Money makes the world go ‘round.

And your partner marketing program is no exception.

But what happens when your affiliates don’t take out their wallets?

The more funds your local partners use, the more revenue they drive for your brand.

Which is why your program should encourage them to spend these marketing dollars.

But what exactly influences partner fund use? What gets your partners spending?

We evaluated 1,147 channel partners and 211,347 data points to get to the bottom of this question.

Check out the full report, or read on to learn how to motivate your partners to market more.

Affiliate fund use drives revenue

You provide your partners with funds to invest in their local marketing…

But that doesn’t mean they always use them.

But those that do spend these marketing dollars see the highest revenue growth.

Affiliates that spend 75% or more of their marketing funds see up to 112% more revenue growth than their peers.

Because more funds = more marketing = more revenue.

So, how do you motivate your local partners to invest their marketing dollars?

The answer might surprise you.

Program satisfaction has the greatest impact on marketing spend

You may think that savvy affiliates (aka, those with a high level of marketing skills and knowledge) understand the value of their marketing dollars and are, therefore, more likely to spend them than their unsavvy counterparts.

And while this is true, there’s a second factor that impacts marketing spend even more than marketing savvy: affiliate satisfaction.

Affiliates who are satisfied with their marketing programs use more funds than those who are unsatisfied. Even low-savvy partners who are satisfied with their programs use more funds than savvy partners who aren’t.

The takeaway: To get your affiliates to spend more marketing dollars, you have to focus on improving their satisfaction.

How to increase affiliate satisfaction

Affiliate satisfaction starts with your marketing program. It’s the thing your affiliates rely on to drive their marketing efforts — so if they’re unsatisfied with this program, you’ll probably see less-than-ideal marketing results.

Here’s how to improve affiliate satisfaction through your marketing program.

1. Make marketing funds easy to use

Many marketing programs offer funds but don’t necessarily make them easy to use. As a result, affiliates deem these dollars not worth their time and effort.

By alleviating common barriers to fund use, you can boost partner satisfaction while motivating them to use their marketing dollars. Here’s how:

• Improve fund visibility: Make sure your affiliates can easily locate their MDF or co-op funds and see how much money is available to them.
• Make rules easy to understand: Your co-op and MDF guidelines should be clear, concise, and simple so affiliates can easily understand them.
• Cut down requirements: Limit the amount of documentation required for affiliates to submit when making a claim.
• Reduce approval times: Ensure all claims submissions are approved within 48 hours.

2. Simplify your local marketing program

Ever get frustrated using a piece of tech that’s way too clunky or complicated? It’s the same for affiliates with complex marketing programs.

One of the biggest culprits of affiliate dissatisfaction is programs that are too difficult to use. That’s why it’s crucial to simplify your program to ensure user-friendliness. That means ensuring that your technology functions efficiently, processes are intuitive, and features are simple.

3. Show your commitment

Affiliate satisfaction increases when they feel corporate (that’s you!) is committed to them. So, in order for them to perceive you as being committed, you have to show them you care about their success.

A few ways you can show your commitment to your affiliates include:

• Investing in the features they want: If your affiliates ask for a program feature, give it to them! Not sure what they want? The data shows that the top three most-requested features are fund matching, education/training, and dedicated support.
• Providing marketing resources: You can better support your partners by providing them with marketing tools, resources, and training to guide them through their marketing activities.
• Offering incentives: Providing affiliates with marketing incentives like gift cards and merch boosts satisfaction while motivating them to market.

Learn the other optimizations needed to drive revenue

The data doesn’t lie — program satisfaction leads to fund use, and fund use leads to revenue. That’s why you need to be intentional about improving your partners’ satisfaction with your marketing program to see results on the local level.

Read the full 2024 State of Local Marketing Report to get even more data-backed insights.

You can also subscribe to The State of Local Marketing Newsletter to be the first to get brand-new data.