Affiliate Marketing: How it Works, What Actually Works, and Why it Fails Brands 

Affiliate marketing isn’t broken, but it is frequently misunderstood. At its core, it is a performance channel designed to reward partners for driving genuine growth. Yet many programs, from legacy giants to startups, find themselves paying for growth they would have achieved anyway. 

Whether you are launching for the first time or auditing an existing setup, keep this in mind: high-performing programs are designed, not left to chance. This is a reset on what a successful Affiliate & Partner marketing program looks like without the usual fluff. 

How Affiliate Marketing Works in Practice: Programs Are Designed, Not Just Managed

Affiliate programs rarely fail because of one bad decision. They fail because they lack a blueprint. To move beyond a “set it and forget it” mindset, you have to answer two fundamental questions for every partner: 

• What specific role does this partner play in our funnel? 

• What commission model best rewards this partners activity? 

A well-planned program maps partners to the entire customer journey. This means using content and influencers for awareness, comparison engines and review sites for consideration, incentive partners such as voucher codes and cashback to secure the final conversion, and even technology and brand partnership providers to support post-conversion. Don’t just manage a list of partners; build an ecosystem where every player has a clear objective. 

Does Affiliate Marketing Work? Only When Transparency Comes First

A common mistake is optimising for volume before you actually understand the value. Volume without transparency is false progress. If you don’t have a clear view of where your traffic originates, you risk a few major issues: 

• Self-attribution and fraud: Partners claiming credit for organic sales. 

• Brand misalignment: Your ads appearing in “low-rent” or off-brand environments. 

• Zero Incrementality: Paying commissions for customers who were already standing at the checkout with their wallets out. 

Incrementality shouldn’t be a retrospective check-up. It should be a primary design principle. If a partner disappeared tomorrow and your revenue stayed the same, they weren’t incremental. 

Lately, there has been a rise in unauthorised PPC bidding and intentional “Ad Hijacking.” We are even seeing browser extensions set up to drop cookies without adding any value. Tools like Marcode and AdPolice are great for identifying these partners before they become a major concern for your brand. 

Affiliate Marketing Attribution: How Incentives Shape Performance

Affiliate attribution doesn’t just measure performance, it shapes it. When “last-click” is your only signal, you inadvertently train your partners to behave in unhelpful ways. They start to optimise for proximity to the “Buy” button rather than finding new customers. This means early-stage influence from blogs, reviews, and educators is chronically undervalued. 

To change the outcome, you must change the incentive. Moving beyond last-click means looking at: 

• Cross-channel visibility: Seeing how affiliates interact with Search and Social. 

• Custom Commissioning: Rewarding “Top of Funnel” partners differently than “Closers.” 

• Outcome-Based Logic: Paying for the behaviours you want, such as new customer acquisition versus existing customer renewals. 

Affiliate Marketing Strategy: Why Diversification Protects Margin

Early programs often lean on easy wins like cashback and vouchers. However, the most common issue we see in inherited accounts is concentration risk. This happens when one or two key partners drive over 50% of the revenue, often with very little transparency regarding their activity. 

This is a critical vulnerability. If a single partner dominates your program, you are one algorithm update or one broken relationship away from a total performance collapse. 

Our priority is always to prevent this over-reliance by building multiple routes for revenue. By diversifying into different partner types, you ensure that when one partner has a bad week, the channel doesn’t. A resilient program blends: 

• Content & Editorial: High-trust environments building brand equity. 

• Creators & Influencers: Social proof driving discovery. 

• Closed User Groups: Exclusive reach via platforms like Blue Light Card or UNiDAYS. 

• Strategic B2B Alliances: High-intent audiences via banking apps or employee benefits. 

The Bottom Line: Affiliate Marketing for Brands That Want Real Incrementality

Affiliate marketing thrives when it’s treated as a strategic growth engine, not a digital coupon drawer. Most programs fail because they’re left on autopilot, rewarding whichever partner happened to be standing closest to the checkout when the credit card came out. That isn’t growth; it’s just paying a tax on sales you likely would have made anyway. 

The strongest programs are built with intent. They assign a specific job to every partner, bake incrementality into the model from day one, and use commissions to drive the behaviour they actually want – whether that’s finding new audiences or building brand trust. 

Diversification is the only way to protect your margins. Relying on one or two partners for the majority of volume creates a “concentration risk” that leaves you vulnerable. In short: stop paying for convenience and start paying for contribution. 

Speak with the Summit team today to start working with our Affiliates team of experts.