What do affiliate program management and football have in common?

You wouldn’t send your athletes out onto the field without any footballs, padding, or equipment would you? Of course you wouldn’t! Yet this is precisely what happens every time that a company leaps into affiliate marketing without considering its affiliates. They’re more than numbers; they’re your players, and individuals to boot. Affiliates have lives outside of your program, replete with hobbies, fears, loves, and interests. And just like players, if you send them out onto the field without a game plan or equipment, they’re going to get crushed by the competition. 

So put your coaching cap on and let’s review the 4 plays you can use to manage your affiliate marketing program to victory: 

     1.       Provide a game plan: Make life as simple as possible for your affiliates and when they’re out there on the field running around promoting your service and driving sales, they’ll need a quick-reference guide so that they don’t have to keep looking up the elevator pitch or the product details.

     2.       Produce the media for them: What would football be like if players had to sew their own footballs? Unless they were exceptionally talented at sewing they probably wouldn’t have a lot of time left for training, and wouldn’t be very good. Your affiliates likewise don’t have the expertise (or time, frankly) to make their own footballs! By developing Media like banner ads, graphics, FAQ’s, and taglines, you save your affiliate team time and allow them to focus on what you want them doing: selling. 

     3.       Ongoing contests and engagement: Getting started is only the first play of the game! Your team needs to stay motivated and focused. If you’re now thinking of your affiliates as players and people, you’re realizing that they have families to take care of, DMV appointments to get to, and dinner to make. By running contests, checking in, updating materials, and sending helpful emails, you help them stay focused and on-track in a  world where they also have their own busy lives!

     4.       Recruit super-affiliates: When the data comes back on your outsourced affiliate program management and you crunch the numbers, it’s going to be very clear who your top players are. Reward them and bring them closer into the fold! If they’re producing 10x the results of half of the people on the list, they deserve a better deal and to be treated as an MVP so that they continue to perform even better. These are the affiliates who are going to take you to the Super Bowl!

Now, just watch out for the cooler full of gatorade, because you’ve just about won! Keeping your team in play quarter after quarter takes game-plans, check-ins, strategy sessions, and the right media to make your affiliate management program a stellar success!

Looking for help getting started? 

Versa Marketing is among the top rated affiliate management companies because they’re exceptional at supporting the affiliate players that lead their customers to victory.