Seasoned affiliate marketers always understand that one of the most important ways to connect with a new generation of consumers has to do with being present in their journey. Not only does this allow them to reach out to new people, but it also helps them gain a competitive advantage and even better retain their existing customers, too.

Yet at the same time, this demands the question: which are more effective, single-publisher or multi-publisher customer journeys? Which is the better way to get the right message in front of the right person at exactly the right time?

Thankfully, the answer to this question has an easy answer. It's simply one that requires you to keep a few key things in mind.

While it's absolutely true that single-publisher customer journeys offer a unique reach, multi-publisher customer journeys bring with them a wide range of benefits that cannot be ignored.

For starters, they allow you to embrace the entirety of the journey itself. You're not simply focused on the "last click," you're able to pay attention to all potential touch points that a customer might have.

To better understand this, you need to remember what a publisher is trying to do in the first place. As a baseline, the goal of a publisher is to attract a loyal and diverse audience for a brand. They do this by serving customer needs. By giving customers information - which in turn creates a deeper level of confidence - about the buying decisions they're making.

When you use a host of different publishers as opposed to just one, you're making sure that a variety of customer needs are being met. Therefore, it becomes the best way to A) reach new audiences, and B) leverage unique audiences, too. Not only does this lead to a higher probability of success, but it's also a gateway to sustainable growth as well.

This is also important because customer recruitment isn't a "one-off" thing. It's not something you "do once and forget about." To achieve that level of long-term growth, you need ongoing recruitment as much as possible. This is simply far easier to do via a multi-publisher customer journey.

Really, you're making sure that regardless of where your customers are, you have someone there to meet them - thus ushering them from one end of the funnel to the other.

In the end, while it's absolutely true that the marketing funnel has changed dramatically over the years, one basic fact remains the same: if you don't make every effort to meet a customer's needs even as they continue to change, another brand absolutely will be. This, in essence, is why affiliate marketing in all of its forms will always be so important. Not only does it help deliver more revenue per shopper, but it's also an effective and low-risk way to meet people where they are. This in and of itself is the most important goal of all.