Finding good and reliable affiliate partners is just the beginning of the journey to greate affiliate partnerships. If you have managed to create fruitful relationships with good affiliate partners your business is thriving and your brand is being promoted to the best audiences available on the internet. If one of your biggest sources of business are affiliate partnerships, it is vital for your business to maintain good relationships with them.
Research
When it comes to affiliate partnerships, research becomes essential. Let’s have a look at what it should focus on and what info will help you adjust your communication with them.
The first thing to find out is what kind of and how many websites do your affiliates own. Are they focused on a general audience or a particular niche? This will help you determine which products you might want to offer to a particular audience.
How much traffic do their websites generate? Related to the first point, more traffic, of course, means more people to see your products. However, this does not mean that a website with lower traffic has nothing to offer. If a website has a particular niche market, it might be a wise thing to target specific products to them if the audience relates to it. That way, your affiliates can make more sales by targeting a smaller group.
What channels work the best for them? Is it a blog post, a youtube video, or a basic post on social media? This can be individual for each affiliate and to get the best results, you should be able to provide them with everything they need to create good content.
What kind of materials do they need to better promote your product? Make sure you provide them with marketing and branding materials, such as banners, custom logo designs, videos, and more. In the case of reliable affiliates who bring you a lot of business, consider providing them with sample products.
Communication
Just like in every other aspect of business and marketing, communication is vital. Make sure you get in touch with your affiliates regularly, share ideas and brainstorm.
Take the top 5 out of your 10 best affiliates and schedule regular calls with them. Discuss what they’re doing well, what could be improved and what kind of communication would work in the future. Are your partners making a lot of sales? Make sure to let them know when they’re doing something well and send them alerts.
Educate your affiliates. By providing them with useful and relevant information about your business and your products, keeping them in touch with updates and changes, they can provide more relevant information to their audience and better sell your products.
Management
If you have managed to create great relationships with your partners you should be in a situation where you don’t need to worry about trusting them. However, doing regular checkups helps you steer them in the right direction. At the same time, you can keep an eye out for affiliates with bad reputation or tactics. Affiliates with obnoxious or intrusive behavior on their customers can make a bad name for your company.
Make regular statistics reports and share them with your affiliates. Statistics allow your partners to see exact numbers and results. They can gather information about what works and what doesn’t. Have a say in what content concerning your products they share with their audience.
Give them advice about what they could improve on their webs and content creation.
10 practical tips
1. Know yourself
You cannot sell yourself until you know yourself. Make sure you know all the relevant information about both your company and your product. Learn your history, your mission and your purpose in the world. Get to know your products on a more personal level, try them out yourself and see why they work well and why they don’t. This will give you a useful perspective and change your point of view when deciding on a strategy.
2. Educate your partners
Your partners can do research about your company and your products on their own but it’s a much better idea to give them knowledge about how things work from the inside. If you know yourself, you should not have a problem giving useful information to your partners and guide them through your company and products.
3. Give them feedback
Don’t be afraid to tell your partners what works and what doesn’t. Giving positive feedback or even constructive criticism helps them learn what they can do better or what should not change when it comes to selling your products on their websites.
4. Ask for feedback in return
Your affiliates have done the research and know what their audience does or does not like. Asking for feedback about your products can be very valuable since it comes straight from the people who share their opinions. You can find out what people like about your products, what could be improved and what is great just as it is. Receiving feedback from your affiliates can be a truly valuable experience that can improve your business.
5. Let their passion show
Affiliates have various niches, interests, and websites related to them. Each one of them can present your products in a different way, find interesting benefits and come up with new ways of usability. So, let them get creative and find great ways how to promote your thing.
6. Let them access and test new products
Today’s markets are overflowing with new products, services and all sorts of marketing communication which often might not seem genuine. When your customers have many options it might be pretty hard for them to make a choice. Let them test your new products or services and create content and reviews about it.
7. Welcome new affiliates
Don’t forget about your new partners and make a connection with them. Send them an introductory email and welcome them into the partnership. This makes your communication more personal right from the start and they will feel much more appreciated.
8. Special campaigns
Consider launching special campaigns, events or even competitions for your affiliates to increase their engagement. Challange or special offers invite fun into the process and can produce some great results in the long term.
9. Provide support
Even if you’re communicating clearly, mishaps and misunderstandings can happen. Make sure you have someone available to answer questions from your partners and clear things up if they’re not sure which direction should they go with.
10. Make sure everyone gets paid on time
Never make your affiliates chase their payment from you. If they’re good at what they do, they have to spend a lot of time and thinking about how to promote your products in the best possible way. It would not be fair towards them to keep them waiting for what they’re due.
Conclusion
All in all, building relationships with new affiliate partners and maintaining them is all about correct communication and attitude. Make sure you do research about your company and products, and at the same time about your future partners. Let them know about your mission, your plans and be clear about what exactly do you want to achieve.
6 reasons to use a third-party affiliate management system
An affiliate management system can help companies improve their affiliate marketing programs by tracking metrics, detecting fraud cases, eliminating the need for hiring an accountant, providing user-friendly solutions, and simplifying the process of building an affiliate network.
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