How Important is Publisher Diversification?
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How Important is Publisher Acquisition and Diversification in Affiliate Marketing?
Publisher acquisition and diversification are crucial for growing your affiliate channel's impact. Investing time in proactively finding new partners is key to ensuring consistent growth. Without actively expanding your publisher base and nurturing existing partners, your channel risks stagnating or even declining.
The Benefits of Diversifying Your Publisher Mix
Affiliate marketing isn’t limited to bottom-of-funnel partners like cashback and comparison sites. At Growth HQ, our clients typically work with a minimum of 9 affiliate types, with more mature programs running up to 18 verticals. Expanding your publisher mix unlocks several key benefits:
- Increased potential program reach
- Unlocking new marketing channels
- Reduced risk and over reliance on few channels
- Enhanced credibility and increased investment in the program
Increase the Potential Reach of Your Program
Relying solely on bottom-of-funnel partners limits your affiliate channel to conversions only. By activating publishers higher up the funnel, you can generate brand awareness, customer consideration, and sales conversions.
Working with influencers, podcasts, media houses, SEO partners, and employee benefit sites can significantly expand your reach across different demographics and audience types.
Unlock New Marketing Channels
Your affiliate program can provide a low-risk opportunity to explore new marketing channels without committing to additional budgets or hiring specialist teams. For instance, Growth HQ has successfully tested YouTube sponsorships and podcast partnerships via affiliate programs, allowing brands to evaluate new channels before scaling.
Diversify to Reduce Risk
Diversification is a proven risk-mitigation strategy in paid marketing, and affiliate marketing is no different. Many programs we audit rely on a handful of cashback and discount sites driving 95% of performance.
If a competitor offers higher commissions, these publishers can quickly divert attention, causing sudden revenue declines. By working with 2-3 verticals per funnel stage and maintaining 6-9 publisher types overall, you’ll significantly reduce this risk.
Raise the Profile of Affiliate Marketing
Brands that engage with diverse publisher types attract more attention from senior leadership. When affiliate channels generate revenue from influencers, paid PR, employee benefit sites, and bottom-of-funnel players, it showcases the channel’s broad potential — increasing internal investment and boosting your channel’s credibility.
How to Test a New Publisher Type
Follow these actionable steps to successfully test a new affiliate vertical:
- Select publishers based on your audience's behaviour and pain points (customer-based targeting).
- Prioritise scalable verticals with publishers that offer strong reach.
- Start small: Outreach to 10 publishers in the new vertical.
- Close deals and launch campaigns with 2-3 test partners.
- Monitor data closely and refine campaigns to meet your benchmark KPIs.
- Scale up by partnering with additional similar publishers.
How to Grow Your Publisher Base
Expanding your publisher base requires proactive effort, so here’s some strategies we find particularly successful:
1. Inbound Applications
Affiliate networks like Impact.com, Partnerize, and Rakuten offer public listings that expose your program to thousands of potential partners. Ensure you vet applications carefully and provide partners with the right assets to ensure partners will turn into click and revenue driving partners.
💡Pro Tip: If your brand awareness is still growing, expect a higher number of bottom-of-funnel applications.
2. Build Targeted Prospect Lists
Focus on identifying where your target audience spends time. For instance, beginner investors may consume investment tutorials on YouTube, so be sure to align your outreach to these platforms accordingly.
3. Activate Dormant Publishers
An easy win is to review your affiliate program annually to identify inactive partners. Often, these publishers need tailored support to optimise campaigns. At Growth HQ, we follow a "use or lose" rule — removing inactive publishers if efforts to re-engage them prove unsuccessful.
4. Utilise Affiliate Platform Databases
Affiliate networks offer extensive partner databases. Leveraging platforms like Impact.com, Partnerize, or Rakuten makes identifying and reaching out to relevant partners easier.
Conclusion
Proactively seeking new partners is essential to sustaining long-term affiliate channel growth. By diversifying your publisher base, you’ll reduce risk, expand your reach, and unlock new marketing opportunities. If you’d like to explore tailored strategies for publisher acquisition and diversification, get in touch with us by filling out our contact form and we can arrange a free consultation.
