A small percentage of your client’s market wants to buy right now (demand capture), and you’re facing competition for affiliates who reach these customers. What can we do to generate demand for clients?

AM2.0 #5 Life After Demand Capture

Hey subscribers, welcome to another deep dive into affiliate management demand strategy.

In the previous issue, which focused on demand capture and revenue growth, we chatted about how we can capture the low-hanging fruit in your affiliate program, primarily through “search demand” affiliate recruitment for SEO review sites, paid search affiliates, and YouTube/Tikok affiliates to a lesser extent.

Basically, all of the affiliates and content who are ranking for relevant searches in your market.

That strategy is best implemented when you launch or first inherit an affiliate program and need to put some quick wins on the board.

The growth curve from this strategy looks something like the example below for a newly launched program: approaching 300 daily high-intent clicks after two months.

But… there’s a problem with this strategy.

It’s limited by the amount of demand intent in your industry (search volume for products) and the number of affiliate pieces of content/pages existing that reach those intent searches.

And it’s only about 5% of the market.

According to popular market wisdom, about 95% of your client’s market is not ready to buy right now.

Depending on your bandwidth, you can actually get to the end of the “demand capture” 5 % of buyers who are ready to buy right now rainbow within the first three to six months of your program.

I pretty much did with the last program I launched, working ten hours per week for two or three months.

I ran into the proverbial “demand capture” brick wall.

This is especially true of Amazon sellers on Levanta, as most successful affiliates on Levanta are paid search affiliates (demand capture).

Other Demand Capture Affiliates

The other most notable demand capture affiliates are coupons/toolbar extensions, loyalty partners, retargeting affiliates, tm+, and on-site tech partners.

Admittedly, there are differing opinions on the incrementality of these partners.

Still, I would suggest that most buyers already intend to buy before they search for a coupon, enable Rakuten, or receive cashback for a purchase, etc.

Revenue and Incrementality of Demand Capture Affiliates

Of the “demand capture” affiliate types - paid search, SEO content, loyalty, toolbars, retargeting, on-site tech, tm+ - not all types offer the same value regarding incrementality.

SEO & Paid Search Affiliates

SEO and paid search affiliates (Buyer’s Guide, Buyer’s Report, etc.) would be considered incremental revenue drivers for your program.

They capture and refer visitors who likely would not have visited your brand website without their partnership.

For instance, they bid on non-branded terms like “product category + review” that your brand would likely not bid on.

That equals incremental.

Loyalty & Coupon / Toolbar

These partners would likely be considered not to bring incremental impact to your program - i.e., without the partnership or compensation of these affiliates, the consumer is likely to still purchase.

Retargeting & On-site Tech

Though there might be a level of incrementality about retargeting and on-site tech partners, they fall on the demand capture side because the customers have already shown intent by visiting the brand’s website before these partners come into play.

Trademark+

Trademark+ publishers bid on “brand + term” keywords as they have high conversion rates, like “Nike shoes” and “Buy Nike Shoes.”

When this happens, it inflates the CPC of bids and cannibalizes revenue.

As a general rule of thumb, it’s a no-no for brands in the affiliate space.

It’s also seen as not incremental because the consumer was already searching for the “brand” term, implying purchase intent (demand capture).

Revenue Drivers

Recruiting demand-capture affiliates when you first launch or inherit a program is important because they are immediate revenue drivers.

An example of a paid search placement (demand capture) I helped secure at Buyer’s Report is listed below.

These kinds of placements, be it paid search or SEO, will capture recurring high-intent traffic so long as the paid search campaigns are being run or SEO articles are ranking.

So, too, will coupon sites, toolbar extensions, loyalty, retargeting, etc.

Those affiliate partners will tap into consumer intent immediately when you launch and, dare I say, cannibalize revenue from day one (if you allow them to).

For example, I launched this program last week. The first two sales were for Deal AM and a lower funnel, Skimlinks site.

I made a request at Skimlinks to remove the coupon publishers from the program and lowered Dealam’s commission to 2%.

Hitting the Demand Capture Brick Wall 🧱 

But what happens after the first few months after all of the paid search, SEO, coupon, loyalty, retargeting, and on-site partners are onboarded and optimized?

What happens when you run into the demand capture brick wall?

Your client still expects growth, don’t they?

It’s time to generate demand.

But that’s easier said than done.

What is Demand Generation?

Amazon gives the above definition ☝️.

If we translate that into an affiliate marketing context, it’s basically all of the ways we can generate awareness that doesn’t involve our demand-capture affiliates: SEO content, paid search, coupons, toolbars, trademark+, loyalty, retargeting, and on-site tech.

Notice that I’m using “demand capture” and “demand generation” terminology instead of “top of the funnel” and “bottom of the funnel.”

I think funnel-based terminology is much more generic, and I think that intent is a much better way to categorize consumers because there are “top-of-funnel” affiliates that can reach consumers of all different levels of purchase intent.

Who are Demand-generating Affiliates?

1) Net New Content - Not Ranking for SEO

Premium publishers, bloggers, reviews, etc., are all considered demand-generating as long as they are not already ranking in SEO terms.

This way, you can be sure that the sales and traffic are coming from the publisher’s “community” and native audience rather than coming via search engines.

2) Organic Social / Influencer / Podcast

This is probably one of the most popular approaches to demand generation.

This is the “product review” or “product post” approach that reaches an influencer’s direct audience on various social media platforms.

3) Mobile App Partners

Mobile app partners often offer incentives and perks to their users to create audience loyalty.

As mobile apps operate outside of search engines, they are considered demand-generation affiliates.

4) Non-brand / intent SEO Reddit & Forums

Being present in discussions in Reddit & Forums for users who aren’t looking for a specific brand or have product intent already.

For instance, if someone searches “how to change a car tire” and lands on a Reddit forum where an affiliate link to "AAA” is shared.

That’s more “demand gen” because the consumer didn't have existing purchase intent for AAA in “their search.”

Yet, that could be an opportune advertising/affiliate moment for them, given their situation.

5) Email & Newsletters

Substack, email lists, and publisher email lists can be great venues for reaching new audiences who aren’t showing purchase or search intent.

6) Employee Benefits/Perks

As “closed networks,” employee benefits providers are not participants in search demand and offer opportunities to reach new consumers.

7) Connected TV

Connected TV providers offer access to television streaming viewers who have not indicated search intent.

8) Deals Sites

Deals sites build communities (similar to cashback) around sourcing discounts and promotional offers for their audience.

9) Social Arbitrage & Whitelisting

Social arbitrage and whitelisting affiliate partners acquire traffic and customers via paid social advertising on platforms like Meta, Snapchat, and YouTube and refer it to brand websites and sales pages.

10) Card-linked Offers

Card-linked offers brokers access to consumers via banks and airline audiences and by offering cashback incentives.

The Difficulty of Demand-generating Affiliates

There are a few challenges presented when working with demand-generation affiliates.

These challenges make it more difficult to sustain continuous growth once the demand capture part of recruitment has been completed.

Consistency/Recurring Performance

For the most part, demand-generation affiliates are less consistent, and their performance is less recurring than that of demand-capture affiliates.

That’s because demand-generation affiliates don't receive a daily flow of purchase-intent searchers like demand-capture affiliates do.

Every day, a paid search roundup or SEO content review receives new visitors with some level of purchase intent.

The same can’t be said for an Instagram post or a card-linked offer, for instance.

Lower Intent Users = Less Revenue

Generally speaking, you will have to refer many more demand-generation users to a brand’s website than demand-capture visitors to achieve the same revenue.

That is because of the lower intent that “not-already-looking-to-buy” demand-generation users have.

Sure, these users might click on their favorite IG influencer’s photo to check out a product, but they might be doing so more out of curiosity than purchase intent.

In essence, these users may just be starting a purchase journey, maybe, whereas users with existing intent are further down the line.

More Manual & One-off

There’s less traffic circulation for most demand-generation affiliates, and affiliate relationships here wander off into spontaneity-and-unpredictability-ville.

In most instances, one-off campaigns, promotions, and performance spikes are more common than stable, recurring performance.

Take a newsletter inclusion or even a premium press hit.

Say your client just secured a premium press

****WARNING***** AMAZING CANVA SKILLS FORTHCOMING!

Our team has previously gotten client coverage on Oprah, and while I don’t have the historical data from that campaign handy, I’m sure it looked something like that.

One-off campaigns tend to follow the same pattern, with a client seeing performance over 3-4 days before the campaign disappears into the archive.

Don’t even get me started on the finickiness of influencers and trying to launch campaigns with them.

Working Smarter with Demand-generation Affiliates

In my estimation, the goal of an affiliate strategy should be to create continuous, recurring, sustainable growth.

It would be nice if the relationship/campaign was low-maintenance, too.

A Case for Social Arbitrage, Whitelisting, & Connected TV Affiliates

Of the affiliate categories I mentioned above, theoretically, I like social arbitrage and Connected TV the best.

There are a few reasons why I prefer working with advertising networks and ad exchange affiliates over some of the others I mentioned:

• Audience targeting (profile relevant audience types - ex. “lookalikes”)

• Testing capabilities

• Specific KPI’s

• “Lower maintenance”

• More scalable

• High traffic potential

If you can create a successful campaign with a creative component (UGC, video ad, static ad, etc), advertising network (Meta, Snapchat, YouTube, etc), and conversion component (landing page, product page, advertorial), then you have found a source of consistent “demand-generation” performance.

These consumers may have held no intent to buy but, based on other factors - similar interests, behavior, etc. - converted into customers.

That beats haggling over posts with influencers, in my opinion.

Go for Recurring, Otherwise

If you are going down the “well-trodden” influencer and podcaster route, I would recommend that you negotiate for multiple/recurring posts or ad-rolls or mentions or whatever.

Again, in my opinion, it’s best to create continuous, recurring, sustainable growth if possible.

Developing more long-standing influencer partnerships that have a regular cadence will stabilize performance some.

Have a good weekend ✌🏼

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