Performance Marketing

Avoid These Partnership Marketing Pitfalls

Affiliate marketing is fairly straightforward. But there are some frequent mistakes that tend to crop up, even among veteran practitioners

Avoid These Partner Marketing Pitfalls — Many large agencies of record lack direct experience with partner marketing and take on programs as part of a larger engagement without the talent or know-how to run the program, putting the brand at risk. DNY59/Getty Images

Driving relevance means driving growth. Join global brands and industry thought leaders at Brandweek, Sept. 11–14 in Miami, for actionable takeaways to better your marketing. 50% off passes ends April 10.

Partnership marketing—historically known as “affiliate marketing”—offers a number of potential benefits to brands that are willing to employ the technique.

The term refers to any outcome-based partnership enabled at scale by digital technology, and two of the advantages of the method (“outcome-based” and “at scale”) are right there in the definition. By building a program that leverages the audiences of hundreds—or even thousands—of partners, companies can control their marketing costs, reach new customers and improve the performance of their marketing efforts.

However,