Role of digital PR and affiliates
The affiliate channel due to the diversity of partner types often has a lot of synergy and cross over with other areas of digital marketing. Where we commonly see a lot of brands looking to explore is the blurred lines between digital PR and the channel. Brands often end up with affiliate programmes from a need to support a digital PR team with gaining access to the affiliate partner Skimlinks.
But who are Skimlinks and why do they matter so much to digital PR teams?
Skimlinks are a subnetwork, a subnetwork is essentially like an affiliate network in their own right - in Skimlinks case lots of editorial publications join their platform as a way to access all their partner brands and use Skimlinks technology to automate adding tracking to relevant links within the editorial articles on their site.
Confused yet?
To put it even more simply, if you are Ideal Home Magazine, instead of joining 50 different individual brands programmes - think joining Industville on Rakuten and then Dulux on Awin. You actually just join Skimlinks, Skimlinks then join all those brands on your behalf. Their tracking then appends to any relevant content links on your sites for the brands you feature.
Skimlinks crosses over so heavily with digital PR as pretty much all the big media houses utilise it. Commercial agreements are becoming more of a currency in securing exposure and often Digital PR teams will be asked by publications about Skimlinks.
The interchange between affiliates and Digital PR can be tricky to navigate, so here is my take on it:
- You shouldn’t monetise all links if you don’t have to, a non affiliate link will have more SEO weighting than an affiliate link
- Affiliate links in PR come in to play to secure exposure you just can’t get through PR outreach and relationship alone. There are just some cases when commercial matters
- You will need to pay a higher CPA for content typically 10% plus
- Having Skimlinks or an affiliate programme does not guarantee exposure - outreach, higher CPA, gifting and also paid placements will still form a part of the work
It is important to get the teams who manage your digital PR and your affiliates to talk - the crossover exists so you need to work out how to manage it to get the best outcome for all channels but mainly the brands strategy and goals
Also the opportunities in editorial content are constantly changing partners like Linkby allow access to sites such as Marie Claire and Grazia on a CPC model - showcasing another great way to find more opportunities to collaborate with major publications
Brands succeed in this area when they take the time to get the right people talking! Rarely a digital channel exists in a silo these days - use the affiliate channel to your advantage when it comes to digital PR.
