A tenancy deal is the purchase of advertising space on an affiliate’s website. In most cases, the tenancy deal will be in addition to the traditional CPA agreement. 

The question around tenancy deals is something that will come into the mind of all new and emerging affiliates in the industry. There are a range of key areas that all affiliates must consider when thinking about when to offer, or when to ask for, tenancy deals.

Trust and performance 

If tenancy deals are something that you would like to consider in your affiliate strategy, then trust and performance are areas you need to consider, grow and maintain with the advertisers you currently work with, or are looking to work with in the future. 

Affiliates must reach a point of trust in order to convince a merchant that they should delve into their marketing budget to do a tenancy deal with them, on top of any CPA agreement that they already have in place. Part of this trust is the affiliate’s performance. When judging all of the tenancy and additional exposure opportunities available to an advertiser, the first thing that they will want to see and understand is your current performance on their affiliate programme. They will look at a variety of information and stats such as your performance over time, time on the programme, peaks in performance, customer reach etc.

Advertisers want to be able to see growth and consistency from affiliates that they choose to work on tenancy deals with. As you will be charging them an extra flat fee tenancy on top of the standard CPA, you must be able to demonstrate what extra value they will be receiving from you. The advertiser must be able to see exactly what additional exposure they will get from the deal; will it provide them with extra branding coverage, further traffic or result in more sales and assist sign-ups? As an affiliate, you must be able to provide this information to the advertiser before any activity is signed off. 

Pitch

Advertisers tend to be more captivated by affiliates that provide them with opportunities that are clearly laid out with explanations on how they will benefit from any extra exposure via a tenancy deal. This can include things like a range of creative mock ups for the merchant to visualise the opportunity. For example, with Affiliate Window’s Opportunity Marketplace, affiliates are able to list, manage and promote all of the advertising options that they have available which advertisers are then able to browse through.

Advertisers appreciate initiative, creative and proactive behavior, but most of all they want to know that you understand their product, demographic and brand. If you can demonstrate this through your tenancy plans, it will impress. If you have an advertiser that doesn’t fully believe in the opportunity, there may be solutions that you could use to convince them. You could provide the advertiser with a shorter duration test that shows them what extra value you can provide with a tenancy deal above the standard CPA agreement.

Inactivity 

One of the largest mistakes some new affiliate marketers make is inactivity. Often new affiliate sites are set up with content and advertiser links, then the site is not maintained by the affiliate as it should. Unfortunately this method will not work – to make money in affiliate marketing, you need to remain active. 

Potential clients will appreciate the effort and creativity that you show on your site, your relationship building and onsite performance. For your user, you must make sure that they are kept engaged by providing them with fresh and appropriate content. Without this core work it is likely that your performance will be affected over time, which in turn will reduce your chances of being successful with any tenancy deals you had planned with advertisers.

Relationships

Advertiser affiliate programmes are either managed by the brand themselves, an agency or an affiliate network. Therefore advertiser, agency and network relationships are pivotal when considering tenancy deals and when to push them.

Whether you are working with the client themselves, an agency or an affiliate network, remember that they will have a great deal of information about the advertiser; previous tenancy promotions that they may have tried, what tenancy promotions work well for them, what tenancy promotions don’t work so will, in addition to the short and longer term goals for their affiliate programme. 

As an affiliate, take advantage of this information and learn more about the brand, what works for them and what they have not tried before. This information could be very helpful when you are offering a tenancy proposition to them. An advertiser always appreciates an affiliate that learns and caters to their needs.

Competitors 

This brings us onto another very important area of relationship; competitors. It is essential to understand what your competitor affiliates are doing in the marketplace, particularly when you are considering tenancy options. Where possible, it is worth benchmarking your tenancy options head-to-head to see which one would provide clients with more perceived value to their affiliate programme. 

It is also useful to understand more about what your competitors are doing and how they conduct themselves as a business and in relationship with the brands you work with.  There is a lot that can be learnt from reviewing competitors but it is often overlooked, as affiliates believe that their USP is enough to sell their tenancy proposition alone. 

One simple thing that any affiliate in the market can do, is ensure that they attend industry events regularly. Large or small, all industry events present a great opportunity to network with current and potential clients whilst also learning about competitors and any industry updates and developments.

Conclusion

When to offer, or when to ask for, tenancy deals? is a very difficult question for all affiliates to answer and many of the established affiliates in the industry will have had very different experiences when testing with tenancy options.

The affiliates in the industry that have struggled with their tenancy deals have too often tried to monetise their offering too quickly and not focused on the basics, which in affiliate marketing are performance and relationship building. Many will argue that not all affiliates in the industry have the resource to focus on all of the areas mentioned in this article. However advertisers can be very understanding of this, if you can focus on even one of these areas to show your advertiser some commitment and knowledge, it will help you when you are discussing tenancy deals with them.

If you are going to think about offering tenancy deals, you must show to the industry that you can provide consistent performance without tenancy deals first, then focus on relationships, present your tenancy deals clearly and show advertisers what added value you can provide to their programmes.