What PR Pros Need to Know About Affiliate Marketing

These days, financial and sales results are hugely important for showing the value and impact of PR. It’s the holy grail of our industry, illustrating exactly how a feature story or product roundup impacts the bottom line. It’s an especially sought-after prize in the whirlwind of Q4, as holiday gift guides are aplenty and marketing teams eye year-end sales goals.

Fortunately, there may be an answer: affiliate marketing.


What Is Affiliate Marketing?

If you’re unfamiliar, affiliate marketing is the process in which a business rewards an affiliate partner with monetary income when that partner promotes the business’ product or services. Usually, this is on a pay-per-sale model. For example, if a news site reviews a business’ product and a customer buys it through the product (affiliate) link in the story, the publication gets a cut of the sale.

Everyone’s Doing It

Several major outlets have been taking advantage of this process over the last few years, with many even launching separate microsites and content streams dedicated to commerce coverage. Just look at CNN Underscored, Business Insider’s “Insider Picks”, Forbes Finds and the proliferation of commerce and market editor roles across all media verticals — even Rolling Stone has a commerce team now! It’s become a key revenue stream for many media houses continuing to transition to the rapidly evolving digital and e-commerce-driven world.

It’s a win for PR folks, too. Through affiliate links, we can track exactly how many sales (ahem, revenue) come through a specific piece of coverage or media outlet. Holy grail achieved!

But that’s not all. Knowing how affiliate programs work is essential to updating and adjusting overall PR strategy and media relations tactics. Want to start leveraging affiliate programs in your pitches? Here are a few tips to get you started.

1. Do You Have an Affiliate Program?

If a brand sells a product or service on their site, set up a direct affiliate program through that company site. There are many platforms that do this like Skimlinks, Viglinks and Pepperjam, some of which are interrelated. At the very least, make sure the brand’s products are available on Amazon, which currently runs one of the largest (and most lucrative) affiliate programs. Many media outlets already partner with one of the above platforms or Amazon. This can help get your foot in the door as a routinely considered and promoted product in editorial product roundups, deals coverage (hello, Black Friday) and reviews.

2. Mix Up Your Pitch Approach

While affiliate marketing teams and editorial staff endeavor to stay separate in order to preserve

unbiased journalism, they still pull for the same team. In pitching, consider reaching out to a commerce editor or affiliate marketing team member directly. We’ve had success garnering interest and making an editorial connection through the affiliate team versus continually following up with an unresponsive (and often overwhelmed) reporter. Depending on the outlet, affiliate teams can actually be the best folks to pitch gift guide recs, product launches and deals first. Note that at the end of the day, a journalist doesn’t usually make the call on whether an affiliate link is included or not; that’s up to the editor and the affiliate team.

3. Leverage Affiliate Media Partners

Work closely with your brand’s affiliate program managers to see which media houses are already partnered, at what commission rate and what their performance has been. This can give insight into which publications may be more open to covering your products, as well as reveal opportunities for which ones to pursue. It’s media relations with a price tag, but it works!

Just as publications are beginning to have both editorial and affiliate marketing departments, it’s not out of the question that we’ll all soon need to become both media and affiliate specialists. So get a jump on it, start pitching smarter and show how PR can really make it happen for your clients.

Questions? Drop us a line at Hello@praytellagency.com

Amy Poltorak is a PR & Communications strategist with a focus on consumer tech and technology brands. Since joining Praytell in 2017, Amy has overseen PR strategy, run media relations campaigns and managed account operations across Praytell’s diverse portfolio, from household names to fast-growing startups. A proud Bay Area native, she was an early member of the San Francisco office and a Northwestern University alum.