thousands of potential affiliates as the top ones receive hundreds of these a day.
You can’t fire an affiliate but you can ban them, if you think they’re using unethical means to drive traffic or their content is ruining your reputation, ban them.
Be available and active
The more available and active you are on all forums, social networks and even Skype, the more loyal your affiliate will become. If you manage communications well and make them feel as though they want to promote you, you gain an ambassador for your brand too.
Personalise your relationship and let them see the human behind the company. If you can meet face to face to discuss strategies going forward and get them excited about the revenue you hope to gain for both of you.
Offer rewards
Commission tier systems are one of the best ways to reward affiliates as they gain higher percentages the more they sell. You can also reward them with higher responsibility so they are recognised for their achievements. Top performers can be given first dibs on content so their website stands out from the rest.
You can also expand on the relationship over the phone or Skype by letting them know what creative you have in the pipeline so they can plan their content accordingly.
Measure and monitor
Offering different commission rates is an ideal way to keep track of budgets, as it removes the risk of
a) Offering too little so affiliates aren’t motivated to sell
b) Offering too much so you operate at a loss.
You should closely monitor how each commission rate enhances or harms an affiliates sales. Does a generous percentage make them work harder? Or are results the same as before?
Listen
Affiliates can be an incredible source for feedback, whether good or bad. As the middle man between you brand and customers they have a unique point of view that shouldn’t be ignored. Ask their opinion, see if there’s anything you could be doing to drive more sales and treat them like a partner.
