Multiple Networks: The Key To Scaling Programs Profitably

There is a common misconception in the affiliate marketing industry that running affiliate programs on multiple networks simultaneously will cannibalize performance. This is simply inaccurate. Savvy affiliate program managers, CMOs, and agencies with experience of launching programs on multiple networks are generating meaningful and incremental revenue growth.

Businesses have diversified in their marketing for decades by advertising in multiple newspapers and magazines at the same time, or on several different TV and radio stations. There is no reason that this same strategy should not be successfully applied to online marketing channels.

We have already seen a proof of the concept in search engine marketing over the lest few years. A marketing channel that for many businesses began with a few keywords on Google Adwords has now developed into a collection of complex strategies to capture opportunities on tier 1, 2, and 3 search engines using a combination of internal teams, agencies, and sometimes even affiliates to cover the entire keyword spectrum.

That same kind of increased sophistication is now being seen in the performance marketing industry. It is being driven by two key insights.

First, while many affiliates belong to more than one network, nobody belongs to all of them. Running a program on more than one network significantly expands its potential reach. Second, even where a particular affiliate does belong to many networks, they still are likely to have a clear preference among them or ‘network affinity’.

It is this network preference or affinity that drives the success of the multinetwork strategy. Network affinity is the result of three main factors that tend to keep an individual affiliate loyal to a very limited of networks:

• Relationships: success for affiliates often depends on relationships with key networks and advertisers. If they have a choice of running the same program from different networks, they’ll go with the people they trust.

• User Interface: once affiliates have learned an interface and become comfortable with its nuances, they lean towards programs that let them continue to use the system they prefer.

• Availability of similar offers: there are very few truly exclusive products or services out there. While you may think you have a unique offering, the chances are that an affiliate will feel there are plenty of alternatives for your offering that will convert for them.

What this means is that high-performing affiliates that operate within your target market sector may be spread across several networks, and each network will have its own pool of loyal publishers. If you want to maximize your program’s reach, you have to go where the affiliates are by making the program available across their preferred networks.

Now, running affiliate programs on multiple networks isn’t a cure-all. If a program doesn’t work on one network, it is unlikely to work on several networks. But once a program has been proved profitable then there is no reason not to expand it to additional networks.

Naturally, this should be a careful process. Some networks may be a better fit than others and these should be identified and prioritized. Similarly, the increased complexity of running a program on multiple networks will require additional time, experience, and tools to execute successfully. But even if these resources aren’t available internally, there is a wide range of outsourced program management agencies, advisors, consultants, and software tools out there that can help.

The bottom line is that high-performing affiliates are not all aggregated together in any one network that they all trust implicitly. They are spread wide across many networks and each network is likely to have a core set of affiliates that prefer to work with them.

If you only run your affiliate program on one network, then you can only reach a subset of the pool of high-performing affiliates. You’re going to leave money on the table. And why would you do that?