Building a Strong Partner Marketing Program

When developing your partner marketing program, it is essential to consider the following:

Establishing clear attainable objectives:

• Making a list of Short term and long-term goals: Why are you launching a partner marketing program? Is it for a specific product launch? Or is it to attract more customers on an ongoing basis?

• Target Customer: What is your customer persona? Are you looking to get new customers or re-engage old ones?

• Outcome: What do you want your affiliates to drive? What types of conversions are your aiming for? E-mail subscribers, downloading applications?

Sourcing the right Partners that will fit with your overall brand objectives:

• Taking into account demographics is key: Purchasing habits of your customers, what do they read? The types of products they buy. Where do they look for products? Are they more likely to use desktop or mobile?

• Ensuring you build a diverse portfolio of partners: Although, this often overlooked as it requires additional recruitment efforts to look for various affiliates, it is essential to spend a significant amount to look for the right partners – otherwise your program may rely too much on certain partners, which automatically puts your partner marketing program at risk

Advantages of a Diverse partner marketing program:

• Reach new customers: when you build relationships with several affiliates you automatically reach to a wider audience.

• Going beyond traditional partners: Partners can interact with customers at different touch-points of the customer journey, therefore working with partners from different affiliate models increases the chances for conversion.

• Upper funnel partners are usually, content sites and influencers their role is to educate potential customers on your brand

• During the consideration stage of the journey, Voucher sites, Comparison and loyalty sites, where factors such as exclusive rates can lead to the purchase.

• At the Bottom of the funnel we tend to see cashback, email or re-targeting affiliates that will drive the final conversion

Tips for achieving Diversification efficiently

• Group your affiliates: communicate with your affiliates in a targeted and relevant way, this will lead to engagement, focus on specific ROI for each affiliate type.

• Explore new opportunities: use tools such as SEMrush and similar web to find new affiliate opportunities.

• Look at the competition and get inspired.Your program needs to be as attractive.