How To Reap The Rewards Of Your Affiliate Marketing Programme
Driving a whopping £40,000 in revenue every minute, affiliate marketing is one of the most effective tools to grow your brand and make more sales. However, to truly unlock the potential of the affiliate space, you need to do more than simply set up an affiliate marketing programme and hope it does its magic. Consumers are considering their purchases more than ever before, and careful programme management is key to standing out and maximising the potential of your existing affiliate network.
If you’ve set up an affiliate marketing programme but have no idea what to do next, or your historically well-performing programme is long overdue for some deserved TLC, worry not. There are loads of things that you can do to improve your affiliate marketing. As you review your efforts, make sure that the following steps are at the core of your affiliate programme management.
Evaluate Your Existing Partnerships
Before making any attempt to grow your affiliate marketing programme, you need to look inward. Your current relationships are the foundations of your network, so evaluate these and think carefully about whether your affiliate partners are aligned with and contributing towards your growth goals.
Identify which affiliates are converting well and consistently delivering revenue, and invest in strengthening those relationships. At the same time, it’s still worth reaching out to any less fruitful partners you may have to re-engage. They may have new opportunities or suggestions that will ensure the relationship is successful for the both of you – but ultimately you won’t be able to know if this is the case if you just leave them to it and simply hope things improve!
Diversify Your Range Of Affiliate Partners
A common pitfall for affiliate marketing programmes is an over-reliance on a narrow group of partners. While you absolutely should invest in the relationships that deliver the best reward, diversifying the range of networks you work with is essential for improving affiliate performance in the long term.
Different partners bring different strengths, whether that’s access to a specific audience like students, or trust amongst a group that might otherwise not engage with your brand. Diversification also reduces the risk of operating in the affiliate space. With a range of partnerships in play, the success of your programme won’t be precariously reliant on one or two performers, increasing the likelihood that you can reap the reward of sustained growth from affiliate marketing.
Make Your Programme Fit With Your Overall Marketing Strategy
It is very easy to set up an affiliate programme and then leave it to run independently from the rest of your marketing channels. Whilst the focus is conversions and the payment structure is often different to other channels – with affiliate cost being based on what’s delivered rather than what is attempted – the channel should be working to complement your overall strategy and there is a broad enough range of affiliates in the channel to make sure it can do that for you.
You could aim to engage with influencers to increase visibility, or set up your commission to entice new customers or subscribers. Equally, it might be that you want to actively support our key workers with special incentives when they are shopping from your site. All of these things and a plethora of others can be done via your affiliate marketing programme to support your overarching marketing goals.
Keep Seasonality At The Forefront Of Your Strategy
Periods like Christmas, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are traditionally very busy within the affiliate space, but a dormant affiliate marketing programme will not be best placed to take advantage of this seasonality. If you want to improve your affiliate marketing, your programme should be aligned with the key shopping seasons to maximise returns.
Think carefully about how best you can align your brand with seasonal affiliate opportunities. Black Friday discount codes will drive extra sales for some brands, while others may prefer to offer enhanced cashback throughout the whole Christmas shopping period. It’s this kind of careful consideration that can make all the difference to the success of your affiliate marketing programme. By prioritising seasonality, you not only boost your programme’s revenue during peak shopping times but also further strengthen your relationships with affiliates. They’ll appreciate being part of well-organised campaigns that drive meaningful results for both sides of the partnership.
Track Performance Efficiently
Tracking the performance of your affiliate marketing programme is essential and should be at the very heart of your day-to-day programme management. Without accurate tracking, you risk wasting time and money on underperforming strategies and resources.
If you’re wondering how to improve your affiliate marketing, one of the most important things you can do is invest in a robust tracking infrastructure to give you the data you need to make informed decisions when it comes to what is working and what isn’t. This includes monitoring clicks, conversions and ROI across all of your channels. For notoriously hard-to-track channels like influencer marketing, specialist solutions like Stored can give you the trusted data you need to truly understand the impact of your affiliate marketing programme.
Get Help From The Experts
From evaluating partnerships to capitalising on seasonal trends, there are countless ways that you can optimise your existing affiliate marketing programme. However, if you’re unfamiliar with the affiliate space then it can naturally feel a little daunting trying to put some of the suggestions made in this article into place.
That’s where we can come in. At Fuel, we have vast experience managing affiliate marketing programmes across a range of sectors and can help you maximise the potential returns from your network. We offer a comprehensive affiliate programme management and reporting service which accounts for all of the optimisations you need to consider to make your strategy efficient, effective and profitable.
Want to find out exactly how we can help you reap the rewards of an affiliate programme? Do not hesitate to contact us online or reach out to me directly by emailing seve@fuel-growth.com.
