As coupon sites and browser plugins continue to proliferate, the affiliate marketing industry has been inadvertently empowering the wrong partners. However, the affiliate world is evolving beyond its transactional, last-click roots as brands recognize the value of forging more strategic, high-touch partnerships.
Mid-funnel, content-rich collaborations are proving to be more effective than traditional tactics, offering brands deeper engagement, a better understanding of their customers, and more sustainable growth.
The key question is: How can brands build long-term affiliate relationships that deliver lasting value?
The Shift Away from Transactional Affiliate Marketing
It’s very much a “tip of the iceberg” situation. Traditional last-click, coupon-driven approaches offer an incomplete view of the customer journey. Disproportionately crediting a single touchpoint while ignoring earlier interactions that played a crucial role in conversion means brands leave money on the table by overlooking important steps in the path to purchase.
Multi-touch attribution models provide a more holistic understanding of the customer journey. By recognizing the impact of earlier engagements, brands can better allocate marketing spend and accurately measure performance across all touchpoints. Not to mention, the insights gained in better understanding the consumers engaging with their product have value beyond numbers on a spreadsheet.
Defining High-Touch, Content-First Partnerships
High-touch affiliate partnerships focus on deeper engagement, particularly in the mid-funnel stage (although top-of-the-funnel campaigns are also common). This stage is crucial because consumers are already aware of a brand but have not yet made a purchase. They’re often looking for more information about the features and benefits of the brand’s products—and here’s the key—from an unbranded POV.
These partnerships rely on valuable content, trust-building, and education rather than aggressive sales tactics.
Unlike traditional full-funnel tactics, which target customers across every stage (from awareness to conversion), mid-funnel partnerships prioritize:
- Engaging targeted communities through informative, trust-driven content.
- Leveraging content affiliates, influencers, and media buyers to enhance mid-funnel performance.
- Prioritizing quality over quantity to build stronger, more effective affiliate relationships.
How to Build and Scale Affiliate Partnerships
Building strong affiliate partnerships requires a shift in mindset. Brands should move beyond one-time campaigns and instead focus on fostering long-term collaborations. Here’s how:
1. Identify the Right Partners
This is where quality vs quantity comes in. While large-scale affiliates offer volume, smaller, niche affiliates often have highly engaged audiences that drive better conversion rates. Brands should seek out content creators, media affiliates, and influencers who align with their target audience and values but should keep expectations realistic; many smaller partners will not have the means to produce elaborate, expensive content.
2. Nurture Relationships Beyond a Transactional Approach
Brands should provide ongoing support, exclusive offers, and creative collaboration opportunities. Offering affiliates value beyond commission—such as co-branded content, product exclusives, or paid amplification—can deepen engagement and create long-term advocacy.
3. Balance Creative Freedom with Compliance
Brands can set performance goals and provide high-level creative direction but allow affiliates the flexibility to tailor messaging to their audience. With content expertise and past performance guiding creative direction from the start of any strategic partnership, affiliates may have a fairly different approach than what’s used in brand-led assets.
Being open to an array of experimentation and styles, including less-polished but more-authentic marketing can result in higher success than sticking to what’s worked for the brand as the brand. Of course, data should have the final say.
Testing different creative variables and letting data dictate success is crucial. By focusing on performance-driven insights rather than personal biases, brands can optimize their affiliate strategies effectively.
Rethinking Affiliate Marketing Perceptions
Some brands still view affiliate marketing as a “necessary evil” rather than a strategic opportunity. This often stems from a few key challenges:
- The difficulty in attributing conversions
- Understanding the value of an educated consumer
- Measuring the efficacy of a brand partnership beyond ROAS
All that said, reliance on last-click oversimplifies the customer journey and can make partnering feel like a waste of time and money.
Multi-touch attribution models are the solve (for now) despite their imperfections. They track affiliate impact beyond the final conversion, offering a clearer picture of how partnerships influence the overall marketing funnel.
To truly understand affiliate performance, consider a variety of metrics:
- Multi-Touch Attribution: Assigns value to each touchpoint along the customer journey, not just the final click, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of affiliates’ influence.
- First-Touch Attribution: Recognizes affiliates that drive initial awareness and interest.
- View-Through Conversions: Tracks conversions that occur after a customer views an affiliate’s content, even without clicking, to measure an affiliate’s role in driving brand awareness.
- Custom Engagement KPIs: Measures affiliate-driven traffic, lead generation, social sharing, and content interactions to paint a picture of overall performance.
Evolve With Stack
The future of affiliate marketing lies in relationship-driven strategies. If you want to evolve past last-click, UTM-based conversion tracking to focus on strategic partnerships, long-term content collaborations, and advanced attribution models, we’d love to chat.
Reach out to learn how we can help build high-value affiliate relationships that align with your marketing goals and drive sustainable growth.
