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- What is the Ideal Partner Marketing Mix? #47
What is the Ideal Partner Marketing Mix? #47
Your Optimal Partner Marketing Portfolio
Tye DeGrange
March 27, 2024
In partnership with
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What is the Ideal Partner Marketing Mix? #47
Last week, we dove into one particular type of partner in the partner 🤝 marketing matrix.
This week, we answer the question:
What is the ideal % allocation of partner type? 🤔
Like your investment portfolio, you want to ensure this is in a healthy place to protect your brand and affiliate program. 📊
How do you slice up the pie 🥧 based on your business model?
How do you cook up the right mix for your brand?
Remember that your affiliate program can drive 20% of your company revenue if you manage it effectively. 🤑 So pay attention!
Today, we cover the various partner types and pay homage to the great Michael Keaton in honor of the upcoming Beetlejuice sequel.
Partner Types
How we think about it a little differently
Recommended Mix
Implications based on your stage & marketing strategy
What Are the Partner Types?
There are a lot of options, and a few are not listed here 😉
More props to Adam Weiss for putting together a great partner landscape breakdown. Let’s use this as a reference for thinking about what partners make sense to build your partner marketing program to acquire many valuable customers efficiently.
How do we break it down?
At RBL, we consolidate this landscape into the following segments:
Content
Influencer
Loyalty
Buy Now Pay Later
Media Buyer on CPA
Coupon & Deal
Connected TV
Podcast / Audio
Innovation
Brand to Brand
Content
These have become the workhorse of the modern affiliate marketing program. They are what brands are clamoring for and the hero they want and need.
Referencing Adam’s Publisher Landscape, our definition of Content includes Content Portfolios, Content, some Financial Services, and Sub Networks.
Commerce Content examples were discussed in length in last week’s edition
Influencer
Are influencers the new oil? All joking aside, their performance and demand for them have grown significantly. They can be critical to your partner marketing program's growth if managed, priced, and tracked appropriately.
Influencers can build trust with your audience more than brands alone.
As I discussed with Social Snowball’s Noah Tucker, even your existing customers can become evangelists.
Influencer networks like LTK, Mavely, MagicLinks, and Creator Co. are considerations when building and scaling influencer marketing. We have done both and are building direct relationships with our client brands.
Examples: Brook Raybould (Mom), Jenna Ezarik (Tech Hardware), Steve Cook (Mens Fitness).
Note these are for illustrative purposes only. We have access to hundreds of valuable influencers of all follower types, followings, engagement rates, and revenue performance.
Loyalty
It’s been around for a long time. Millions of consumers flock to it to get the most from online shopping. It’s not just cash back. Airline miles, credit card points, 529 college savings plans, charities, and even Bitcoin have loyalty sites where consumers can earn credit with any online purchase.
There are many misnomers in this space, and brands have valid concerns about how they can tread carefully. Downloadable toolbars and software have long been controversial topics, with brands and partners of all types questioning whether DPS / toolbars are taking credit for purchases that they did not drive. We can delve into details, and if you want more info, DM me.
I’m working with Tricia Meyer and the PMA on their Measurements Council to educate the affiliate marketing community on the considerations with Downloadable Software Publishers (DSPs).
Here is a helpful PMA blog post on the topic with respective network policies and links to the infographic.
Examples include Capital One Shopping, Upromise, and Acorns.
Buy Now Pay Later
As the chart below shows, Buy Now Pay Later has become a force in E-Commerce.
Millennials are into it, making up a sizable audience and hungry for ways to save via BNPL.
While not for every brand, it can be an incremental partner for your advertising dollars.
When you realize you cannot afford the full cost of the item in your cart and don’t want to take the credit card interest rate hit, you say to yourself…
Media Buyer on CPA
This model has been around for years, and it’s not going anywhere. Savvy affiliates and media buyers who take a quantitative approach can partner with select brands on the correct commission rate to complement brand marketing in Google, Meta, TikTok, and other platforms.
If you are a brand in growth mode, have larger budgets to reach aggressive growth goals, and have many competitors on large platforms, you might want to consider working with savvy media buyers on a CPAi (Commission Increase) to increase your real estate in paid platforms where your existing paid efforts can be complimented.
Coupon & Deal
We consolidate Adam’s Coupon and Deal into one here. Our thinking is that it should not make up the lion's share of your affiliate program, and if it is, then your program is on auto-pilot or being mismanaged. Sadly, we see this lot and can fix it.
The number of programs we have logged into and seen Coupon and Deal over index is alarming.
For brands with a high number of competitors and with a regular promotional strategy or in a retail space that periodically warrants product liquidation, this is a vertical you might not want to ignore.
Consumers of all types are hungry for deals to stretch their dollars now more than ever, and high-value customers can be found in these cohorts.
You do need to tread carefully, measure the quality of cohorts over time, and ensure that you are thinking critically about commission rates for these partners and price them efficiently.
Examples to consider:
Connected TV
Platforms like TV Scientific have increased and are enabling advertiser brands to tap into streaming content / Connected TV to showcase ads in some cases on a pure CPA (Cost Per Purchase) basis.
“Affiliate is everywhere. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it”
Affiliate Marketing is:
Full funnel 🎯
Multi-Channel 🥧
Highly efficient 📈
Now available on TVs via streaming 📺️
Podcast / Audio
This area has exploded recently and is also near and dear to me as a consumer (The Knowledge Project, The Rewatchables, and 9 Figure Operators) and creator of Always Be Testing.
In particular, brands in the health and wellness space have flocked to audio and podcast opportunities.
Balancing cost, tracking, and transparency have proven challenging for some without many resources to book and budget accordingly. Still, many brands rave about their performance and ability to reach consumers looking to stay informed on several topics from authentic, thoughtful voices.
Examples include Tim Ferris, Huberman Labs, My Favorite Murder, and Wiser Than Me.
Innovation
I would consider some examples in the Conversion Tech and Shopping category in the Innovation category. I would also consider emerging tech and partner business models part of the Innovation / emerging bucket of partners. This is where our favorite adage, “Always Be Testing,” comes into play.
Brand to Brand
Two complimentary brand advertisers team up to provide added value to their customers.
One of my favorite brand-to-brand partnerships was the collaboration between Spotify and Ticketmaster…
Some good examples of brand-to-brand partnerships here (Source: HubSpot)
Brand-to-brand partnerships are not always a yes; they take a long time and require many stakeholders across executive, product, engineering marketing, and legal, to name a few.
When done well, they can generate lasting revenue and brand equity for both parties.
Our Recommended Mix…
For an E-Commerce brand looking to grow, optimize incremental partners, and willing to spend a flat fee budget as well as pay per-action and think of affiliate marketing as a full-funnel opportunity, I recommend the following mix…
Please note this will change based on several variables, such as:
Budget
Competitive Set
Promotional Strategy
Company Stage
Not enough brands think about this in terms of their investment thesis. Reforge has done an impeccable job of outlining this opportunity. Here, we aim to apply this to your partner's marketing approach.
This underscores the importance of your partner marketing approach being customized. to your situation. A one-size-fits-all approach is where brands, networks, agencies, and affiliate managers get into trouble.
Are you ready to get deeper and more strategic about this? You want to get nuts?
Source: Batman
One of many Reforge frameworks applies here.
What stage are you in?
Have you developed your performance marketing investment thesis?
If you haven't done this yet or need help thinking about it, you might want to talk to our COO, Mike McElhaney, or our head of Paid Marketing, Meaghan Jones.
How should you structure your budget?
Of course, partner marketing could be applied to each of these company stages. While I cannot say without other specifics and factors shared which partner mix % works for your business at which stage generally, I think the more aggressive you are, the more you need to look at models like content, influencer, Connected TV, and Audio.
You will want to adjust the % mix and ensure appropriate allocation of your 1) Always On Strategies, 2) Long Term Investments, and 3) Testing & Learning 🧪 😉
Phew - you made it to the end - I might owe you a coffee ☕️ or a high five ✋
Key Takeaways:
Affiliate marketing has many partner types, and it’s only growing.
Last week, we explored one partner type, Content Commerce. This week defined them all. In the coming weeks, we will share more deep dives!
What are the various partner types to consider?
Benefits and considerations for each, including fun Michael Keaton references
The RBL recommended Mix for E-Commerce brands in “growth seeking” mode
Important considerations and some helpful strategic considerations
Reforge Investment Thesis and how it can be applied to your partner mix
Good luck building the perfect partner marketing program for your situation!
Bonus Material:
