The most important way to guarantee successful passive recruitment for your affiliate program is to make your affiliate program stand out within in-network search. Affiliates are constantly looking for new programs to join and if there are a few extra steps you can take to make it easier for them to find you, you should be doing them.
Below are three excellent practices for making your affiliate program stand out within in-network search.
Proper Keywords
Assigning the right keywords to your program is far and away the most important way to make your affiliate program stand out within in-network search.
When you set up your profile within your affiliate network there will be a place to list out keywords that affiliates can use to find you when they’re searching the network. The screenshot below is from ShareASale and shows where you can place keywords for your program.
Make sure that you’re using keywords that accurately describe your product and ones that affiliates are likely to type in when searching.
The best practice here is to use several of your competitor’s names as keywords. If there’s only one tip you take away from this article, have this be it.
In the programs that I manage I get more applications from affiliates who found my program through a competitor’s name keyword than any other way of passive recruitment.
Along with utilizing competitor’s names as keywords, make sure to also include generic terms relevant to your product. Be selective though because networks have caps on how many keywords you can utilize.
Attractive Creative
Once affiliates find your program you want to make sure they don’t just gloss over it and move on to the next one. You need to stand out and attractive creative is the best way to do this. Affiliate networks give you opportunities to include nice images of your company’s logo and sometimes product shots and animated gifs.
Affiliates like to have an arsenal of assets to promote the brands they choose to represent and if you display from the get-go that you have high-quality creative, the prospective affiliate is that much more likely to look further into your program and apply.
Clean Messaging and Complete Profile
Lastly, it’s important to have a full profile with clean messaging and descriptions. If you have an incomplete profile, not only will your program not have a professional look, but the networks will not list you as high in search results.
There are typically fields for short description, long description, and other smaller things such as cookie life. Make sure that you complete all available fields and provide prospective affiliates with as much information as possible. Make sure you make your descriptions succinct and easy to digest.
Also, make sure to include contact info in case prospective affiliates want to ask you any questions.
I hope that you found these few ideas helpful and that you implement some of them when optimizing your program for visibility within your network’s search.
Good luck with all your affiliate marketing efforts and feel free to email us or comment below with any comments or questions.