Start up of Affiliate Marketing

Starting an affiliate marketing program on the company side of things is fairly easy. The biggest thing you'll need is a way to assign unique and trackable links to your website to affiliate partners.  

Beyond that, the benefits of affiliate marketing strategies rely on partnering with influencers and passionate consumers who are already aligned with your brand, have a sizable reach, and generate captivating content. 

The following will help you attract the type of top-tier affiliate partners who will add true measurable value to your organization.  

What Is an Ideal Affiliate Partner?

Choosing the ideal affiliate partner is similar to understanding your ideal target audience. The two processes can be particularly similar because oftentimes the perfect affiliate partner is already an avid consumer of your brand.  

However, unlike a typical consumer, ideal affiliate partners also have large spheres of influence. This makes public figures, content creators, and anyone with an audience a strong target for an affiliate partnership.  

Additionally, your ideal affiliate partner should be someone who shares the same values as your brand.  

All in all, the ideal affiliate partner is a passionate consumer of your brand, has a sizable reach or sphere of influence, and shares the same values on which you built your business.  

In general, though, there are three different types of affiliate marketing:  

• Unattached affiliate marketing

• Related affiliate marketing

• Involved affiliate marketing  

• Unattached Affiliate Marketing

Unattached affiliate marketing is where the affiliate has no direct connection or personal involvement with the product or service they are promoting. This form of affiliate marketing typically relies on pay-per-click advertising or other forms of online marketing where the affiliate's role is solely to drive traffic to the merchant's site.  

Since the affiliate does not endorse or use the product, this method can sometimes lack credibility with the audience. However, it allows affiliates to promote a wide range of products without needing in-depth knowledge or personal experience. 

Related Affiliate Marketing

Related affiliate marketing involves affiliates who have some level of authority or presence in a particular niche, but who may not necessarily use the products they promote. For instance, a fitness blogger might promote various types of gym equipment or supplements without having personally used them.  

This method benefits from the affiliate’s established relationship with their audience and their perceived expertise in the niche. Although it is more credible than unattached affiliate marketing, it still lacks the personal touch and firsthand endorsement that can significantly influence purchasing decisions. 

Involved Affiliate Marketing

Involved affiliate marketing is the most engaged form, where affiliates promote products or services they have personally used and truly believe in. These affiliates can provide personal testimonials and authentic reviews, which greatly enhance credibility and trust with their audience.  

For example, a tech blogger might review and recommend gadgets they actively use. This type of marketing is highly effective because it combines the affiliate's authority and trustworthiness with genuine personal experience, often leading to higher conversion rates. However, it limits the affiliate to products they can genuinely endorse, potentially reducing the variety of products they can promote.

Partnering with involved affiliate marketers typically offers the strongest ROI, as these individuals are already immersed in the market of the brand they’re working with, and often already have an audience with whom they connect.  

Product Positioning 

When considering how to attract ideal affiliate partners to your organization, it’s important to recognize where they’re currently spending their time both online and offline.  

This will help you put your product in places where potential affiliate partners can naturally find, learn about, and test them.   

Imagine you design and sell modern, stylistic putters. You need to build both brand authority and awareness in a hyper-loyal marketplace while also generating sales. A young golf influencer with dreams of making the PGA tour would be a perfect candidate for an affiliate partnership.  

They have the audience and are aligned with your brand. Now they just need to fall in love with your product. In order to do that, they need to be able to find it.  

While affiliate marketing alone has a low cost-barrier to entry, if you have a wider marketing and branding strategy in place, you'll have an easier time positioning yourself for those ideal affiliate partners.    

Affiliate Partnership Awareness 

The last step before reaping the benefits of affiliate marketing is bringing on affiliate partners and finalizing the contracts. This last step though, requires some amount of affiliate partnership awareness.    

If the passionate consumers and influencers you’re targeting as affiliate partners don’t know an affiliate partnership with your brand is a possibility in the first place, they certainly won’t know that they should even consider applying.   

Entering affiliate partnerships will also attract additional potential affiliate partners and boost overall awareness for your entire organization.