How to Work with Affiliate Partners for Your Marketing Campaigns
Get impactful tips for making the most of your affiliate partnerships, learn what affiliate partners are, why they’re so valuable for your business, as well as how to offer affiliate marketing and connect with the best affiliate marketing offers.
Businesses often consider partner marketing when expanding their brand reach. This type of marketing can bring many benefits and help their growth strategies. One of the most valuable types of these relationships are affiliate partners, like the ones you can access through Squaredance.
Before we jump into some tips for making the most of these partnerships, let’s discuss what affiliate partners are, why they’re so valuable for your business, as well as how to offer affiliate marketing and connect with the best affiliate marketing offers.
What are Affiliate Partners?
Affiliate partners are a type of marketing partner, which focus on increasing the reach of your brand, as well as improving your revenue stream.
They accomplish this by driving traffic to your ads, websites, and any other channels you make available to them using links that are tracked. Partners then earn a commission each time that this linked traffic converts.
The different categories for affiliate partners can vary, but on Squaredance, for example, there are 3 distinct categories for affiliate partners:
Media Buyers: Partners who specialize in driving new customers in paid social, search & display channels.
Publishers: These partners promote a brand's products via content sites such as blogs, review sites, newsletters, and listicles.
Influencers/Brand Ambassadors: Partners who leverage their social following on paid social platforms to promote different products using affiliate links.
Why are Marketing Partners Valuable?
The biggest benefit of working with affiliate partners is that your company can take advantage of all the reach and credibility that they have already accumulated. Plus, they’re often paid on a cost-per-sale (CPS) fee structure, so they take on the costs to test new audiences, creatives, and messaging.
The bigger the partner’s network, the better possible outcome. However, this also means that these large affiliates may request a higher CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) as commission.
How to Find Affiliate Marketers for Your Product
If you want to find the best affiliate marketing offers, you’ll need to start by figuring out how to offer affiliate marketing. The easiest way to get started is to join a platform like Squaredance, which makes starting affiliate partnerships quick and painless.
Instead of wasting tons of time and energy on your own, trying to figure out how to find the right affiliate marketers for your product, Squaredance provides access to a wide range of potential affiliates in a single database.
This way, you can see exactly what each potential marketing partner would charge if you choose to partner with them and leverage those costs against the potential gains of accessing their established network of consumers.
Then you can select the best affiliate marketing offers, based on your growth goals and the potential ROI for each prospective partner.
Tips for Improving Affiliate Partner Relationships:
Provide Valuable Resources & Insights
Any data or insights that you’ve learned about your customers through any channel (i.e., CSR teams, agencies, media buyers, etc.), should be shared with affiliate partners. The better understanding they have about your products and customers, the more effectively they can promote you.
TIP: Different affiliates will have different objectives and end goals. Something that’s exciting for a media buyer might mean very little to a publisher or influencer. Cater the resources you’re providing appropriately for the best results.
You can learn more about the different types of affiliates and their individual drivers here.
Always Be Consistent & Responsive
Once you cast a wide net of affiliates, you’ll notice everyone has different schedules, priorities, and sources of traffic. Don’t get discouraged if an affiliate takes a bit of time getting back to you.
Advertising can be volatile, and affiliates experience these cycles as well. Some marketing partners may even seem to go into hibernation periodically, but don’t worry, they’ll re-engage when they feel the time is right.
The best way to support your affiliates is to ensure that you’re available to provide assistance when needed. After all, they’re trying to sell your products and services. And since they’re often extending their own resources on your behalf, if they can’t reach you for an extended period of time, it could cause them to incur significant losses.
TIP: Affiliates often respond during afternoon, evenings, and on weekends, as some are navigating the pressures of 24/7 advertising placements. The quicker you respond to inquiries, the faster they can pivot strategies to maximize the efficiency of your campaigns.
Offer Updates on Company Initiatives
You never want your campaigns to start feeling stale to your marketing partners; otherwise, they’ll start looking elsewhere for more exciting opportunities.
One method for keeping affiliates engaged is to ensure they’re always aware of new initiatives your company is taking. Everything from new product launches to new content, promotions, or even expanding into new market regions should be shared with partners.
Involve affiliates in any capacity you can. Keep them informed. A well-run affiliate program should act like an extension of your own marketing team.
Squaredance Makes It Easy to Find the Perfect Partners
Squaredance is more than just your average affiliate network. It’s an ever-growing community of brands, publishers, influencers, media buyers, and consumers - all coming together to produce meaningful work and create exponential value for one another.
If you’re ready to start your growth journey, and you’re looking for an affiliate network to set you on the path to successful scalability, Squaredance is the solution you’ve been looking for.
