Setting Up Your Affiliates Program

Setting up an affiliates program can be a profitable addition to your sales and marketing effort – one that companies don’t take advantage of as much as they should.

There is no risk to you, as you don’t pay affiliates unless a sale is made. There are, however, programs where you pay per action or per lead, but they are not recommended – read on to find out the reason why.

Here’s the easy step-by-step guide to setting one up.

Step One: Know What You Want

Begin with the end in mind: You need to think about what you want before you set it up. Most companies want more sales, but there are other, often overlooked benefits to be derived.

If you are a company that needs word-of-mouth marketing, consider a multi-level marketing component. If you need to grow a healthy database of leads to mine for years to come, consider rewarding on a pay per action basis, where you get contact information in exchange for commission for your affiliates program. However, the most straightforward — and least prone to corruption — is the pay per sale model.

Step Two: Choose the Right Software

You need the customer’s experience to be seamless. If the customer feels disjointed when clicking from your affiliates’ websites to yours, you might lose the sale. As users, we’ve been trained not to trust being redirected to another site, especially when we are about to give up our credit card number, so you need to take steps to deal with this with your software.

Another aspect to consider with your software is proper sales tracking. Nothing will shut your program down faster than affiliates not getting proper credit for their referred sales.

You also have to make sure that the software works from a functionality standpoint. Have it tested several times by making purchases on it before turning it loose.

Step Three: Determine the Point of Contact

Determine who will manage the affiliates program in your company. If you can’t handle it in-house, consider a management company.

Someone needs to monitor the performance on a day-to-day basis. Someone needs to be available to the members when they have questions and concerns. Someone needs to keep on top of opportunities to expand the program so that you can maximize your results. Finally, someone needs to continually invent new promotions to spur sales through your program.

Step Four: Prepare a Step-by-Step Guide for Your Affiliates

If you really want to see your affiliates program take off, you need to invest time and money. They need to know how to be successful – everything from creating “thick” websites with continually changing, relevant content, to search engine optimization and marketing. Create a “quick start” manual to help get things rolling, as well as a guide to maximizing sales for the affiliates.

And it’s not over when the affiliates are set up and ready for business, when the first sales comes in, or even months down the line when you are making regular payments to them. You have to keep helping them achieve greater and greater performance levels.

The bottom line: The more you can guide your affiliates to success, the more success you’ll see.