As its name suggests, partner marketing is a strategic collaboration between two companies or a business and an individual owning a significant personal brand. Both parties need to work to achieve mutual goals. Partner marketing is also known as partnership marketing.
Charles Darwin who famously developed the concept of survival of the fittest is also quoted as saying, “It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”
The most common partner marketing method is probably affiliation. Affiliate marketing is a promotion model where affiliates or publishers advertise your product or service on their website in return for a commission. Due to its measurability and accurate ROI calculation, this type of partnership perfectly fits the partner marketing matrix.
One of the greatest benefits of partnership marketing is getting access to the audience of another brand. By partnering with another brand you effectively borrow some or all of their audience for the campaign.
When you partner with a company that has the audience you want to target, it is cheaper and easier to get access to that audience because they already have it. Saves you having to build it from scratch using traditional methods that can take a long time.
“The best affiliate relationships have always been partnerships. The strongest merchant and publisher relationships always see them regard each other as partners rather than a purely transactional relationship. Trying to reinvent affiliate marketing as partner marketing is a reaction to those who still view the industry in a dim light,” said Pete James, head of affiliates at vouchercloud.
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Pesach Lattin
Pesach@lattin.us
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Expert Insight
with Evan Weber
CEO of Cartier
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What is Partner Marketing Vs. Affiliate Marketing?
Evan Weber at Affiliate Summit
1. Why is “Partner Marketing” a buzz word now, after 25 years of “affiliate marketing?” Partner Marketing has become a buzz word in the affiliate marketing industry over the last couple of years, and it's about time! Partner marketing is when two companies link up to reciprocally promote each other as an affiliate of each other. This has been going on behind the scenes for years with savvy companies/brands that have looked to monetize their
audiences with other offers. I have been doing partner marketing for 15+ years and it works amazingly. One reason partner marketing is buzzing is that there are a good amount of partner/affiliate tracking platforms on the market that are singing the praises of partner marketing. Partner marketing is a GREAT idea to pursue to grow revenue in my opinion.
2. What are some key reasons to try “Partner Marketing?”
There's no reason to not be leveraging partner marketing in my opinion. The key is to do outreach and find other companies with a similar audience to partner up with. It's really not that hard. You can contact people through Linkedin and propose the idea. Since partner marketing is catching on, they might just be open to the idea of a reciprocal rev share arrangement. A lot of times companies are so focused on their own customer acquisition that they neglect monetizing and enriching their
audiences. Now go out and get them!
3. What makes a “Partner Marketing” campaign successful?
It really should be called Reciprocal Partner Marketing, because that's what it is, promoting each other in a series of placements that could include: SaaS dashboards, members areas, email lists, social media pages, website placements, and blog layout placements to name a few. It helps if the companies you partner up with are as big as you are, but that's not always the case and isn't the most important factor because all additional revenue helps. Once you form the partnership, stay in touch on
a monthly basis to strategize on the coming month's promotions and to see how it's going for each other. You have to stay the course, because it will do more over time. Once you start driving revenue for each other it becomes fun!
EVAN WEBER
Find EVAN ON LINKEDIN
Cyrille Vigneron
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ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW
BUT JUST SHORTER
1. Amazon announces “virtual product placement” - a way to insert ads / items after filming has wrapped. Think virtual billboards in any show that has already proven to be a hit.
Amazon did not name any specific brands that are testing VPP, but the company indicated one consumer packaged goods (CPG) brand experienced a 6.9% increase in brand favorability and a 14.7% increase in purchase intent for their campaign
2. Brands can resolve a lot of the mystery surrounding influencer marketing if they approach influencers as performance partners, just like publishers, loyalty affiliates, and coupon programs. Most brands have
dabbled in affiliate marketing, paying a publisher, for example, to produce or publish content related to their brand and calibrating payment based on measurable KPIs such as customer acquisition, engagement, or increased revenue. Marketers can apply the same principles to influencers.
3. Here are some examples of partnership marketing activities: Build do-follow links on relevant blog posts, social media blasts sharing new content or upcoming events, Email swaps promoting your respective services or content, Co-produced and co-promoted webinars, Live events targeting the same prospects, Conducting a new piece of research together
3. Partner Marketing Works Best when two companies complement each other's product lines. However, partners don't have to sell similar products as long as they target the same audience. For example, a fulfillment company might partner with a marketing agency to help their customers launch better marketing
strategies. The marketing agency gets more exposure, and in turn, the fulfillment company’s customers increase their fulfillment orders, therefore, leading to more revenue for the fulfillment company.
4. Jump Shops lets affiliates set up their own personalized online e-shops and promote their favorite products from the brand. Plus, brands can use Jump Shops to communicate with their affiliates and send them logos and illustrations for the website and social media. Meanwhile, the company makes money from a 3.5% fee on all transactions conducted through the
e-shops.
5. Snapchat has partnered up with Cameo, the platform known for being a marketplace for shoutouts from celebrities. They unveiled their new feature as part of Snapchat’s NewFronts presentation, where Cameo members, meaning the famous faces that fans are paying to see can post endorsements of brands and products. For example, the launch kicked off with a Snap of Mean Girls star Lindsay Lohan talking up Velveeta cheese.
6. Acceleration Partners, formerly an "Affiliate Marketing Company" is now the "leading global partnership agency", today announced the acquisition of Grovia. The Seattle-based company strengthens Acceleration Partners' existing suite of partnership marketing services with a powerful recruitment platform that helps companies discover high-quality affiliates, influencers and publishers at scale.The
Grovia deal marks the third acquisition for Acceleration Partners since partnering with Mountaingate Capital two years ago
7. The days of managing affiliates and partners on a manual, one-to-one basis are over, and companies can seamlessly manage a network of partners who are committed to driving the same business outcomes as the brands themselves—be it sales, leads, traffic or otherwise. The opportunities for companies to leverage partnership automation technology and a CPA cost structure are virtually limitless. ( Robert Glazer)
8. As we move away from cookies, tech partners and companies will need to find different ways to collect user information and track them across multiple sites. Affiliate marketing will only matter even more, leading to multiple benefits.
Contextual Advertising: Advertisers will have access to publishers offering data in the right places at the right time.
First-Party Data: Publishers will provide companies with access to first-party data that allows them to understand the interests and motivations of their audiences.
Optimized Technology: it is possible for affiliates to deliver unique benefits and context to consumers based on advertiser strategy and KPIs.
Privacy: Because companies are not using cookies to collect information, they establish stronger relationships through direct consent.
9. Roku announced a new program for retailers to pair shoppable ads with Roku Pay to make it simple to sell the products right from ads on the TV screen.
10. Ascend2 recently published “ The Outlook on Intent Data” report, and statistics suggested that the majority of marketers (69%) have been at least “somewhat successful” at leveraging intent data to achieve their marketing objectives. About 20% of best-in-class marketers said that they
have been “very successful” with the use of intent data
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What is Partner vs. Affiliate Marketing?
We also had a fair amount of conversation around the definitions of the words “affiliate” and “partner”; aren’t they the same?
There is no shortage of opinion on the topic - and while the advertiser/publisher relationship remains largely the same, the market trends that are driving new, innovative types of partners forces us to look at these definitions more closely.
Here’s my view on how they differ:
I define affiliates as those whose business model derives its revenues from performance-based deals, like coupon and loyalty sites, for example. They’re plug and play; they know exactly how to be successful in affiliate marketing and have a tried, tested, and profitable way to help brands grow their business.
Partners, on the other hand, are not plug and pay and take more time and effort to construct, onboard, and optimize. Think of your B2B partners, influencers, media companies, or mobile app publishers: payment models may be different, the platforms (or spreadsheets) used to manage or measure them may differ, and they may be managed by departments outside of marketing.
Partners represent an emerging wave of new relationship types but they in no way diminish the value of affiliates. In many programs, affiliates generate the bulk of the sales due to their industry knowledge, customer acquisition savvy, and overall experience in the space.
They are quick to launch, easy to educate, and profitable partners whose business models are proven to drive conversion. That said, over-reliance on any one partner type (affiliates or otherwise) to drive revenue for your partnership program is risky. A diverse portfolio of partner types ensures that this revenue stream won’t dry up if a relationship is strained or a promotion gets pulled.
Partners who are new to the world of affiliate marketing are an untapped resource and essential to program growth. Consumers nowadays are looking for authentic, third party recommendations and searching content sites, their favorite trusted influencers and other businesses they are working with.
If you don’t have relationships there, they won’t find you - it’s as simple as that. And I’ve seen some really innovative partnership types emerging between businesses (B2B
partnerships): most recently, Rent the Runway partnered with W Hotels so travelers can “pack lighter,” and Disney+ partnered with Verizon to offer free trials to Verizon customers.
These types of partnerships just make sense and I believe we’ll continue to see more just like these in the traditionally “affiliate” dominated performance marketing space.
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The Watercooler
Impress your Co-Workers with these useless facts about marketing
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Is this 1921 cartoon the first recorded meme?
When this comic was posted to Twitter, it caused excitement as people began to wonder if it was the first meme - a format-dependent joke, typically of a picture with a caption or subtitle - ever published.
Both draw from the same template of the 'Expectations vs. Reality' joke, which contrasts two pictures side-by-side with an obvious discrepancy between them.
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All About Us & Advertising
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ADOTAT.com is the product of over 20 years of online marketing publications and articles by Pesach Lattin & many more experts that have contributed!
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