To win over a potential client or affiliate partner, it’s essential to speak their language and customize your pitch to their specific needs. Doing so increases your chances of receiving a positive response.

Growing your business through affiliate marketing can be supercharged by partnering with affiliates who have the ability to make a significant impact. These top performers have a talent for creating buzz around your offer by harnessing paid media, leveraging their mailing list or their social following.

There are six primary types of affiliate partners, each with its own set of needs and styles of communication. 

It’s crucial to understand these different types of partners and their unique needs to provide the necessary affiliate assets and metrics for their decision-making process.

We have a whole module of the Affiliate Accelerator coaching program dedicated to Affiliate Partner Types, Their Needs and Communication Styles if you’d like to learn more in-depth practices, but this should get you started. 

Let’s review each of the types and best practices to woo them.

The 6 Common Types Of Affiliates And How You Can Work With Them 

Content Marketers

A content marketer’s main goal is to create engaging and valuable content that attracts, retains, and grows an audience. When the partnership is solid, content marketers can play a huge role in the success of your offer. By producing high-quality blog posts, videos, social media content, and other forms of media, they can help establish trust with their audience and drive traffic to your offer.

Content marketers also help optimize your content for search engines, increasing your offer’s visibility and reach. By using relevant keywords, SEO-friendly headlines, and backlinks to your offer, they can help you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

The right content marketer can help establish (and keep) credibility and build new, strong relationships that ultimately result in increased conversions and revenue. 

These affiliates care about creating high-quality content that will be different and valuable to their audience. On average, content marketers have lower earnings per click (EPC) than some others, but their audiences are loyal, and that means a ton of traffic to your offer. 

Because a high-profile content marketer cares about the quality of the content they’re putting out, do the same when you’re pitching to them. Create something valuable to send to their audience, or write them a long-form guest post about your offer that they can easily share. Whatever you do, make it meaningful with a content marketer.

Affiliates With Paid Media Only

These superstars can be powerful tools for growth. By utilizing paid search, social media ads, and other paid media channels, they drive highly-qualified, ready-to-buy, targeted traffic right to your offer. As you might expect, this often results in increased conversions and revenue.

By working with affiliates who have expertise in paid media, you can leverage their skills and knowledge to reach a wider audience and get more eyes on your offer than you could organically.

But these superstar affiliates don’t do long-form media like content marketers. They do cold media. They need a short and sweet message, telling them their coffers will be full if they choose to work with you. They want high-quality offers that convert and pay commission the fastest.

Affiliates With Affiliate Traffic Only

An affiliate with a dedicated audience can be a valuable part of your strategy. These affiliates have established themselves as influencers in their niche and have a loyal audience that trusts their recommendations. By partnering with these affiliates, your offer is promoted to a highly engaged audience, which is more likely to convert.  

If they’re not working with any paid media, this type of affiliate will likely benefit from a reciprocal deal. Their audience is engaged, and that is valuable, but their reach is limited. Arranging a mutually beneficial exchange is definitely the way to charm this influencer and help everyone grow too.

Affiliates With Both Paid Media And Affiliate Traffic

Affiliates who are working with both paid media and a large, engaged audience are a special kind of powerhouse, and they can also be a bit more flexible to work with too. Many affiliate marketers work with both paid media and affiliate traffic, so the best way to figure out how to approach this kind of affiliate is to think about whether they’d want a lucrative deal upfront or come up with a profit share instead. Do a little homework on them and figure out what will interest them the most. 

Media Buyers

Media buyers specialize in buying advertising inventory across various media channels, including display ads, search ads, and social media ads. When you work with the right media buyer, you can guarantee that your offer is displayed to a highly targeted audience, increasing the likelihood of conversions.

They can also provide valuable insights and data on campaign performance, allowing you to optimize your strategies for maximum ROI with surgical precision. Moreover, media buyers are in a position to negotiate favorable rates and placements for your offer, maximizing ad spend and driving even more sales.

Media buyers know how to leverage media, and can potentially send massive amounts of traffic. It makes sense that they will only work with high-converting offers. For these people, uptime is priority number one, so it’s imperative that you have a fast website that never crashes. They spend their own money to drive traffic to your offer, so the second that offer stops converting, they pull their ads. Woo these folks with lightning speed of your tech and commission payout.

Social Media Marketers

Social media marketers possess the skills to develop and execute social media strategies that attract and captivate audiences while directing traffic to your offer. 

Engaging a social media specialist allows you to harness their expertise to create a devoted following and establish a robust brand identity across various social media platforms. By consistently presenting compelling content and utilizing audience participation and social media advertising, a social media guru can significantly increase your offer’s visibility.

Similar to media buyers, social media marketers excel at harnessing social media channels to promote your offer. They utilize concise messaging and engaging content to communicate their ideas effectively, and you should follow suit. Make sure your message is eye-catching and enthralling to stop the audience from scrolling by.

The Importance Of Having A Mix Of Assets To Be Ready To Partner With A Variety Of Affiliate Partners

In the affiliate marketing world, too often, the pitch misses the target. But if you think about it, it’s relatively easy to see which kind of pitch would work best for which kind of affiliate. Think about how they built their list, and you’ll understand what their needs are.

Here are some assets to consider having on tap for potential affiliate partners.

• Longer, well-researched advertorials, articles, journals, etc. These are great for content marketers and bloggers. 

• Shorter, clickbaity emails to push to a high-converting sales page are a match made in heaven for media buyers.

• Having a great tech stack, good uptime, optimizations, and split tests ready for consideration is the way to a media buyer’s heart.

• The ability to customize copy, landing pages, etc., are a dream come true for super busy super affiliates who always need things customized but have no time. 

• The ability to increase or decrease commissions or CPAs easily is the perfect way to help inspire affiliates with paid traffic and set higher sales goals that pay based on performance.

• Reciprocal deals can be very lucrative and often come with a loyal audience of eager and engaged fans. Email campaigns, podcasts, and shared social media posts are just a few ideas for affiliates with their own audience traffic.

• Beautiful photos and videos that are easily shareable and compliant on all social media platforms are the best way to reel in any influencer.

• When pitching to superstar affiliates, come at it with a partnership mindset. Create a gorgeous landing page for them, for example, that they can use to make more money. Think of ways you can both benefit, not just now but also later down the road. 

Need Support Creating and Scaling Your Affiliate Program?

Supercharge Your Affiliate Revenue with everything you need to know to grow your partnership marketing channel in a free mini-course Everflow of Partner Connections.

You’ll get 15 lessons and 7 actionable tools designed to meet you at any level (beginner, intermediate and advanced) and help you build a steady affiliate revenue coming month after month, year after year! 

TAKE IT – ABSOLUTELY FREE… 

Sources:

VIP Masterclass Lesson: Types of Affiliates and Their Needs

VIP Masterclass Lesson: Affiliate Accelerator Coaching Program

Admin

Affiliate Marketing • 32 min read

Affiliate Networks: Clickbank and Goldenberri

In today’s digital environment, business owners continuously seek creative ways to increase their reach and sales. As a marketing tactic, affiliate marketing is gaining [...]

Read more

Affiliate Marketing • 36 min read

Maximizing Efficiency in Direct Mail Marketing: The Benefits of List Rental, Pre-paid Mail Drops, and 3rd Party Mailing Tracking

There are a variety of methods you can use when striving to reach maximum efficiency in the direct mailing market. As an affiliate manager, it is up to you to find and [...]

Read more