4 Key Areas of Affiliate Recruitment

Maximise your affiliate recruitment by thinking like your potential affiliate partners

In my last post I talked about the need for affiliate recruitment and why it was important to always be looking at how to grow your affiliate programme, keeping an eye out for new and emerging affiliates. That is all well and good, but how do you find these affiliates and attract them to your programme? I tend to think of affiliate recruitment as having 4 key areas.

1. Differentiation and programme benefits

One of the most important areas for recruitment in my eyes is the need to know why affiliates should promote you. There are many affiliates out there and you might unearth some gems, but if you cannot give them a good reason to promote you over your competitors, why would they?

Think about what sets you apart from your competitors. Do you pay a higher commission? Can you give them exclusive offers? Can you build creative for them to suit their site? Anything that you can offer that makes it easier to work with you over other affiliate programme could give you the edge and see them switch their links to your brand over a competitor.

Avoid making unsubstantiated claims like ‘you will get rich promoting this programme’ as most affiliates will just treat this like spam. Instead focus on the actual USP’s of your affiliate programme or site.

2. Research potential affiliates

Once you understand what sets your programme apart from the crowd, the most important thing is to find new affiliates, so you can tell them how wonderful you are. There are lots of simple ways to find good affiliates for your brand.
You could begin by creating a list of keywords for your brand and use Google to find content sites within that niche. For example, if you sell stationery you might make a list like:

• Paper
• Printer
• Cheap printer
• Cheap paper
• A4 paper
• A5 paper

If you look at keywords that get plenty of traffic you might come across affiliates with good potential to promote your brand, particularly if they are already getting strong traffic from a keyword associated with your market.

You can also look to benchmark against your strongest affiliates. If you have an affiliate that is performing especially well on your programme, you could use something like Similarsites.com to look for sites that are similar (surprisingly!). This is very easy to use and can give you a list of sites to try to contact.

Lastly if you work with an affiliate network this can be an easy way to find affiliates who are driving traffic and sales. You could ask your account manager to do a ‘gap analysis’ on your programme. You can do this in two ways. First, against the network i.e. identifying the top 100 affiliates on the network and checking whether you work with them. There will be some that are irrelevant (they might work in different sectors) or unsuitable, but most of these top affiliates have the potential to drive high numbers, fairly quickly.

The second way I would ask for a network’s help with gap analysis is to compare against similar programmes. So for example, you might sell car insurance, a gap analysis against a home insurance programme would be useful as many affiliates promote insurance as a whole rather than one particular vertical.

3. Effective communication

Communication will be a balance between benefits and research. You need to tell them why they should promote you, but to do this effectively you need to understand their site, how it works, their audience and what they would need from you.
Personalisation is a key part of communication. As someone who receives lots of emails from account managers or clients, there is nothing worse than ‘Dear Affiliate’, followed by an email that shows they have never visited your site before. Just like making friends in real life, you need to show an interest in people and their business. Making suggestions that are tailored towards the affiliate will show that you have taken them seriously and genuinely want to work with them. Sending a blanket email will not; most affiliates will discard these without reading (unless you are a huge brand)

When you do get in touch, make sure you give different ways for people to get back in touch with you. Some might prefer to call, others prefer to email. Make sure that you give them as many options as you can so they can use their preferred method.

4. Increase visibility

The final area I think is key to recruitment is being visible. This means you have a better chance of relevant affiliates coming to you. Can you dedicate a page or section on your site for affiliates so they know how to join the programme? You can see an example below from Zavvi where they have a 'Become an Affiliate' link on their homepage footer.

You should also take advantage of the chance to network at events such as Performance Marketing Insights where you can meet people and swap ideas.

You might find your affiliate network have promotional opportunities, for example a weekly newsletter promoting offers or an offers blog. A number of the major networks also have Twitter feeds that they might post good promotions on.
Lastly, taking the time to write opinion pieces, or guest posts for blogs would help to push your name (and brand) in front of people. Make sure to keep them impartial and don’t be too sales-focused if you want to get published regularly.

Summary

So the key to good recruitment is that you know what you can offer your affiliates. When you research, make sure you look at how you can work with the affiliate that will support what they are doing if you want a long-term partnership. Make sure you personalise your communication to show that you have taken the time to consider them properly. Lastly, be as visible as you can so affiliates don’t have to look too hard to find you.