One of the most powerful tools in a company’s marketing arsenal is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is where a company pulls from the collective strength of smaller marketing companies to deliver a specific result. Many times, this result comes in the forms of sales completed or leads submitted.

An example would be a company that has an ecommerce site selling shoes. Instead of just using their own in-house marketing to drive traffic to the product pages where users can complete a sale, affiliate marketers will use their own marketing to bring in prospects and generate revenue. The affiliate will usually be paid for each sale that is completed (whether a percentage or flat rate).

How is this advantageous? There are a lot of risks, and trial and error involved in having traffic convert on your site. It might take a while to figure out what traffic type, ad auction settings, ad copy, or what targeting data produces the best results. Instead of using your own time and money to figure these things out, you can pay another company only when you receive the results you want.

While this sounds wonderful, it does present some challenges that can be solved by a company that will manage all your affiliate vendor relationships. Here are some of the benefits such a company brings:

Vetting

Before you may have even started in this space, affiliate marketers are probably already attempting to sell you their performance marketing services. Whether it is through emails, LinkedIn messages, or phone calls they might be currently looking for your business.

Now imagine that the word gets out that you have started using affiliate marketers. All of a sudden you are getting hit up more than ever. How do you decide who to use with all these choices?

This is where a company acting as your agency of record can help vet the different vendors for you. These companies understand what to look for to quickly filter out some, and properly test others.

Optimization

After having onboarded a number of affiliates that are producing the results you like, you may ask how you can improve.

An agency of record makes it their job to constantly monitor the results of these campaigns so that areas of improvement can be identified, and the correct recommendations given. Many times, brands are only able to verbalize what is wrong but do not understand the process well enough to help the affiliate marketers do better.

Time & Money Saved

Vetting and optimizing by your agency of record means you do not have to spend the time doing these things yourself. While your AOR has a fee, compared to the time saved it can be well worth it.

Also, affiliate vendor management companies know how much data (and ultimately money spent) is needed to determine the quality of an affiliate, thus saving you the time and money of testing too long or too little.

Not sure where to find a company that can act as your agency of record for your affiliate vendors? Call ADX Media today to hear how we can save you time and money, and bring the results you are looking for.