Avoid These Partnership Marketing Pitfalls

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, this is a new space for many companies, and knowledge gaps can lead to unforeseen problems as brands wade deeper into partnership marketing. Here are four of the top mistakes we see companies making in their affiliate and partnership marketing programs—and how to avoid them. Lack of management There’s simply not a very big pipeline of partnership marketing talent. As a result, many companies end up putting inexperienced junior-level employees in charge of their efforts, potentially setting themselves up for failure. There’s nothing wrong with a marketing team admitting what they don’t know. But here’s the difference between the companies doing well in this space and the ones that struggle: the winners are the ones that know what they don’t know and seek experienced outside help in managing their programs, preventing them from making predictable mistakes. We’re starting to see more companies understand the value of hiring external agencies to either manage or support their partnershp marketing initiatives. Even here, though, companies should be careful. Many large agencies of record lack direct experience with partnership 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. It’s critical that companies vet potential agency partnership regarding their specific experience in this space, especially when the companies themselves lack relevant in-house expertise. ‘Reinventing the wheel’ Although it’s difficult to find experienced partnership marketing professionals, the industry is not new and there are established tools and best practices that can help brands to get their programs off the ground. And yet, we sometimes see companies try to invent their own methods, failing to take advantage of existing tools and resources. We see this on both sides of partnership marketing—with both publishers and marketers looking to build their own custom platforms for building and maintaining relationships. A quick glance at other business processes reveals why this is usually a bad idea. After all, companies don’t try to build their own customer relationship management platforms; instead, they integrate with an established platform such as Salesforce. Similarly, it would be incredibly inefficient in most cases to build new, custom ecommerce tools from the ground up, instead of simply integrating with Shopify or Amazon. Companies should seek out existing partnership marketing platforms that are already active and build on top of existing platforms and networks rather than seeking to reinvent the wheel. In this respect, partnership marketing is no different from other aspects of business; companies should seek out existing partner marketing platforms that are already active and build on top of existing platforms and networks rather than seeking to reinvent the wheel. Moving too slowly There’s an understandable impulse, when a company enters the partnership marketing space for the first time, to start small. But there are two reasons why this isn’t an ideal approach for partnership marketing. For one, it simply takes a while to find, develop and nurture the partnerships that will provide the best performance for a specific company. Also, partnership marketing is a space that is moving quickly. One of the big advantages to partnership marketing is that companies can essentially name the price they’re willing to pay for a certain outcome, and it is a space where brands can still find good value. With all that in mind, it’s important for companies to scale quickly when they identify high-performing partnership to solidify a long term relationship. Not diversifying within the channel Partnership marketing provides brands with an opportunity to diversify their marketing efforts, rather than placing all of their bets with (increasingly overpriced) traditional channels. But the savviest companies are also diversifying within the partnership marketing channel itself, working with both a large number and varied types of partners. Often, this diversification requires marketing leaders within a company to expand their idea of what partnership marketing can mean for their organization. For instance: early in the pandemic, one of our clients (a luxury clothing company) was struggling to move its inventory. As Events and Meetings Go Hybrid, Can Real-Time Sentiment Analysis Help ‘Read’ the Room? But company leaders had historically been very resistant to the idea of partnering with coupon or deal sites, worried that this would devalue their high-end brand. We worked with the company to offer a 15% discount with a minimum spend level during an eight-day period, resulting in a 24% increase in sales for the discounted items, many of which were out of season and tying up cash. This sort of success would not have been possible if the brand hadn’t been willing to test how to work productively with different types of partners. Partnership marketing is still a very under-utilized channel. As such, it stands ready to deliver outsized benefits to the brands that make investments in the space. But these investments must be strategic, guided by real-world knowledge of what works, what doesn’t and what new or hidden opportunities are most likely to deliver results.