How to Scale Your Affiliate Marketing Program: 3 Epic Strategies

Affiliate marketing is one of the most cost-effective strategies to grow your business without having to spend money upfront on campaigns. 

When done correctly, it can make an outsized impact on your business success. However, knowing when and how to scale your affiliate program can make or break your results. Timing and execution are everything.

If you’re ready to start investing further in your affiliate marketing program, this guide is for you. Keep reading to discover tactical advice for knowing when it’s time to scale and actionable strategies for doing so successfully.

The Business Case for Affiliate Program Growth

Your marketing team only has so much capacity, both in terms of budget and time. So, how do you build a case for investing more resources into your affiliate program? 

Investing in your affiliate marketing program is lower-risk than other marketing initiatives. Affiliate marketing offers performance-based ROI, meaning you only pay for results, like actual sales, leads, and conversions. 

Affiliate marketing programs offer promising potential for scalability, as each new affiliate partner allows you to expand your reach to wider audiences without necessarily increasing spend.

Finally, affiliates are effective for bringing in warm leads that are closer to buying. Their trust in your affiliate partner is passed to you by proxy, making it easier to convert them to a buyer.

How to Make the Case Internally to Invest More in Affiliate Program Growth

Before moving full steam ahead with your affiliate program, you’ll likely need to pitch key decision makers, communicate how to scale affiliate marketing effectively, and get approvals. 

Here are three solid strategies for making the case internally:

1. Focus on the numbers by highlighting successful results from recent programs.
2. Showcase revenue growth and affiliate funnel expansion potential by forecasting the ROI of an expanded affiliate program.
3. Benchmark your competitors to identify gaps and opportunities to win.
4. Develop a clear plan that outlines what support and resources you’ll need, like an increased commissions budget, affiliate marketing platform, program manager, and improved banners and ads.

When to Scale Your Brand’s Affiliate Program

When it comes to how to scale affiliate marketing, timing is everything. Expand too soon, and you may not be ready to take advantage of a growing affiliate funnel. But wait too long, and you could miss out on a valuable opportunity.

Understanding the four growth phases of an affiliate marketing program will help you determine when’s the right time to scale.

Typical Affiliate Program Growth Timing & Phases

Phase 1: Early Program

In the Early Program phase, focus on setting up your program by:

• Setting goals and defining success metrics
• Recruiting affiliate partners
• Testing affiliate marketing platforms
• Making process changes internally to make the new program a success 

The Early Program phase is too early to consider scaling. Focus on nailing the basics and creating a foundation for success.

Phase 2: Validation and Growth 

Once your program is established, it’s time to validate and grow. During this phase, focus on optimizing your existing affiliate program’s performance. Ensure you’re making progress towards key metrics and KPIs defined in the Early Program phase.

Here are some key indicators that your program is going well:

• You have a growing affiliate funnel, and affiliates are bringing in a steady stream of quality leads or revenue.
• The cost-per-acquisition is comparable with your other well-performing channels. 
• Affiliate partners are providing you positive feedback on the ease of working with you.

If the above points are trending in a good direction, it could be time to consider dedicating more resources to your affiliate program.

Phase 3: Expansion 

In the Expansion phase, you’ve validated that your existing program framework is effective, and you’re ready to aggressively take it to the next level. You’ll know you’re ready for the Expansion phase when:

• You’re getting month-over-month growth from affiliate traffic. 
• A select number of affiliate partners are driving a significant amount of revenue in key business areas.
• You have wide-spread confidence in the affiliate program, and leadership sees its value.

At this point, consider investing more heavily in program management, procuring sophisticated reporting tools, streamlining affiliate tracking, and launching larger-scale campaigns.

Phase 4: Maturity and Innovation

At this stage, you’ve proven to your company leadership and wider team that you can scale affiliate marketing with consistent success. Here’s how to know you’re reaching the Mature phase:

• Affiliate marketing has become a staple tactic in your marketing mix and continues to drive meaningful results each quarter.
• You have a good variety of affiliate types. Plus, you know what works and what doesn’t.
• You can identify opportunities for advancing your program by expanding into new markets or introducing tiered incentives.

At this stage, focus on identifying innovative new ways to grow your affiliate funnel.

{{blog-cta}}

Three Strategies for How to Scale Affiliate Marketing

Now that you’ve determined what stage you’re at, let’s explore three solid strategies for growing and scaling your affiliate program.

Strategy #1: Build a Comprehensive Affiliate Resource Hub

Before you focus on expanding your network of affiliates, maximize results by ensuring your existing affiliate partners are set up for success. A great way to do that is by developing a comprehensive affiliate resource hub that provides everything they need to be successful in one convenient location. 

An accessible hub with all your promotional materials helps ensure all affiliates are using consistent brand messaging and visuals. Plus, when you’re ready to expand your affiliate network, it makes onboarding new partners easier.

Here are some ideas for what to include in your affiliate resources hub:

• Brand guidelines: Logos, color palettes, and any specific guidelines on how to talk about your brand
• Assets: Affiliate banners and images, product or service photos, B-roll for videos, screenshots, etc.
• Pre-approved messaging: Pre-written snippets of copy, social media caption templates, product and service descriptions, and talking point prompts
• Tracking and links: Guidelines on how to use affiliate links and coupon codes
• Support materials and documentation: FAQs, training videos, sales materials, product walkthroughs, etc.

Some key things to keep in mind when developing your affiliate resource hub are ensuring it's simple to use and navigate, accessible through both mobile and desktop, and up to date with your latest brand news and releases.

Strategy #2: Build a Quarterly Promotional Calendar and Contest Cycle

Supporting your affiliates with promotions and contests helps create a sense of urgency and excitement towards working with your brand, keeps you top of mind among affiliate partners, and boosts sales incentives during key times, like the holidays.

Here are a few important things to keep in mind when building a quarterly promotional calendar:

• Get aligned across marketing and sales: Ensure contests line up with planned product/feature launches, trends, and sales targets.
• Define goals and objectives: Treat your affiliate program like an ongoing experiment. Setting goals gives you a north star and helps you determine if the initiative was worthwhile. 
• Customize promotions: Create different contests and promotions for different groups of affiliates. You could segment based on target audience, affiliate performance, etc.
• Diversify incentives: Consider other types of incentives such as recognition, travel, invites to events, higher commission tiers, etc. 

We recommend keeping a quarterly cadence, so you don’t overwhelm your affiliates. Clearly communicate each promotion and contest, as well as any rules and stipulations. Make sure you set clear expectations and parameters, so your campaign produces the intended results.

Strategy #3: Build Community and Expand Affiliate Partnerships Internationally

Another strategy for how to scale affiliate marketing is to expand and strengthen your affiliate network both locally and internationally by growing your community. 

First, experiment with community-building within your primary market. Here are some tactics to consider:

• Create private online groups for sharing tips, insights, and making connections.
• Host virtual or in-person events and experiences.
• Develop a newsletter for different segments of your affiliate network.

Once you’ve established a community-building program at home, you can grow your affiliate funnel internationally. Going international is a great way to reach untapped markets without a massive investment. It can help you test the waters in new markets and increase awareness. Additionally, it helps reduce risk by diversifying your income streams. 

Working with influencers and micro-influencers, like those who post on TikTok, can be a great way to get more bang for your buck. Not only can they double as affiliates and directly generate results, but they can also help build broader brand awareness and trust among key audiences. 

It’s important to keep in mind that you may need to adapt your approach for an international audience. While the above tactics can still work, consider adjusting them to better suit the community:

• Create versions of content and supporting materials in the local language to improve comprehension and make affiliates feel welcome.
• Adjust messaging for differences, such as culture, weather, seasons, lifestyle, etc. 
• Communicate specific promotions for different locations (e.g. if you’re running a sale in one country and not another.) 
• Provide reference materials about pricing and promotions in foreign currencies, so affiliates can share details relevant to their audience.
• Develop reference material about shipping/returns for international shoppers, so affiliates can provide direction if their audience asks.

How to Scale Affiliate Marketing with Technology

Leveraging technology is the final piece of the puzzle for how to scale affiliate marketing. A platform with advanced management and tracking capabilities, like LeadDyno, can help you take your affiliate program to the next level.

Reduce Mundane Admin Work and Improve Onboarding

LeadDyno helps remove a lot of the busywork involved with establishing, managing, and growing an affiliate program. It also makes the process of onboarding new affiliates a breeze. Here’s how:

• Automate tracking and attribution: Automatically track all systems records, like clicks, leads, and sales, in real time.
• Calculate commission: Automatically determine who gets paid, how much, and when.
• Make payment: Pay your affiliates directly through commonly used platforms like PayPal. 
• Get easy reporting: Never be in the dark about your performance. Get access to real-time metrics when you need them. 
• Implement marketing automation: Pre-schedule emails for your affiliates to keep your brand top of mind and your partners informed.
• Improve onboarding: Host branded sign-up pages, give instant access to key dashboards and a personal portal, share resources, and provide detailed instructions.

Get Key Insights with Real-Time, Reliable Tracking

Without a centralized system, tracking the performance of your affiliate program can be time-consuming and inaccurate. LeadDyno can help you streamline tracking by:

• Monitoring the entire user journey with end-to-end tracking capabilities
• Supporting multiple attribution methods, whether it’s through affiliate links, coupon codes, social sharing, and beyond
• Tracking subscriptions and recurring purchases, so you’re not limited to one-time purchases
• Reporting results in real-time, so you’re never behind and can access data instantly

Empower Your Affiliate Partners

LeadDyno can help you become your affiliate partner’s favorite brand to work with. We provide the tools you need to empower your affiliates to succeed. 

Each of your partners gets their own personalized dashboard, so they can see their own performance data, access referral links, and see when they’re getting paid. 

As we mentioned earlier, you can also develop an affiliate program hub to host all the supporting material your affiliates could ever need to succeed. 

Bonus? Empowering your affiliates to self-serve also reduces admin work for your team — a win-win. 

Automate Commission Structures and Payouts

As you scale your affiliate program, calculating commission accurately can be a challenge – especially as you introduce different commission and incentive structures. LeadDyno can help take the guesswork out of commission and automate the process for you. LeadDyno supports:

• Different commission models, including flat fees, percentage-based payouts, tiered commissions, and recurring commissions
• Product and coupon-specific rules
• Tiered commissions and upstream referrals 
• Payouts, so you can make a large volume of payment and transactions automatically 

Transform the Affiliate Dashboard

A dedicated dashboard for your affiliates can be game-changing for program performance. 

Every affiliate in your program will get their own dedicated dashboard with unique referral links, codes, and statistics. They can track their progress in real time with access to clicks, links, and sales generated from their efforts. They can also get a transparent view of how commissions are being calculated, along with pending and earned commissions and their payment history. 

The affiliate dashboard can also help affiliates give a stronger performance overall, thanks to the easy access they’ll have to marketing materials like banners, product images, videos, and copy snippets.

Final Thoughts

Set yourself up for success when scaling your affiliate program. The right timing, strategy, and platform can help you get there. Scaling doesn’t have to be complicated. With LeadDyno, you can expand your affiliate funnel with advanced features that enable simplified tracking, automated commissions, and affiliate empowerment. 

Take your affiliate program to the next level today with a free trial.

‍