Affiliate Marketing - dentsu Media US

Samantha Duncan

A consistent question that clients are increasingly asking is how they can support new product launches by tapping into their partnerships. Clients gravitate towards affiliate partnerships due to their high return/minimal risk nature, combined with the opportunity for increased brand awareness. The affiliate channel is both niche as well as up-and-coming; however, it does weave through the grander traditional marketing channels (i.g., paid search and social). There has been a growing interest surrounding campaigns for product launches because of advancements in tracking from affiliate platforms. These technological developments have provided opportunities for unique partnerships and commissioning efforts around these launches. By tapping into your partnership's individual audiences, you can display the new products to their followers and make a strong splash in the market. This article highlights four effective approaches for product launches that will set you up for success within the affiliate space. 

1. Attractive Offer 

An enticing offer to launch and allow affiliates to promote is important. Affiliate consumers are some of the savviest shoppers and are consistently sourcing for the best offer. Partners also need to feel that the offer is strong enough to invest their own marketing dollars and efforts behind it, as well as featuring it on their sites. Offers should be available to new and returning customers. They should also be redeemable on a national scale. This will help maximize the scope of audience reach and potential buyers. Working with your top publishers and offering them exclusive promo codes for the new product is also a great tactic to get features and optimized site SEO for your brand. If the new product steers away from discounts, there is an opportunity to advertise during publisher events. For example, Capital One Shopping events will offer boosted cashback in exchange for features on their site. 

2. Dynamic Commissioning 

Employ your affiliate network’s technology to pass back data that can optimize payouts for new products. By passing back Category or SKU data, you can create lists that offer increased payouts for the new products. Be sure to alert partners of the increased payouts for the specific products with a network newsletter and designated text links. Commissioning by region is another useful tactic for products if there are geographical soft launches planned. An outdated idea pertaining to affiliate marketing is that most publishers cannot easily focus demographically, but now top publishers will also offer regionally-targeted placements such as mobile push notifications.  

3. The Right Mix of Publishers 

Low-funnel, top-revenue drivers will be the strongest contributors to amplify the new product launch. These are your traditional cashback publishers, such as Rakuten and Honey, that have stepped up technologically to assist the customer journey with Chrome extensions and in-store offerings.  

Collaborating and booking media with top-of-the-funnel content publishers, such as Buzzfeed, will be key for introducing the new product. Focus on partners that are already aligned with your brand and have proven that their placements are successful for your brand. Influencers are strong partner options to create content for products that may need additional explanation on usage. While the branding and packaging of the product should explain the functionality, if there is still ambiguity, then you should book creators who are savvy with tutorials, versus posting photos only. LTK (rewardStyle and LIKEtoKNOW.it), Magiclinks, and Sovrn are distinguished partners that can build packages of affiliate influencers for flat fees. These influencers will create content around the usage of products that can be featured as posts or stories across all social media platforms. Contractually review all content beforehand and ensure that you have the right to re-purpose the content across your brand’s social platforms.  

Other unique pay-for-performance publishers that could be leveraged for the new product campaign launch are card-linked offer publishers, such as Figg and Cardlytics. These partners will create custom marketing plans that will amplify brand messaging, driving sales online and offline. Finally, collaborating with crypto publishers, (e.g., Coinbase and Changelly) could be great additions to reach the Millennial and Gen-Z demographics. 

4. Public Relations Collaboration 

Many publishers that the brand’s PR team collaborates with for a given product launch will also have affiliate programs in place. Negotiating in conjunction with the PR team to include affiliate commissionable links within posts and articles could earn the PR team some deep discounts on the overall flat fee media buys. Also, these publishers may be more enticed to push the press releases across platforms if they can generate income with the commissionable links.  

These four approaches utilize affiliate partnerships to successfully drive incremental revenue and awareness surrounding new product launches. With proper tracking in place and these proven strategies available to boost sales and exposure, tapping into your partnerships can be a fantastic way to scale new product launch campaigns.