Recruiting affiliates into your program is one of the key pillars of successful affiliate program management.
As an affiliate network, we provide a pool of affiliates who can at any time decide to join and promote your affiliate program. In addition our Publisher development team are dedicated to approaching new affiliates for our advertisers to partner with and growing our base of affiliates that advertisers have access to.
It is important that you also actively recruit affiliates for your program and approach websites or bloggers that you think could work well within your vertical or niche.
Ongoing recruitment of your program involves:
- Finding previously hidden, but valuable, publishers over time
- Researching new affiliates joined to Commission Factory
- Recruiting affiliate types that are productive or underrepresented in the program
- Researching sites with other affiliate programs to compare publishers with your own list
- Contacting content sites and inquiring about advertising opportunities
How to get affiliates attention and awareness for your affiliate program?
Affiliate Sign Up Pages are the simplest and yet most underused affiliate recruitment tool there is. When you consider that affiliates are internet savvy people it's not a surprise to expect that they are also online shoppers. If they buy from you or they get great service, having an affiliate sign up page on your website is the best way to let them know they can make money promoting a store they already like.
Be social - If using twitter use #Affiliate in your tweets or #AffiliateMarketing when making announcements. You can also use these channels to market your program to existing customers whom already follow/like you and may be interested in promoting you further.
Thinking outside the box is another way to recruit some unique affiliates or sites. For example if your online store sells international soda's and confectionery in Australia, then you might be able to expect that getting your banner or products on an American Expat blog could produce a great deal of sales or new customers.
Affiliate perspective on recruitment
When developing your recruitment strategy, try to anticipate what affiliates would value most, and target your program to the publisher's specific vertical.
Publishers choosing affiliate programs will generally review the following:
- Similar advertiser's they are already working with
- Whether new advertisers may strain existing, profitable relationships
- The risk of managing a new program
- Earning potential of any new partnership
- How active the advertiser is with their affiliates
- What offers and promotions the advertiser has available to affiliates
- Terms and conditions
To address these concerns, be sure to prepare yourself the following information about your program's:
- Average Order Value (AOV)
- Average conversion rates (CR %)
- Products or services, as compared to your competitors
- The revenue commission you're willing to pay
- Any additional benefits (such as increased revenue share, launch incentives, or special consumer promotions) you have
- Creative assets
- Your USPs
Activation Strategies
In many cases, simply providing the right tools, communications, and incentives will encourage publishers to start driving sales quickly. In other cases, you might need to add bonuses or commissions for publishers who engage within a specific time period. And, of course, once publishers start making sales, their loyalty to your program is more assured.
Building Program Awareness
Simply listing your program in Commission Factory won't necessarily attract top publishers. You'll need to build awareness of your program first.
For example, you can:
- Email newsletters to the network
- Highlight sales, coupons, or new products
- Ensure that the affiliate recruitment link on your website leads to compelling information about your programs' benefits
- Use external affiliate forums to spread the word
- Advertise your affiliate program to your social media base
- Directly communicate with affiliates in the region
Working with different Affiliates
Having a startegy around program diversification is very important to cotinue to grow the affiliate channel. Read our detailed article on how to diversify your program and why it's important.