7 Tips for a Running a Successful Affiliate Program

Running an affiliate marketing company can be one of the most best ways to boost your sales, if you know how to do it right. Here are 7 helpful tips the best affiliate marketing companies apply to their programs. 

1.  Align the program strategy with your internal goals and objectives

Affiliate marketing can be valuable, but don’t let it change the way you do business. You should first consider if an affiliate program is a viable revenue opportunity, and also consider how it can help you reach your growth objectives.  Develop a program that aligns with the business goals you already have laid out.

2.  Select the right affiliate network to launch with

There are many affiliate networks to choose from, so make sure you vet each and pick the one that aligns most with your own goals and efforts. Some are generalized while others specialize by industry, and all of them will have their own distinct advantages and some have drawbacks.

3.  Develop the right affiliate commission structure

You can create custom terms for your individual affiliates, but you also need a default rate for all your standard affiliates. This will include a cut for your affiliate and the affiliate network. Will you have a flat commision structure or will it vary by product category? Is it worthwhile to pay for leads or offer sales incentives? Your affiliate manager can help answer these questions.

4.  Put in place the right program policies restrictions

To some extent, your affiliates are representative of you, so it’s important to have clear restrictions, such as banning offensive websites. Develop other guidelines for working with your company, such as limitations on paid search and coupon usage.

5.  Develop high performing media

Different content types speak to different audiences, so it's important to develop a wide variety of high performing media to reach the most potential leads. Banner ads are the most common option, but you should also develop text links, email creative copy, and product data feeds to gain the most reach.

6.  Develop an affiliate recruiting strategy

Depending on your industry, there are certain types of affiliates who will bring more value to your business. You should work to target these specific affiliate types, and develop outreach messaging to draw in the most valuable recruits.

7.  Align the necessary resources, expertise and experience to properly launch and grow your affiliate program

Many businesses have begun affiliate marketing, though few have the knowledge and expertise to gain exponential returns on their own. Working with experienced outsourced affiliate program management is the perfect way to ensure you make all the right choices for success from the beginning.

Versa Marketing Incis an expert affiliate marketing consultant with years of experience launching and managing existing affiliate programs.

 We leverage our experience affiliate relationships to develop the most effective performance based marketing strategy for your business

The Value of an Affiliate Management Company

There’s no denying that there is incredible money to be made in affiliate marketing. According to Forrester, affiliate marketing will be a $6.8B industry by next year and it’s vastly outpacing the growth of competing technologies like pay per click (PPC) primarily because it is outcome based, which nearly guarantees a return.

That’s pretty appealing but most companies are being left behind simply because they lack the time, access, consulting, relationships, and resources that they need to develop a successful affiliate marketing program. 

Hence, the recent boom of affiliate management companies and consultants.  They introduce their clients’ program to the thousands of bustling affiliates and plug them directly into all that revenue potential. 

Here are four of the greatest advantages to working with affiliate management services: 

Excellent pre-existing relationships: A reputable affiliate management company will have a large database of affiliate relationships that can be leveraged for your program.  These bonds don’t form overnight but rather come from years of work. You can tell a top affiliate management agency right away because they’ve been around at least several years and that time in the channel is need to build the relationships that can drive real results for your program. 

Fully managed service: If you had a nuclear engineer on your team, would you ever consider taking night and weekend classes so that you could take over their job? Heck no! You’d trust them to do their thing because they’re highly specialized and their training guarantees that you avoid a meltdown.

This is exactly the sort of relationship that you’ll have with a really stellar affiliate management company. They'll fully manage the fantastically complex and nuanced affiliate marketing system that drives explosive revenue growth. You’re free to tourthe metaphorical nuclear reactor any time of course, or check-in on how the affiliate program operates, but the reality is that you’re busy and you need an expert running it for you while you sleep.

Top Performing Media: Among the top complaints of marketers who are hesitant to get into affiliate marketing, the number one fear is that their branding or messaging will be lost as it’s handed down to affiliates. Affiliate management agencies put this fear completely to rest by having in-house design teams who can perform quality assurance on your message. They also have access to top performing ads and media based on best practices so that you need to be a design genius to benefit from masterful design.

Optimization and mmaintenance: Getting a program up and running is really only half the battle. People often forget how much ongoing reporting, testing, and optimization goes into dialing-in affiliate revenue. Not to mention, those affiliates are people and have to be kept engaged and the commission structure has to be changed to both keep it interesting and adapt it to the flood of new technology. 

In a nutshell, outsourced affiliate program management allow you to leap from the "merely interested” stage to extraordinary results, fast. They’ve already laid the foundations you need to be successful, from the relationships and creative media to the intuition and ongoing management.

So now that you’re feeling fired up and ready to tackle affiliate marketing hand in hand with an expert consultant, look no further than Versa Marketing Inc. We’re one of the top affiliate marketing agencies dedicated to helping people navigate this complex industry.

Give us a shout at (800) 940-8780 to talk to someone or jump right into a free consultation and let’s get you started!