Ways to Recruit Affiliates.
It’s time for Part Eight of the Affiliate Marketing for your Business blog series. This is your comprehensive resource for everything related to affiliate programs. We began this journey with intro material and have worked our way to more advanced strategies and concepts. Please share this series, bookmark this page or sign up for our newsletter to stay connected to all the information you need to set up your affiliate program.
In case you’re just joining, here’s a recap:
- Part 1: was an introduction to affiliate programs.
- Part 2: discussed offers, payouts and structuring your affiliate program.
- Part 3: was about affiliate roles, processes and vocabulary.
- Part 4: went into depth about the various affiliate offers.
- Part 5: explored tracking URLs; variables, parameters, etc…
- Part 6: featured affiliate websites, research, targeting, content and traffic.
- Part 7: showed what to feature in your affiliate program for affiliates.
As promised, we’re going to review how to recruit affiliates to grow your program. There’s many ways to attract high quality affiliates, I recommend testing all of these and determining which ones work best.
Before affiliates will consider joining your program, they’ll need basic information you can provide on your sign up page or through other mediums. Information affiliates will want include; fees, offers, payouts, tracking software, support, etc. See Part Seven for what to feature about your affiliate program.
Let’s jump right in and start learning about the different ways to recruit affiliates.
Sign Up Page
The most important and easiest way to recruit affiliates is your sign up page (located on your website). It should be easily accessible throughout your site and featured in the footer, and maybe even in the header. Your affiliate sign up page should clearly and concisely describe your affiliate program, providing high level details and how to join. Your sign up page should be customizable to your brand, creating a seamless user experience from website to sign up. Unless you are a major brand, affiliates won’t waste their time searching for information and steps to sign up. Present this information right away and expedite the approval process as much as possible to allow affiliates to begin quickly .
Your tracking software should automatically deploy an email confirmation once an affiliate is approved for your program. Soon thereafter, be sure to send a ‘Welcome’ email and describe the benefits of your program, their affiliate manager’s contact info, how to message support, featured offers and any key points they should keep in mind.
Affiliate Referrals
To build a more successful affiliate program, it’s recommended to offer an affiliate referral program. Referral programs reward existing affiliates for recruiting new ones. Incentivizing your affiliates to do this requires a proper commission structure. Your affiliate tracking software should provide the option of compensating referrals as a single payout (CPA on the successful sign up) or as an on-going percentage of revenue, generated by the referred affiliate (the referring affiliate gets x% of the revenue the referred affiliate receives for sales, over x period of time). As you can imagine, this provides a great incentive for affiliates to help you recruit new affiliates with relevant traffic sources.
Affiliate Directories
Listing your program and offers on various directory sites is a great way for affiliates to get visibility into your program. Affiliate directories like OfferVault and oDigger connect affiliates with programs and offers. Affiliates search these sites for offers and sign up for programs to get access to their offers. For more information on how to get your offers listed on directory sites, read this post on getting started.
Trade Shows
Attending affiliate related trade shows is a relatively inexpensive way to get intimate access to affiliates. Trade shows connect affiliates, advertisers and publishers with affiliate programs and networks. These gatherings make it easy to display your program’s offers by setting up a booth and participating in lectures and events. Because many affiliate trade shows draw in such a large crowds, it’s very easy to meet new and existing affiliates to create or grow your partnerships. Read about what you can expect from trade shows such as Affiliate Summit and LeadsCon.
Email Communication
Emailing your existing affiliates and notifying them of updates such as; new offers or payouts, can really get them excited about your program. Affiliates network together, post in forums and blogs, review programs, comment on offers, etc… reminding them of your referral program can get them talking and promoting your program to their affiliate friends. Check out this post for more information on communicating with affiliates.
Study Your Competition
The ideal candidate is likely already an affiliate of your competitors. Researching and studying your competition is nothing new, and it can be extremely helpful in finding new, high converting affiliates for your program. Study what your competitors are doing to recruit and retain affiliates. Research forums, articles and blog content for recruiting strategies. You might even consider commenting in your competitor’s threads and replying to posts to get the attention of their existing or potential affiliates, but be prepared for reciprocation. Sometimes even a simple Google search for your competitors’ names will reveal affiliate sites that promote the competition. Feel free to contact these sites directly and negotiate a payout.
Pay-Per-Click
Leverage search engines to advertise your affiliate program’s ads to trigger based on search queries. Finding inexpensive and targeted search terms to bid on is key when building your affiliate base. Great PPC sources for targeting affiliates are; Google AdWords, Bing adCenter (which now includes Yahoo!), Facebook Ads, AdKnowledge, Bidvertiser, AdBrite and more.
Target your audience and potential affiliate base using relevant keywords and demographic information. To start, this might take some research, or begin broad and narrow in until you find the best keywords and phrases.
Social Networks
As social networks take over communication and marketing efforts, use this popularity and momentum to promote your program. Share information and link to your affiliate sign up page. Test different types of messaging and see which renders the highest engagement levels. Most social networking sites are free, this will be a cost-effective way to promote and generate sign ups. Remember to encourage others to share your message to increase visibility.
Article Marketing
Online article marketing is one of the easiest ways to recruit affiliates. Begin by writing a content-rich article emphasizing the products or services your program offers. Post your article[s] on sites like Ezine Articles, Go Articles, BusinessKnowHow, Ezine Directory, Yahoo! Groups, Amazines, etc. Remember to hyperlink key phrases and words back to your sign up page, offers or information pages. The advantage of this method is that you’re attracting only affiliates that are legitimately interested in your offers and program and happen to be searching for related offers.
Posting on Social bookmarking sites is another great way to recruit affiliates. Sites like Digg, Del.ico.us, Reddit and many others are excellent for recruiting affiliates.
Reviews and Forums
Reviews are a great way to attract affiliates by providing information and featuring your program’s strongest qualities. Contact existing customers, clients, partners or affiliates and request (or incentivize) them to provide a review. Ask to focus on the benefits and advantages of your products, offers or features. Lastly, have someone in your organization write a comparison article, comparing and contrasting your program to others. Reviews provide valuable information and have a strong influence on readers, make a name for your program and its offers.
Creating a forum is a quick way to get readers to post comments and encourage the community to talk about your program. This will induce interest with potential affiliates and get them thinking about your program. Use these forums to post benefits, advantages and opinions about your program, provide a link and/or clear call-to-action for interested affiliates to easily sign up.
Before you begin placing links, make sure they’re working and tracking properly. Your reputation will be tarnished if an affiliate clicks on your link and is sent to an error page.
Now that my affiliate program is stacked with affiliates, what’s next?
Now that you can recruit the affiliates you want, we’re going to look into how you retain them and build those relationships to promote growth and retention. Stay tuned as you’ll learn how to help, engage, reward and communicate with your affiliates. Thanks for reading and as always, feel free to email me directly or leave a comment below.