Tips for Improving and Growing Your Affiliate Marketing Program

A recent Rakuten study found that over 80% of brands use affiliate marketing, making it more prevalent than it has ever been. If your company is among those eighty percent, you undoubtedly already know that affiliate marketing is one of the best forms of advertising available today, and you're considering making an investment.

Your affiliate marketing program may seem unworthy, nevertheless, as a result of the poor performance of many firms' affiliate marketing campaigns. Should this be your present situation, there exist numerous methods to revitalize your affiliate marketing campaign. What you should know is as follows.

Tips to Tell If Your Program Is Underperforming

First of all, you need to know whether your program is underperforming in the first place. What are some signs to look out for?

I think the biggest sign that you need affiliate regeneration is probably that you aren't diversifying enough. Check to see how much of your income comes from one particular kind of publisher or from your top publishers. Your program is almost certainly failing if you find that ten of your publishers are producing 90% of your revenue. If you can get the other publishers to contribute, you can improve your program.

The other telltale sign is if you’re having a hard time recruiting new publishers. If it seems almost impossible to get new publishers in the door, then it could be that they don’t see the benefits of collaborating with your company, and that can mean your marketing program is stagnating.

Top Tips for Affiliate Marketing Program Revitalization

So, how can you bring your program back to life? Here are six top tips that can revitalize your affiliate marketing program.

1. Re-evaluate your commission structure

Your commission structure is how you pay out to the publishers who direct sales in your direction. If you’re not getting new publishers or your current publishers aren’t directing many sales your way, then it might be because the commission structure just isn’t aligned with your business goals.

Personalized, unique commissions for different publishers can be a great way to attract new publishers who feel like your program gives them what they need to excel.

2. Treat your publishers like part of your salesforce

Affiliates are essentially part of your salesforce; you may not have control over the content they produce or how frequently they produce it, but you are paying them to promote your business. You can use publishers to fill any void you have in your marketing strategy, all without having to do it yourself.

This means that you should give your publishers the tools they need to promote your brand, just like you would give in-house marketing teams the information and tools they need to deliver on a marketing strategy. The easier you make it for a publisher to promote your company, the more likely that they’ll do it.

3. Diversify the publisher types you’re working with

Multiple different publisher types and networks reach out to different types of customers, and that means more people with eyes potentially on your content. Whether it’s YouTube, blogs, social media sites, or even other retailers, you want to have multiple publisher types with multiple different customer bases, all of whom might be interested in your brand.

Many companies choose to use different affiliate management agencies to broaden their horizons as much as possible, and you might also want to come up with individual commission structures for each type of affiliate. Pinpoint the voids in your marketing strategy, then see what types of publishers will best fill those voids.

4. Do something good and boost your brand reputation

One way that you can revitalize your affiliate marketing program is just by showing publishers that they can be part of something good by working with you. For example, you can implement a way to support charities with each purchase. When you integrate charities into your purchasing structure, you get to do something good, and everyone who works with you gets to contribute to this.

Of course, contributing to charity is just generally a great thing to do, but many shoppers will also have a more positive image of a brand if that brand supports a great charity. Publishers may be more likely to sign up with your company, and customers may be more likely to purchase from you.

5. Understand the methods your publishers are using

Publishers drive traffic to your company in many different ways, and it’s important to familiarize yourself with the ways that partners do this. Whether it’s social media, blogging, SEO tactics, or email marketing campaigns, understanding how your partners work can help you understand how to engage with them.

Additionally, this helps you avoid running exactly the same methods of marketing that your publishers are using. Some successful affiliate programs put certain restrictions on their publishers’ methods, so there’s no crossover.

6. Create new and enticing incentives

Transaction-based and performance-based incentives are critical to keeping your publishers focused on performance. Whether it’s a commission increase once a publisher sends a certain number of sales to your website or an added commission when customers purchase a new product, this incentivizes your publishers to produce great numbers consistently.

Recall that you also need to ensure that your publishers are receiving the most recent information about these incentives. Recognize the several effective outreach channels.

An affiliate marketing program that isn't doing well can be brought back to life by identifying its shortcomings and making improvements. This entails assessing how to pique publishers' interest in your brand, revising commission schedules and bonuses, and keeping tabs on publishers' current performance. Refersion can give you the data you need for this technique.

Become a Refersion member now to monitor the performance of your publishers, identify their shortcomings, and gain insight into their work.