Affiliate Marketing agencies are leveraged by brands who are looking to extract more value out of the affiliate channel by recruiting new publisher partners, developing more in-depth relationships with current publisher partners, and right pricing the channel to ensure it is providing a strong ROI. To understand whether you should bring on an Affiliate Management Agency, you need to understand what Affiliate Marketing is, what your programs potential looks like, and what KPIs you’re hoping to achieve. As leaders in the industry, let us help you clarify a few things!

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is a performance-based marketing channel that leverages different types of partners (from mass media outlets to influencers to shopper loyalty sites) to help brands get exposure. In return for partners giving brands exposure, brands pay partners a percentage of the revenue they drive.

What do Affiliate Marketing Agencies do?

Affiliate Agencies help advertisers optimize and increase the output of their affiliate programs by:

• Having premium relationships with publishers to ensure that your product is prioritized for placements and promotions over your competitors
• Working with industry leading media outlets to create content and exposure for brands
• Implementing a sales driving influencer marketing strategy
• Honing in on the recruitment, development, and onboarding of traditional affiliate partners
• Applying data and insights into customer journeys to determine how to properly reward and incentivize high value partners and to focus strategy around incrementality
• Executing the day to day operations of an affiliate program

Do I need to Hire an Affiliate Agency?

The three biggest reasons to find an Affiliate Program are:

1. You are not seeing growth from your current Affiliate Program
• Your current in house team or Affiliate Agency just isn’t cutting it! If you’re not hitting your goals, it may be time to find a new agency to help you drive growth.
2. You don’t have the bandwidth to manage an Affiliate Program
• It requires a lot of time investment to have your Affiliate Program running to the level you want. From recruitment to onboarding to daily maintenance – Affiliate Marketing can be a lot of work. We can manage your program so you don’t have to!
3. You’d like an expert agency’s perspective on your Affiliate Program
• Your program is productive, but you feel like it has more to achieve. An Affiliate Agency typically has a much more robust wealth of knowledge that can help. Insights on SEO strategies, partnering with influencers, and e-commerce recommendations should be tactics your Affiliate Agency can provide direction on. Affiliate Agencies should see the bigger picture in helping to develop an all-inclusive strategy.

Which Affiliate Agency is the right fit for my Company?

Previous Experience Knowledge is key! Your Affiliate Marketing Agency should have a history in the affiliate space and be able to demonstrate knowledge of affiliate networks, affiliate technology and tools, and vertical-specific publishers.

Publisher Partnerships From conference attendance to publisher road trips – it takes years to build relationships with affiliates. Your Affiliate Agency needs to have consistent and valuable relationships in the space so that they can help your brand get priority for placement opportunities.

Communication Your Affiliate Marketing Agency should be available for you 24/7 and have a dedicated call with you at least weekly. Throughout the week they should be demonstrating their value by providing reporting and recruitment updates.

Creative Thinking & Strategy Roadmap You want your Affiliate Agency to provide you examples of out-of-the-box thinking or potential areas of development that may be non-traditional for the affiliate space. The best affiliate programs take an innovative approach and know how to incorporate other tactics to drive sales.

Team of Experts You want to make sure your agency has enough experienced professionals dedicated to your project. The best teams should include account managers who are responsible for driving the day-to-day success of the program, publisher development managers that communicate daily with your base of publishers, and publisher recruitment specialists who are aggressively tackling the onboarding of new affiliates.

Want to Learn More About Our Affiliate Program?

DMi Partners affiliate management solutions help brands build a footprint in the affiliate space by providing program consulting, strategy, and execution. DMi has a proven track record of success scaling programs for our advertisers and keeping them one step ahead of their competition. If you’re interested in learning more please contact info@dmipartners.com.