What Does The Future Hold For Affiliate Marketing?

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I’ve been in affiliate marketing for 20 years and some change :) - during this time I can safely say that we’re moving into a new iteration of affiliate or as many now refer? to it? “partnership” marketing.?

The internet of things is changing, and we’re facing Web 3.0 fast and furiously with innovation coming to the fore quicker than when? With the emergence of the metaverse, brands are beginning to engage with customers on a variety of platforms.?

The End of the term "Affiliate Marketing?"

I strongly believe that the term ‘affiliate marketing’ will soon be archived by those who have a deeper understanding of how true partnership marketing is forged. Why? Simply because the boundaries of what an affiliate is have stretched and changed over the years, and we’re entering a new era where content curators, ambassadors and influencers now form a big part of the partnership economy we are diving into.?

This commercial model is paid on performance metric but often it’s also not. Delegating what happens in the affiliate space including everything sitting outside of paid SEO, pay-per-click and even social media or social selling is now a full time job.?

We are fund managers.?

We are relationship builders.

We are marketing strategists.

We’re witnessing a huge catch-all where influencers, content creators, mobile app developers, paid advertisers and cashback and marketing tech-type publishers are becoming commonplace across most programs.?

Brand partnerships are strengthened as brands partner with other brands to drive sales. We’ve seen this with the likes of Salesforce, Hubspot and Shopify who are building partnerships with businesses that collaborate with them to enable more sales across their customer databases.

The affiliate channel is no longer a channel but is instead a methodology, a marketing style or type that is adopted at a much deeper level than just being a small part of a brand's marketing mix. It’s a way of doing business that heavily relies on transparency of partnerships, data and making sure that both partners are getting the best value from working alongside one another.

It’s about collaboration & symbiosis.

Compliance Will Get Stricter?

One thing I believe will come to the fore as affiliate marketing continues to grow and mature, is that we’re going to have to get stricter on embedding more compliance policies and processes to manage these new changes.?

A lot is already happening to this in the pipeline in the US with the FTC as they create stronger rules about how affiliates should promote? and the messaging that they need to put in place.?

Marketing technology is evolving with tools like Rightlander that look at affiliate compliance in terms of how third-party partners are managing your brand, delivering to the commercials and the deal structures that you put in place with them.

Performance Partner or Advertiser??

Affiliates will soon stop thinking of themselves as performance partners, and more as advisors.?

Larger affiliates who have a significant volume of traffic and customers in their databases are beginning to consider themselves more like media publishers and less like performance partners.?

But what does that mean long-term??

We may have to alter the way that commercials and affiliate marketing are carried out.?

Not only this, but we may also have to reconsider the way we manage these relationships more professionally, with more resources behind them.

Simpler Processes

As affiliate marketing evolves, I believe that we’ll see a simplification of the affiliate management process.?

Tech is constantly improving and creating automation tools for affiliate managers to manage big databases of partners that they’re working with.?

Impact.com has a fantastic tool that’s plugged into their affiliate network called ‘Media Rails’, which helps affiliate managers create stellar onboarding processes, for their partners that are coming into their program and help them get up to speed on their products and services to start promoting them quickly.?

Once something becomes automated, it then requires fewer resources for the brand to manage.?

For the last 20 years, the affiliate marketing channel has been growing year on year at double-digit percentages, and it’s showing no signs of slowing.?

As more digital marketers are being pushed to spend budget wisely to get more for their money, we’re going to see a shift as more channels move to partner marketing and ad-based outcomes.

Funds Managers?

Understanding where margins can be squeezed and where the margins can be improved is key.?

Tweaking the labouring of where the budget is being spent across multiple partners will achieve the best results for brands.?

I like to think of affiliate managers as fund managers.?

Why??

We’re given a budget and we’re tasked with spending their budget across multiple traffic sources.?

It’ll be important for affiliate marketers to think about where they want to specialise in their career skillset as the days of only having one affiliate manager running an entire program will soon fade.?

Thinking about your skillset and investing in your development and training as an affiliate manager is something that, I believe, will become a requirement within the role.?

There will need to be a shift in how teams are managed going forward and how programs are being run. Their channels are going to make a much larger segment of the marketing mix, simply because of the way that it pays on performance.?

And unlike any other channel, it can be highly regulated, highly monitored and controlled.?

Is Affiliate Marketing Here To Stay?

As we head into Web 3.0, the affiliate marketing industry must adapt to a whole new universe.?

We need to keep a close eye on what’s happening as we move forward in the digital world and observe how affiliates are going to optimise and invest in those segments to start staking a claim in terms of how they operate within the metaverse.?

But ultimately, I believe it’s good news for affiliate marketing.?

I believe affiliate marketing is here to stay, and that it’s unlikely to change dramatically.?

It’ll be an integral part of any digital marketing platform – and it’s an exciting time to be entering this industry too!?

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