How to Feed the Hungry Affiliate Marketing Channel

Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest growing marketing channels in the country right now -- more than triple what it was 10 years ago. The explosive growth isn’t expected to slow down any time soon.?Businesses in the United States are on track to spend over $8 billion on affiliate marketing in 2022.

This makes a ton of sense to any?multi-channel marketer.?Affiliate marketing?doesn’t require a huge investment, the performance-based model means advertisers only pay for what they get, and a well-crafted program can?boost revenue by an astounding 30%.

But oh boy, it's a hungry beast.

Digital marketing, and affiliate in particular, is my life. As a mother of four small children, I say it's my fifth child. I want companies to excel and achieve in this channel because I have seen it deliver value and revenue across hundreds of sectors.

But make no mistake: Despite its impressive track record, affiliate marketing success is?not?a sure thing–or easy to come by.?There’s a lot of room for error without the right resources.

Here are the often unexpected but inevitable potholes I see week over week:

Pothole?#1:?You've Chosen the Wrong Publisher Partners for your Brand

There is no shortage of publishers in the affiliate marketing space–but that’s good and bad. Yes, to maintain a successful program, you need to build an ever-growing roster of publishers, but you have to be extremely selective.?

Repeat after me: Not all affiliates are created equal. First of all, not every publisher will align with your brand’s values. Some won’t have a proven track record or established credibility. Others won’t think twice about ignoring your program’s terms and conditions. Those are all red flags. Steer clear.?

The truth is, there is no such thing as over-vetting a potential publisher. To do that, you really need a team that has the right connections.

Pro tip: Who you know makes a big difference. Odds are, an agency’s breadth of relationships will far surpass that of an in-house team. In affiliate marketing, it always pays to get an inside edge on the best contacts through tenured experts who know the industry inside and out.

Pothole?#2:?You've Set Auto-Pilot as a Strategy

No matter what you may have heard,?affiliate marketing is in no way a set-it-and-forget-it solution. What works today may not necessarily work tomorrow. Really. In fact, in the world of digital marketing, the one and only constant is change. Trends, tactics, tools, and strategies must be regularly monitored and optimized accordingly–and probably, more frequently than you think.?

Technology updates happen all the time, too.?And don’t forget about competition. One thing you can always count on? Your competitors are not sitting still.?

At first glance, affiliate marketing may just look like a numbers game, but don’t be fooled: High traffic doesn’t always equal big profits. The reality is, a lucrative affiliate program has to be constantly recruiting and nurturing the right partners, with the right audiences, to drive the right traffic in a way that results in new customers and actual sales for your brand. That calls for constant attention and a rock-solid strategy, one that is grounded in experience and sound enough to work week over week, month over month–and, by the way, also flexible enough to pivot when the market dictates.?

Pro tip: Sustainable ROI requires strategic insight and experience that expand beyond the numbers.

Pothole?#3:?You're Relying on a DIY Approach to Scale a Large Program

There’s a pretty widespread?misconception that affiliate marketing is simple to implement, which explains why it may be tempting to hire someone with limited experience or tap someone in-house to manage your affiliate marketing. But, in doing so, you might be setting yourself up to fail.?

Reality check: Affiliate has?a lot?of moving parts. For starters, one in-house person will never have the wealth of industry knowledge and the relationships needed to navigate the nuances and recruitment needs of building a successful affiliate program. Also, there is also a diverse set of data to analyze, myriad affiliates to vet and have access to, and special rates only an agency can secure.?

All of that takes a whole lot of expertise–and a whole lot of time. Your affiliate team - whether in-house or outsourced, must have a team of specialists across several skill sets to have eyes on your account every single day.?

Pro tip: Affiliate can be very much a scalable engine of growth for your business but only if you commit the necessary resources and manpower towards your program. Affiliate is not, and will never be, a part-time gig. Period.

Pothole?#4: Letting Your Guard Down?

Affiliate marketing may appear to be a low-risk path to brand awareness and revenue, but that doesn't mean it’s risk-free. Every year,?an estimated 2% of all transactions are attributed to affiliate fraud. At first glance, this might not seem so bad. But it adds up to well over $200 million in lost revenue each year, which is about a 22% reduction in return on?your?ad spend. Ouch.

That’s a lot of wasted marketing dollars. Not to mention, a real risk to the integrity of your brand.

One of the best ways to stay ahead of fraudsters is to be extremely proactive, as in constantly-on-the-lookout-for-anomalies-in-your-data kind of proactive. That’s how you catch things like high click counts without the conversions to match, cookie stuffing, or bot traffic.?

Pro tip: Fraudster tools will continue to become more sophisticated so new forms of fraud are always in the works. You can’t take your eyes off your data for a second.

Pothole?#5:?You've Handed Over Control of your Affiliate Program

There are many players in the affiliate space; lots of expertise, bandwidth, tech -- all designed to build and sustain a profitable program.

But when it comes to the many traps of the affiliate channel -- fraud, mis-attribution, overpayment of commissions to publishers and more -- it's tempting to buy into a provider will protect you mommy-like from all the bad stuff. That is a gross over-simplification.

You have to be an active participant in your brand’s success. This doesn't mean you'll actually?do?all the recruiting, vetting, and managing a roster of quality publishers that are right for your brand.

It is, however, your job to ask all the hard questions that may be hidden under a 10-page scope of work. Knowing the potholes of this complex channel is a good place to start.

One of the reasons we invested in our own tech is because we wanted our clients as well as our in-house teams to have access to credible, network agnostic analyses that are connected to the larger digital landscape. We call our proprietary technology?Control Suite?for that very reason.

Pro tip: Don't be forced to decide between tech or service. You deserve both.

About Stephanie Harris

Stephanie Harris was PartnerCentric's?first employee when she was hired by the founders early in 2006 at a time when the company was just taking shape.

Today she?is the owner & CEO of PartnerCentric, the largest woman-owned performance marketing agency in the US. A veteran of the space, Stephanie got her start as an award-winning affiliate program manager, personally managing at one time some of the largest programs in the PartnerCentric portfolio today. She believes that in order to lead in the affiliate space today you have to know how to do every role in order to propel client success and employee satisfaction forward with vision, talent and drive.

Reach out to Stephanie at [email protected]