Ultimate Guide to Scale Blogger Outreach Using Affiliates

Exposure is essential for your business. Well, at least if you aim to gain a competitive advantage and achieve short and long-term success. It’s the starting point in acquiring customers, leads, and generating sales.

The question at this point is:

How can one use blogger outreach to gain exposure? Furthermore, how can you scale your blogger outreach using affiliates?

It’s time we put the outdated methods aside and focus on practical and innovative techniques instead.

The Concept and Importance of Blogger Outreach  

Blogger outreach campaigns refer to companies using affiliates, most commonly influencers/bloggers, with established following to gain exposure.

Bloggers write content and post it on their site to introduce their audience to a particular brand. In turn, they receive compensation in the form of free products, services, or even money.

According to OptinMonster:

• 77% of Internet users read blogs
• Approximately 409 million people view more than 20 billion pages monthly
• Blogs have been rated as the 5th most trustworthy source for gathering online information
• 72% of online marketers describe content creation as their most effective SEO tactic
• Marketers who prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to have a positive ROI on their efforts

As customers respond well to blog posts, it’s only wise to use this to your advantage as a company.

The importance of Affiliate Bloggers 

So, if an affiliate blogger or influencer, promotes your product, their followers are far more likely to purchase it. After all, they consider it as an objective recommendation, making it far more effective than paid ads.

Blogger outreach is not only important but essential for your business. Regardless of your niche, you can benefit from affiliates blogging about your business on their site. And here’s 5 reasons why!

1. It’s a cost-effective method
2. It connects you with the right audience
3. It helps you gain backlinks
4. It increases your business’s online presence
5. It establishes trust in your brand

Which Affiliates to Target for Your Blogger Outreach?

There’s a lot of competition when each company tries to scale its blogger outreach campaign.

So, how can you choose affiliates for your blogger outreach campaign?

Finding the perfect representatives or affiliates for your blogger outreach is undoubtedly not an easy job.

Step #1 - Research

First, you need to find affiliates closely related to your niche. It’s due to a simple reason. Your content should appeal to them and their followers, which is essentially your target audience.

Example: Say you want to promote your new skincare product line. Research affiliate bloggers and influencers writing about skincare. They may have Blogs, V-logs even a Podcast.  

Step #2 – Understand. 

Before you pitch to affiliates, you also need to understand their character and decision-making process. What do they value the most? What can you provide to them to bring them closer to achieving their goals? Can you provide transparent and easy-to-comprehend affiliate management software?

Example: If they value quality, you will need to convince them of the value of your products, services, or brand.

Essentially, it would be best to reach out to affiliates only when there is space to create a win-win situation. Your goals should be aligned, and both sides should provide some benefits.

The Perfect Email Pitch

Given what we have learned, here’s an example of how an effective email pitch is written. Also, what components you should include and what to avoid.

• Short and Clear – Short and clear introductory emails are typically the best to use when introducing yourself.

Avoid - No one has the time to read your life story, worse yet, Wikipedia-based information. So, make sure to stick to the point and avoid adding excessive information, like this email below

Tip: You should only say that you are a fan if you genuinely know the blogger’s content. It would be best to mention some articles, what you liked in their posts and what you didn’t to add on credibility.

Personalize - Your email pitch should convince the reader that he/she is dealing with a human, not an automated tool or a machine. So, you can include some exciting twists instead.

TIP: As mentioned, readers love out-of-the-box messages. So, you can add memes, jokes, and similar nature information in your email pitch. For instance, if a blogger replies with “No, thanks,” you can do a follow-up to light up their day. In turn, they might even return the favour.

Become a Fan - Your email pitch should provide the receiver with a reason to respond. You can include a piece of their content, prove that you read it, and give an opinion. You can also instantly offer something in return to enhance your collaboration chances further.

Template for Reaching Out to Your Affiliates for Blog Promotion

If you still feel confused at this point, here’s a template you can fill out to reach out to affiliates as part of your blogger outreach campaign.

Hello,

I am [Name Surname], working as a [Job Position] at [Company Name]. We are [Description] and [What You Do].

Currently, we have several established partnerships regarding blogger outreach and guest posting campaigns. Here’s a list of the websites we are collaborating with:

[Include a list of affiliates/sites/etc.]

As you can see, we value quality above all. That’s why I wanted to reach out to you.

What got my attention was your [Blog Post]. I loved your perspective regarding [include an aspect or idea of the mentioned blog post].

At this point in our company, we are looking for affiliates with fast-growing audiences, such as yourself.

Here’s what we have to offer: [Include the terms, what you have to offer and links to your posts, explain how they can contribute to their target audience and goals].

Is that something that you would be interested in?

Let me know if you are willing to discuss things further.

I look forward to hearing from you,

[Name Surname], [Job Position] at [Company Name]

How to Compensate Affiliate for Blog Promotion?

Different companies use different methods. Still, the most widespread one in affiliate marketing is commission rates combined with cookie links.

Affiliate tracking cookies allow publishers to determine where their sales come from. Essentially, these are files created and stored on your visitor’s web browsers when they click on affiliate links from a blog. In turn, companies can allocate payments based on pre-established commission rates with their affiliates.

The only question left is, what form can the payment take?

In general, the compensation highly depends upon what the affiliate and publisher agree to.

 More experienced, full-time writers usually prefer financial compensation, while hobbyists might go in a different direction.

Here are some ideas, on how you can compensate your affiliates for your blogger outreach campaign:

• Monetary compensation based on a fixed price (usually around $15-$20 per post)
• Monetary compensation based on pre-established commission rates calculated upon the number of clicks they have generated
• Publication credit, which can motivate some affiliates to work for free
• Free company’s products or services

Don’t take our word for It. Join the Other Companies Who Have Done This

If you are not convinced by now, let’s review some companies/individuals that used blogger outreach in their marketing campaigns. Here are the details provided by Neil Patel.

• Gregory Ciotti used guest blogging strategies to generate 36,733 email subscribers
• Jon Cooper generated nearly 400 hits from a single guest post on Moz
• Bryan Harris built a full-time business generating over $15,000 a month, starting with a single guest post at Okdork

So what are you waiting for? Get down to work right away and start scaling your blogging outreach campaign today.

(Devdiscourse's journalists were not involved in the production of this article. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Devdiscourse and Devdiscourse does not claim any responsibility for the same.)