Affiliate Management is a Skill You’ll Never Stop Learning

Here's why

Affiliate Management is a Skill You’ll Never Stop Learning. Here’s Why.

In the blink of an eye, affiliate marketing has exploded on the digital marketing scene. For many brands around the world, it’s an irreplaceable part of their marketing strategy. But it doesn’t stop there! Technuh reports that by the end of 2021, the value of affiliate marketing will skyrocket from $12 billion to $13-16 billion.

Given the advancements in technology and tools that make influencer management and partner discovery more intuitive, learning affiliate management skills seems like a no-brainer! With easy tips, accessible tools, and a promise of exponential growth, affiliate management is more than a no-brainer. It’s a must-have!

Sales and Relationship Management Training

The world of affiliate marketing is growing and changing every day. As an affiliate manager, you need to keep up, which requires constant, in-depth learning. Getting acquainted with the industry and how it varies from place to place and channel to channel will have you prepared for any surprises up the road.

Now that cold calling is dead and gone, we’ve entered the age of social selling. Leading conversations and affiliate engagement are just a couple of skills you should master to keep up with the fast-paced digital market. In the face of constant change, on-the-job training is necessary. Especially in the wake of COVID-19 where traditional networking events are more complicated than ever, on-the-job training is crucial for building relationships. Think about it —isn’t it better to dedicate a little extra time so your employees do a good job versus spending no time so they do a mediocre job?

Now that CMOs recognize affiliate marketing as much of a digital skill as SEO or paid media, affiliate managers are investing in affiliate marketing to stay ahead of the game. Especially now that the tasks are getting a little more tricky.

Industry Expansion

As the affiliate marketing industry becomes more accessible, it continues to expand and diversify. With the rise of influencers, anyone can be a publisher and profit off their social media channels with the help of performance based campaigns.

With that being said, it’s becoming more and more difficult to tell the difference between influencers, social advertisers, SEO and PPC affiliate partners. On top of that, if anyone can be a publisher, then that means everyone could be a potential referrer. Now you can see why affiliate managers need all that studying to keep up!

The affiliate manager’s goal to manage budgets and assure a promising ROI isn’t that simple anymore. As social media channels and traffic sources multiply, affiliate managers have to work diligently to build relationships across all channels and at the same time, make sure no cables get crossed.

As the industry expands, recruiting and discovering new traffic requires more manpower. To get the job done, affiliate managers have started hiring people with the specific position of partner discovery. In the meantime, affiliate managers have to create new relationships and keep up with their current ones. To optimize their time, affiliate managers have looked to AI and other software to analyze the data recommendations for their business.

Getting Automated with Saas

As the industry expands and affiliate managers start working with multiple channels of traffic, affiliate managers will have to automate more processes to maintain efficiency. That includes adapting marketing, data analysis, and optimization. To keep the software user-friendly, Saas providers will have to create specific tools and services to maintain the affiliate manager’s workflow.

Here are just a couple of examples of what Saas providers could help with in the near future:

• Portfolio segmentation
• Automating life cycles
• Communication management

With just these few tracking solutions, affiliate managers could have an easier time finding, recruiting, and optimizing their brands’ affiliates. Ideally, affiliate managers will choose programs that make their life easier by managing their database of diverse partners and saving them time and resources.

By learning how to operate these new technologies, affiliate managers can successfully run their business, diversify their partners, and gain new customers.

Using the Performance Model to Nurture Stronger Relationships

Believe it or not, most relationships die out for a variety of reasons. Poor transparency, lack of trust, and faulty account management just to name a few. Like we said before, as the industry expands, it’ll get more difficult to keep tabs on all your partners. That’s why the key for the future of affiliate marketing is communication.

Well, communication and a little bit of marketing automation. With these two tricks combined, affiliate managers will have an easier time maintaining their relationships. There’s a few more exciting bells and whistles in the works, such as:

• Speedy payment implementation
• Tracking improvement
• Attribution optimization

The biggest takeaway, though, is to remember one rule— there are no rules. The affiliate marketing industry changes and expands everyday. The best way for your programs to grow is to adapt to the changes as they come, and that means keep learning new tricks, skills, and tools.

Some things, however, don’t change. Your partners will always appreciate direct, transparent communication, which will create a long, healthy relationship with your affiliates. On top of that, Saas and other technological tools are here to stay. Get acquainted with automation so you can save time and money to find new partners and traffic.

As experts continue to finetune the channel, the affiliate marketing industry will continue to skyrocket. Stay one step ahead and keep learning. New skills and tools will guarantee you nothing but success.