Hi, and welcome to the Affiliate Insider Podcast with me, Leanne Johnston. This is a podcast for digital and affiliate marketers. Listen up as I explore the latest digital and affiliate marketing trends and give you the insider's view on what's occurring in affiliate marketing. Join us as we explore affiliate strategies, host expert interviews with leading affiliates and tech entrepreneurs, and discuss the latest affiliates and digital marketing trends. If you want to stay at the cutting edge of affiliate marketing, you're in the right place. Join me for this week's episode and let's get started.
SPEAKER_02If you're looking to launch an affiliate program but aren't 100% sure where or how to start, put your best foot forward and book a free agency call with us today. Affiliate Insider offers a range of agency services from strategy and consulting to technical integration, affiliate recruitment, and in-depth program audits. Our team will help you plot the right course, save you time to launch and scale a successful affiliate program and strategy. As one of the UK's top 50 rated agencies as ranked by the Drum's Digital Agency Census, we've helped hundreds of brands launch and grow multi-million dollar programs across a range of industries. Why not book a free scoping call and let us help you expand your reach with successful affiliate marketing? Visit affiliateinsider.com and click on agency to find out more.
SPEAKER_06Welcome to the Affiliate Insider Affiliate Marketing Podcast with me, Leanne Blindstone. This episode was brought to you by Cottmorize.
SPEAKER_01Dynamics of the marketing game have changed, effectively seeding control from marketer to consumer, increasing pressure for omnipresence to meet your consumer whenever and wherever they are in their buying journey. Yet tapping pay-for-access channels is expensive and unsustainable. We believe that all marketers need sustainable, brand safe, and scaled alternatives to their primary sales and marketing channels, and that goal is best achieved at the intersection of scale, automation, and performance-based compensation models. You need to turn your partnerships into profit centers. The partnership channel offers a unique combination of automation, scale, and outcome-based pricing models to create operating leverage necessary to drive sustained, profitable growth. Partnerize delivers the software platform and expert services that help the world's leading brands create operating leverage by turning their partnership channels into profit centers. We offer you a better way to partner.
SPEAKER_06Well, I've been rattling around in the affiliate marketing business for more than two decades, managing affiliate programs across multiple industries and working with both startup and blue chip brands. As you'll hear, I've got a bit of an accent. I was actually born in South Africa, but now reside in the United Kingdom, where I manage affiliate Insider, an agency, content hub, and events company. I've literally seen how affiliate marketing burst and grew into the fragmented model it is today, and I'm loving every minute of it. I'm also rather lucky to be in a position where I can foresee future trends, hold a bird's eye view of where things are headed, and understand why things work the way that they do. The key thing is I've seen during my tenure how effective referral marketing can be across multiple industries. And this week, I've got a lot to share with you as we delve a bit deeper into the content we shared from our recent affiliate insider Amplify Summit, which kicked off in last week's episode, covering future trends to watch for 2022. This week, though, I'll be sharing the highlights from the panel discussion sponsored by Partnerize, as we discussed what affiliate marketers need to do to better manage partnerships and grow in this now fragmented marketplace we're operating in. The truth is, being an affiliate manager simply isn't easy. We now operate in a world where we need to diversify our strategies to accommodate a multitude of different partnerships. The one size fits all approach is no longer an option for program managers to gain an advantage. The channel has moved on, expanded outside of being just a digital medium, and now it can be seen as a performance or payment methodology that sits alongside other digital channels to help expand customer engagement, brand reach, and product awareness too. So if you missed last week's episode, press pause now and go back to listen to it. Then come and join me to get the highlights from the panel of experts that joined this particular discussion. And in case you missed it or wondering what the heck Amplify was, in short, our summits are an opportunity to kickstart the year with industry experts, highlighting where and how to focus your strategy to gain momentum. Our next event, Elevate, is going to be coming up soon on the 14th and 15th of June. So make sure you head on over to our website and register so that you don't miss out on our next insightful conference. A chance to network with industry leaders and the opportunity to meet new partners, demo new marketing tech, and basically elevate your performance as we see this year come to an end. For now, let me crack on and give you some of the highlights from the most food sessions at this event and allowing you to consider your next bold move as you follow your strategy to drive incremental growth for your publisher relationships in the week ahead. I'll get you started off with the main points we discussed with this first clip from the panel where Maura Smith from Partnerize and Alex Markov from Refersion start off by explaining where affiliate marketing is heading and how we can no longer consider affiliate marketing as a channel, but more as a model, and how to approach partner diversification to gain additional growth and traction for your brand in the year ahead. So let's get started with today's panel where we're talking about amplifying your performance in a fragmented marketplace. And to kickstart this conversation, my question to you, Maura, is you know, the affiliate gene pool is getting really, really difficult to navigate. Let's face it. We're finding lots and lots more people working on the performance model. What are some of the big challenges that brands are facing right now with this new complex ecosystem that we're working in? Sure.
SPEAKER_04Thanks for the question, Leanne. I think in order to answer this, I'm going to give a little bit of historical context about what's taken place within our channel, specifically as it relates to partner diversification. So finally, I believe over the last two years, we've seen partner diversification really materialize. And prior to that, for you know, the majority of time in this channel, the dominating partner types were coupon, voucher, cashback, until the last two years, where we started to see content commerce really make meaningful contributions to the category, not just in traffic, but also in revenue contribution. In fact, we've done some research over at Partnerize through our growth index, which showcases the growth that's taken place across the partner types in our category. But the shift in terms of contributing partners really didn't happen on its own. We know that brands long desired a more meaningful contribution to programs from content partners and content creators. But, you know, advances in technology, specifically with regard to attribution and commissioning tools, really paved the way for content partners to be properly compensated for their role in the consumer conversion journey. This partner type was, you know, highly coveted because they often lived in the uppermost or discovery stages of a conversion journey, driving higher new defile rates. But because of this channel's last click model, pay for performance model, these partner types often didn't receive credit for their role in a conversion journey. But now with these advances in attribution, applying credit to partners at first touch, split across the path, or really at any point in the journey, they can now earn compensation credit and are therefore invested in making a material impact across partner programs. I think that this historical context is important because it means brands, marketers must realize that in a now diversified partner landscape, one size fits all approaches no longer work, whether that's in terms of applying commissioning strategies, attribution, deploying incentives to partners. Brands and marketers really need to think about taking a tailored approach to their relationships and partnerships to ensure that they're not only setting themselves up for success, but that they're setting their partners up for success in terms of what they can drive in terms of value for their program. So it's really about, you know, ensuring that you're not taking a one-size-fits-all approach and optimization.
SPEAKER_06So I'm going to talk a little bit about that because I want to head over to Alex. I know you guys have done some amazing things with brands like Pure Vida with ambassador programs that are being incorporated into this whole affiliate performance mix. Talk to us a little bit about what you have seen some of the challenges being.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you. I agree that you know the the sort of stakeholders space have changed and more have been added. We're seeing a lot of companies like Pure Vita and other folks like them who are really creating a sort of uh story around their own authenticity, how they work with individuals creating content where it used to be big companies like the rebate companies, which still exist and are highly profitable, but now it's individual content contributors, you know, like influencers. So actually, oftentimes we say it's, you know, while we want to plug into every merchant and help them create a really good program to work with those folks better, sometimes you don't want to get in too early. Yeah, it's important that you know you think about your marketing, your story to your influencers first so that they can properly represent your brand. So they they have to be bought in. Um, we see a lot of like specifically younger consumers. They really care about who the brand is. You know, they they want that sort of authenticity that could be a bit more skeptical around who they buy from. So it's really important that a brand's arm their partners with that story and uh you know, even collateral around how they operate. I think establishing your brand's identity to hopefully flop to your brand is is important. So I think once you have that recipe, using a you know, a software like Refersion makes it a lot easier. And you could see that in like pure Vita brands, types of brands where where they really they they make sure to stay close to their folks and their groups.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. So it's no one size fits all approach and stay close and understanding what your marketing is. Seth, what about you? I mean, from a network perspective, you obviously went with a lot of different clients in a lot of different programs and publisher types. What do you think some of the challenges are?
SPEAKER_07I think more to touch on a good point there, that the one size fits all approach just doesn't really work anymore. Different brands are coming in for different reasons, different brands are using the channel for different reasons as well. I think from my side with Grow, we're targeting small businesses. So I think the strategy or the plan that they have in place is the most important place to start, and that they should really look at focusing on affiliates that that help them reach their short-term goals, because if they don't reach their short-term goals, I think they generally don't reach the opportunity to create long-term goals. That makes sense within the channel in any case. And um I think on that front, it's and I think I've said this to you plenty of times, there's not it's not a qualitative approach, right? If you look for a couple of affiliates, a handful of good partners that will help you launch your program quickly and get moving. And from there you can build on the base sets that are already in place and and moving you forward. I think the other thing is from a network point of view, and I'm sure from agency as well, the brand should really work with their affiliate managers and with their agencies to plan their strategies. You know, we've all got a lot of experience being in the industry for so long. And if you're a new brand coming to the industry, leveraging that experience and knowledge is quite important, quite key. And yeah, they'll help you find the right partners to get that off the ground.
SPEAKER_06Okay, so some key takeaways for you to think about from this clip, as Seth from Grow has mentioned, the one size fits all model of affiliate management no longer works. Your tech and team need to be operating on a diversified and segmented partner management approach. This starts by understanding the traffic sources you need and want for your short-term goals and has to align with other digital marketing channels you're also investing in. Number two, get strategic about what you want to work with and why. What do you need your publishers to bring you to complement your own direct marketing efforts? Where do you need publishers to fill the gaps in your customer journeys? And how can you leverage agencies and networks to help you access these partnerships and develop specific commercial models and manage them to success? Spray and prey tactics, they simply are no longer going to work. If you're launching your affiliate program now and coming to the table in a competitive landscape, you best be laser focused on showing short-term goals and measuring your success. Use agencies to help you get that data. Work with 20 perfect partners versus trying to onboard and recruit 200 poor ones. Resource your team to extract value quantitatively with quality-driving partnerships. If your program is about sales, go after sales. If your program is about brand reach, that's a different strategy altogether. Chris Chadgett from Publisher Discovery and Seth Rubin echoed these sentiments by expanding a little bit further in this next segment. Take a less.
SPEAKER_03Because that way one size will never need to fit all because you're actually dealing with it as an integrated part of your overall marketing strategy.
SPEAKER_06That is the challenge, actually, because it's becoming more complex. And because it isn't a siloed channel anymore, I think that's what's causing people to not really understand how they should be working in affiliate marketing.
SPEAKER_03That's a killer ball, anyway.
SPEAKER_06So how what about building scale in this fragmented marketplace? So we need to understand our strategy, we need to ask for help if we don't know how to build that strategy, we need to be thinking about it not as a siloed channel anymore, and we need to be thinking about how we move out of that one size fits all affiliate program model and actually start working with different individual, you know, traffic owners and sources differently. What are some of the things that we should be thinking about to build scale in this now fragmented marketplace? Any of you can take this first.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I think I'm gonna build on what Chris said there, because I think I have a good look on this, especially with the smaller brands. We talk a lot about outsourcing your marketing. I think as a small brand coming to affiliate or a startup business coming to affiliate, it's really difficult to invest so much straight away into paid marketing. You know, you're gonna go onto Google and run a Google Ads campaign. How much money are you gonna spend? What are your CPAs or your CPCs looking like to achieve your CPAs? You don't really have that information yet. So I think as an example, looking at Google Ads, it's just an example. It's a very easy marketing activity, Chris Channel.
SPEAKER_03Easy way to burn catch. An easy way to burn cash, but also very good affiliate manager could could well think in terms of actually using or aligning with some great affiliates who are expert PPC guys and they could do the PPC and arbitrage the traffic.
SPEAKER_07Right. So I think that essentially if you think out the box a bit, like how much of your marketing can you outsource? And it's not just PPC. PPC is the obvious one and an easy one to talk about, but in terms of video marketing or video creation, yeah, in terms of email marketing, even content creation, content marketing, you don't need to invest so much of your own money into these channels where you could find that expert affiliates that could arbitrage instead and they could do the promotion better as they're experts in that field. We think of um again, looking looking at my kind of portfolio, thinking of smaller businesses, scale is is really like a big it's it's a huge challenge for them because they're they're madly constrained by the money that they can spend. Unless they're heavily funded, it's impossible to compete with their big artists. So if they're able to potentially pay higher ECPAs than they would if they knew what they were doing across the other channels, then it's a good way that they can scale. The revenue or the money that they spend basically comes out of margin and not out of cost. So however much they sell is how much they can afford to spend on acquisition. So I think that's really a good, easy way to consider scaling.
SPEAKER_06So to sum all of that up in bullet points, affiliate marketing is no longer a channel, it's now a model. I want you to think about that a little bit and think about how that impacts what you're doing with your program strategy right now. Educating associated digital marketing teams internally in your organization is going to be important to help you build scale and work outside of previously defined marketing team silos. So let's be a little bit cognizant about working cohesively with the rest of the marketing team. Smaller brands may have to fully outsource their API programs to expert agencies or even consultants in future to gain faster success. The truth is you want to have experts managing your Aphilia program because you'll save a lot of time and money making mistakes. This model is now complex. It has to work congruently alongside other internal marketing teams so that you're not burning cash in all the wrong places or impeding your business to scale. Mora goes on to explain further, citing some of the insights that partnerized commission with the Forester Research that backed these points right up.
SPEAKER_04I would build a little bit on what Chris said earlier around the education piece. I mean, we commissioned some research with Forrester a few years ago across 175 plus senior level marketers on the affiliate channel. And one of the primary concerns that they cited was just their inability to understand this channel or model, Chris. And, you know, I think what's important to consider is that affiliate partnership is not what it was 15 years ago. Again, I mentioned earlier the only place where scale could really be achieved in this space 15 years ago was with coupon voucher and cash back. And that definitely created some perceptions with senior level marketers about affiliate being only discount-oriented. It also had a reputation, whether real or perceptive, as being manual. Um, you could even think about this, you know, manual process when it came down to recruiting and activating partners. When you couple that with what Seth said, we know that marketers tend to prioritize tactics, channels, whatever you want to call it, as prioritize those that offered the combination of scale and automation because it requires less time. It's less resource intensive for marketers, and they also need results quickly. So things like paid search, paid social, they really became the go-to tools in a marketer's arsenal. But, you know, we've definitely evolved as a model, as a channel, specifically with technology sort of driving that innovation when it comes to deriving scale from this space. So when you think about recruitment, for example, we now have automations in identifying, recruiting, and activating partners so that brands and marketers can spend less time on the tedious tasks involved in that workflow. So I think, you know, the channel is going to continue to evolve and embrace more automations that will help unlock scale. And that definitely has to be driven by technology. It can't be done alone in asylum.
SPEAKER_06Automation and scale. We're now starting to see this influence, the way that we can really extract value and grow referral marketing programs. People, affiliate marketing is now finally looking more attractive as a medium of choice to build scale and value within a digital marketing mix. She only took us 20 years to get here, right? But affiliate marketing is finally looking sexy. And maybe this is the year where we're going to see a big shift towards the sector as a less of a misunderstood medium and more of a comprehended marketing choice next to other channels such as SEO and social. Because now we can finally unlock scale and advanced technology tools and tracking. But then this raised the question about where the experts see the future of affiliate marketing heading in this fragmented marketplace. Take a listen now closely to what each of them have said. To learn and to keep learning because this market is just going to become more and more complex. And I'm sorry, I am old school, I am gonna call it a channel, even though I think we we think it's not, but another thing that's gonna be changing. But what I want to do is I wanna so we've we've we've kind of like It's explored. Yes, it's a fragmented market. Yes, there's lots of different uh publishers that are coming in. Yes, we cannot have a one size fits all. And yes, there's you know key things that you need to do in order to scale in from the technology that you use, the marketing tech that you plug in, the resources that you expand to support this model. But where do you guys see the future of affiliate marketing going? Because a lot of people coming to this event also want to understand where you guys are seeing future trends and what they need to be looking at right now in order to embrace this fragmented off it. So I'll open that up to the floor and maybe ask ladies this to get to get you more right to comment on where you see the future of affiliate marketing day.
SPEAKER_04I think you so yeah, this is this is definitely an opportune time to be part of this channel model. Innovations are certainly taking place right before our very eyes. Investment is increasing. There was a Gartner study that was done, I think, in 2021, where 65% of CMOs intended to invest more in the partnership channel. Right now, so we're definitely gonna see innovation continue to take place in our category. I think we'll see more white space created between the legacy network model and the software automation and service motions, which is definitely required to accelerate growth from this channel for both brands and partners. And that innovation is gonna trickle down to the partner types as well. You know, we talked a little bit about content commerce, content creators. That's been a long anticipated arrival in getting that partner type on par and contributing to the level that coupon voucher cashback have been. The reality is now they're definitely a mainstay in partner programs. But that's gonna give way to the next sort of partner type to emerge on the scene that will require marketers to embrace and develop to continue to diversify the major contributing partner types within our space. I think we're going to see more brand-to-brand relationships whereby there are relationships that are created and cultivated between two non-competitive brands because they'll engage in co-marketing activities and really gain the benefit of marketing to either audience and grow their own reach. And I think that's really, you know, an important consideration, especially with this next generation of consumers who are increasingly discerning and are going to require partnerships that are predicated on trust and first party data, which is also going to, you know, hopefully poses a counter to some of the challenges we've seen with ITP and the deprecation of third-party cookie. So I think, you know, in short, innovation will help spur the next sort of wave of partner types that will drive meaningful contribution in our channel.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I love that. What about you, Sach? What do you think the future of affiliate marketing looks like?
SPEAKER_07I mean, look, everyone's always talking about tracking and cookies and privacy, and I think we're all, and especially in this group, probably pretty tired of hitting that one. We all know the truth. We're all swimming through them and have been for years. I think also the most obvious rise of influencer marketing again, it's like the year of the mobile that came every year from 2007 until that step aside, I think there's three kinds of areas, practical areas, and I see in the next year, year and a half to two years, one being video. I think I touched on it before. Um content creators are more geared towards video. The new consumers, new generation of consumers are more they prefer to consume video content. So I think there's a lot of content out there, especially that's not monetized, and I think it presents a great opportunity now and in this year to jump onto that. Also, podcasting. There's a lot of a lot of voice ad and podcasts. Yeah, really. Like the the rise of podcast platforms. Um, Brandon just launched one in the finance sector and like um just taken off. Absolutely take off.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, check out our podcast, by the way. Sorry.
SPEAKER_07I think the other thing that's really, really, really exciting is the movement and conversations into metaverse. I think this is gonna be mad promotion of digital products, especially like in the influencer space, because everyone in the metaverse or on a web three kind of world becomes an influence. It touches back to what we were saying earlier about micro influencers and brands representing brands naturally. Everyone's a promoter or a defector. So you end up becoming you are the advoc for for the the brand and using web three tech, there's it's very easy to track.
SPEAKER_06I think HM already launched, didn't they? They launched it just a lot.
SPEAKER_07Was it not Lari that had a mirror that you could stand in front of and for a thing? I'm pretty sure I saw HM as well, but big brands like Adidas just did a collab with one of the biggest NFTs that sold out within minutes. Nike bought uh refract, I think it's called. It's a big design studio also in that space. Ataris bought tons of land in the sandbox. So there's a massive move into that. And what is really exciting is that there's a whole lot of ad tech and ad opportunities and marketing opportunities that are going to sprout from this. Like we we can't even fathom at the moment. So I'm really excited about that. I don't think it's so much this year, and I think this year we'll see some of the initial infrastructure get laid down. And I really think brands should start looking towards opportunities in the metaverse and and within web three and see how we can exploit that.
SPEAKER_06Video, voice, metaverse. All of these things are going to implement affiliate innovation. Take a closer look at these mediums this year. If you want to watch the full video, which will be available on Affiliate Insider later this year, you'll also hear the segment where we discuss the metaverse, the complexities of driving customers back to the basket from the fragmented marketplace, and driving customers to look out for all of these things that are going to be coming in the year ahead. When we release the full summit on demand, you can subscribe to watch this video in full on Affiliate Insider or sign up to our newsletter now. You can do that by going to affiliateinsider.com and head on down to the footer where you can subscribe to our newsletter on the homepage. Alex Marker from Revision closed us out on this panel with his most important tip for affiliate managers and brands to live by this year. Transparency and job specialization. Two key things we need to be looking at within our teams to ensure continued affiliate marketing success.
SPEAKER_00I would encourage people who are you know interested in affiliate marketing to you know think about like the future of jobs. Because we're people that do all sorts of things. It's not just like one affiliate manager that does everything. I think there'll be a lot of areas to specialize in. You know, AR, PR is probably one example. So, you know, if you're interested in the space, we're gonna need more people to do all these sort of things better.
SPEAKER_06Well, that's a wrap on this week's affiliate inslider affiliate marketing podcast. Tune in next week for part three of this four-part Amplified Summit highlights feature, because there's plenty more to be shared, and hopefully, all of these things will help you nurture and grow your partner performance and ROI too. Thanks so much for listening and stay tuned for the next exciting episode. If you missed out on attending the Amplifier Summit live, don't fret. Get your seatbook now for our next Elevate Summit taking place on the 14th and 15th of June as a virtual summit online. Simply head on over to affiliateinsider.com and click on the pink Affiliate Insider Summit button to register yourselves now. If you're listening to this podcast and wondering how the heck you missed out on Affiliate Insider's Amplified Summit, don't worry, we'll be hosting our Elevate Summit on the 14th to the 15th of June. Simply head over to affiliateinsider.com forward slash events and click on the Elevate Summit to register now.
SPEAKER_05And that's a wrap for this week's Affiliate Insider Affiliate Marketing Podcast. If you're loving what we're putting down in this series, head on over to Apple iTunes and give us a five-star rating and subscribe to our podcast channel so you never miss another insightful episode. Tune in next week for more digital marketing insights and traffic driving tips, tricks, and strategies to keep your digital marketing fresh and your affiliate program driving consistent sales.
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