6 Reasons Why Your Brand Needs an Affiliate Marketing Agency in 2023

Here are six reasons why Affiliate Marketing should be part of your marketing mix in 2023:

1. Increase brand exposure and awareness
2. Drive incremental ROI
3. Produce a new revenue stream for your business
4. Increase the opportunity for publishers to talk about your brand
5. Use data to drive future relationships
6. Develop and foster long-term mutual relationships

Increase Brand Exposure and Awareness

Your brand is amazing, and everyone should know about it. By starting an affiliate program with an experienced agency, brand awareness will grow. Each affiliate link placement is a touchpoint for your end consumers to become more exposed to your product or service. And when the publisher is a coveted top-tier publication, even better as it becomes an invaluable recommendation from a trusted source.Shoppers love to search high-value SEO product review sites with terms, like “best of (product/service)” or “brand/product reviews''. Plus, most publications are already looking for affiliate-ready products to feature in their shopping recommendations and shoppable content, so it’s a match made in heaven. Partners like Capital One, Rakuten, and TopCashback have millions of active and loyal users and brands can tap into these audiences by offering the shopper a reward to incentivize purchase.

Drive Incremental ROI

A well-run, full-funnel affiliate program is more than just a great review on a top review site. In fact, there is a wide spectrum of publisher types that can capture new customer sales! Coupon and loyalty sites can be leveraged to maximize new-to-file customers or drive a higher order value. Outside of traditional affiliates in the content, loyalty, and coupon verticals, brands can establish affiliate partnerships with:

• Cart abandonment and retargeting partners to increase onsite conversions
• Buy Now, Pay Later publishers (especially if there is already an onsite integration as a payment solution)
• Paid search affiliate to help complement a brand’s own PPC campaigns
• Employee benefits and reward malls (including perk hubs for military members/veterans, nurses, first responders, etc.)

Produce a New Revenue Stream For Your Business

Working with an affiliate agency can produce a new revenue stream for your business! According to the affiliate experts at LaRue, a full-funnel affiliate marketing program can account for 10-15% of a brand’s total e-commerce revenue. Unlike Google or Facebook ads, affiliate is a performance-driven channel where brands only pay publishers a commission if an affiliate click converts to an online purchase. As a result, affiliate marketing is often one of the most profitable channels for advertisers to invest in.

Increase the Opportunity for Publishers to Talk About You

Getting in front of the right publishers can prove to be difficult. However, an agency will already have the publisher relationships to truly drive a program. Working with an agency that also has a PR arm is like having the best of both worlds. While PR does what they do best, the affiliate channel helps ensure every placement is fully supported and tracked through affiliate links. Reminder: Offering competitive CPAs (that’s affiliate speak for publisher commissions) increases the likelihood of inclusions in editorial articles, product reviews/roundups, listicles, gift guides, and more!

Use Data to Drive Future Relationship Decisions

Data is everything and if you’re like us, you can’t live without it. And in most cases, the smartest decisions are data-driven! Affiliate Marketing allows brands to track key metrics from PR-driven content placements, as well as measure the incrementality of working with traditional affiliates across all verticals (for example loyalty, sub-affiliate networks, influencers, coupons). Measurable KPIs include topline revenue growth, traffic (affiliate clicks), conversion rate, AOV, ROAS, new customer acquisition, revenue distribution by publisher type, and more! A dedicated affiliate team at an agency will have the knowledge and industry expertise to analyze those KPIs and make strategic recommendations on commissioning strategies, as well as leverage publisher relationships to help brands meet their goals.

Develop and Foster Long-term Mutual Relationships

Affiliate Marketing is fundamentally a relationship-driven marketing channel and if you want to develop your relationship with industry content creators, hiring an agency that specializes in establishing and cultivating those relationships is imperative. It takes time to build and nurture relationships with publishers, so brands should plan to budget for at least a year of dedicated affiliate management to achieve the best results. Another huge positive aspect of having an affiliate agency doing your footwork is that they can create unique ways to work with influencers and publishers, making your brand stand out amongst the fray.

In conclusion, hiring a specialty affiliate agency is one of the smartest strategic moves you can make for your brand. If you’re looking for an agency that does both Affiliate Marketing PR look no further than LaRue. With a team full of PR and Affiliate Marketing experts, we’re mastering performance-driven media strategies like it’s second nature. But that’s because it is! Let’s work together.