In a crowded digital marketing landscape, affiliate and influencer programs are often misunderstood, siloed, or poorly managed. To break down how brands can truly get the most out of their affiliate programs, I sat down with Greg Hoffman and Lynsey Kmetz from Apogee Agency.
With over 21 years of affiliate management experience, Greg recently authored the book Think Like an Affiliate Manager. Lynsey, bringing her unique background as a former content creator and early-2000s blogger, brings the publisher’s perspective to the table. Together, they shared actionable strategies for scaling affiliate programs, navigating tricky attribution, and managing the delicate balance between content creators and coupon sites.
1. Stop Launching Links, Start Building a Program
A common misconception among brands is that simply joining an affiliate network and generating a text link will magically drive revenue.
- Affiliate Marketing Isn’t Magic: Many brands do the bare minimum, wait six months, and then wonder why the channel isn’t working.
- Infrastructure is Key: Success requires a deep understanding of the mechanics, infrastructure, and various promotional methods available.
- Avoid the “One-Person” Trap: Brands often hand the entire affiliate and influencer channel to one young employee and expect overnight success. This overwhelming expectation leads to high turnover, meaning you truly need a dedicated team or agency to optimize effectively.
2. Aligning with the Publisher’s Business Plan
When evaluating potential partners, brands often obsess over audience size without considering the creator’s actual business model.
- Brand Awareness vs. Conversions: An influencer with a million followers might generate massive brand awareness but zero sales. That doesn’t make them invaluable, but it means they serve a different purpose in the funnel.
- The Performance Test: To gauge an influencer’s conversion power, offer them a slightly lower flat rate combined with an affiliate performance upside. If they refuse the affiliate portion, they are likely signaling that their audience is primed for awareness rather than purchasing.
- Respecting the Business: Whether you are dealing with a massive media publication or an early 2000s “mommy blogger,” you must treat them as savvy business owners Have candid conversations about expectations, engagement rates, and demographic fit.
3. The Necessary Evil: Coupon and Cashback Sites
Many premium brands turn their noses up at coupon, loyalty, and cashback extensions, fearing they cheapen the brand. However, completely ignoring the bottom of the funnel is a strategic mistake.
- Proving Conversion Rates: Content creators take a risk when promoting a new brand. By bringing in a few reliable coupon partners first, you generate the baseline sales data needed to prove your site converts.
- The Runway Strategy: For the first three months of a new program, it is normal for 100% of sales to come from bottom-funnel partners. You can then use this data to pitch content creators confidently. Over time, as content matures, aim to reduce the coupon share of revenue to around 25%.
- The Checkout Hypocrisy: If a brand claims they are too “premium” for coupon affiliates, yet they feature a promo code box on their checkout page, they are contradicting themselves. Customers are conditioned to hunt for discounts; if you don’t partner with strategic coupon sites, you risk losing the sale entirely.
4. Navigating Attribution and Internal Buy-In
Affiliate managers constantly face internal friction, especially when trying to prove their channel’s worth to leadership.
- The “Source of Truth” Trap: Relying strictly on last-click Google Analytics as the ultimate source of truth is a massive error. The modern customer journey spans multiple devices, cookie blockers, and platforms.
- Fight to Be in the Room: Affiliate managers must demand a seat at the table alongside SEO, PR, and Paid Media teams. These channels are deeply intertwined. An affiliate link might introduce the customer, trigger a Facebook retargeting pixel, and lead to an email signup that converts three months later.
- The AI Future: As Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI search engines scrape publisher content to provide answers, clicks are decreasing while visibility increases. The next frontier of affiliate marketing will require new attribution models that reward publishers for feeding AI answer engines.
Final Thoughts
Affiliate marketing is no longer a set-it-and-forget-it channel. It is a full-funnel strategy that requires careful relationship building, smart commission structuring, and an understanding of complex attribution.
To hear the full discussion and gather more insights, check out the complete video on YouTube: Think Like an Affiliate Manager | Recover Money Left on the Table and Increase Profitability.
