Let’s face it, affiliate marketing gets a bad wrap. Once considered a channel fraught with black hat players, fraud, weak strategy and an overall lack of transparency — the opacity associated with affiliate marketing did not imbue confidence and trust with partners. And most importantly, there also wasn’t a level of confidence that the channel could deliver desired results and outcomes.
The reality is that the ‘last click only’ perception of affiliate marketing is a thing of yesteryear. Looking back, coupon and loyalty dominated the category because of this reliance on the last-click model embraced by brands. That model stymied the channels advancement and progression. However, affiliate is no longer relegated to rudimentary tactics like banner advertising on coupon sites.
There are affiliate marketing providers today who stand as category innovators who did not settle for the status quo, and have developed new technology and tools to address the inherent problems of legacy affiliate head-on. The real challenge for affiliate marketers now is one of perception not value. While the tech that supports affiliate marketing has accelerated, marketers’ minds live in the past.
Advanced discovery tools have helped diversify partner composition, within programs and in the market. The expansion of affiliate to content and influencers, coupled with attribution features have shifted spend and rewards to the partners that drive outcomes that brands value. i.e. in the upper funnel discovery stages that often help drive higher LTV.
Workflow automations in affiliate are nascent, signaling further category development and progression are on the horizon. As this evolution continues to unfold, it is critical that brands maintain the pace of innovation, and are poised to reap the benefits early. But to do that, it requires a perceptive shift. Below are a few…
- Adjust your mindset. Breaking old habits can be very difficult. It requires a level of trust to let go, re-assess based on a new, more mature landscape of options and try something new. If a marketer wants to take advantage of the technology that is redefining the affiliate marketing space, they need to reset their standard operating procedures and have an open mind as they evaluate and test the tools around them.
- Data is the foundation to deliver desired outcomes – In order to optimize, you must use data-driven methodologies. Going beyond the traditional tactics of affiliate marketing, one must analyze the data that is being funneled through the affiliate program. Marketers now can see on a granular level, the type of consumers they are acquiring through the channel and the type of consumer each publisher type is driving. They will gain insights into individual publisher metrics such as average order value, conversion rate, repeat visits, where they fall within the clickstream, and where each publisher ranks within each publisher category. Affiliate marketing partners will provide high-level campaign performance statistics; however, it is important to marry first-party data against the performance data of each publisher to understand their true, long term value.
- Diversification. No publisher is created equal, and therefore each one can appeal to a different audience – men, women, younger demos, older demos, any number of composite targets. The best affiliate tools provide a diversified supply of partners, but they also enable a marketer to bring their own partner base into the mix, opening up the possibilities of potential publishers. By understanding the unique value each partner provides, marketers must/should embrace ALL publisher partner types as part of their affiliate mix in order to maximize reach across varying audiences and demographics.
- Break out of your norm and execute. Leverage the technology at your disposal and implement test and learn strategies. Test and learn informs the performance of your overarching strategy and helps you get comfortable and expand with present-day affiliate tactics that drive growth.
- Adjust your balance sheet. With all of the newfound technology in your toolkit, marketers should start to leverage the data available (now available in marketers MTA solutions) to champion the notion to finance or those that ultimately control investment decisions and demonstrate how affiliate is a profit-driving entity.
Over the years, affiliate marketing has evolved from a dominant coupon, discount channel, a state that was further exacerbated by fraud vulnerability, and the last-click attribution model into a widely-used, scalable sophisticated means for marketers to confidently operate and cultivate high lifetime value customers and derive operating leverage.
While the opportunities in the new age of affiliate marketing are vast, and your own evolution will be a gradual journey of testing, learning and building anew, the strategies listed above will help bring an affiliate marketing program into the new age and allow marketers to take advantage of new ways to invigorate programs. And invigoration by definition leads to healthy growth — which in the marketplace at hand means profitable, clean growth, that is the ultimate success story.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mandy O’Brien
Mandy’s role as Senior Director of Affiliate Services at PepperJam enables her to work with a vast group of clients who utilize Pepperjam’s Elite service offering. She guides her team in the execution of program management, while providing strategic oversight for the channel to ensure client’s goals and expectations are met.