
In this episode, Alex explores how affiliate marketing can serve as a powerful strategy for scaling business revenue, especially for small businesses and startups. He emphasizes the value of leveraging affiliates’ trust with their audiences, creating an authentic connection with potential customers that traditional advertising can’t match. Alex discusses the importance of selecting the right affiliates—those aligned with your brand and market—and providing them with resources and a proven sales process to boost their success. He highlights how ongoing management, relationship building, and performance monitoring can create a thriving, self-sustaining affiliate network. Using real-life examples like Shopify and Bluehost, Alex illustrates the long-term value affiliate programs can add, transforming a brand’s reach and growth potential.
Links
- How to Find Affiliates For Your Product
- Katie Keith Shares How She Built an Affiliate Program for Her WordPress Business
- Derrick Hernandez Shares Affiliate Recruitment and Retention Techniques
Key Points
- Affiliates as Sales Multipliers: Affiliate marketing enables businesses to scale their revenue by leveraging affiliates’ trusted audiences, effectively acting as an extended sales team that gets paid only for results.
- Strategic Partner Selection: Success hinges on choosing affiliates who align with the brand and resonate with the target audience, rather than just focusing on audience size.
- Providing Resources & Proven Processes: Equipping affiliates with proven sales materials, examples, and insights enhances their ability to promote effectively and aligns their approach with the business’s existing success strategies.
- Ongoing Relationship Building: Building and nurturing relationships with affiliates, including feedback and incentives, strengthens affiliate loyalty and fosters a collaborative environment for continuous growth.
- Real-Life Success Examples: Cases like Shopify and Bluehost illustrate how affiliate programs, when managed strategically, can become cornerstones for sustainable and substantial business growth.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Alex: Welcome to partnership where your network is the wind in your sales. I’m your host, Alex Standifird, and I’m here to redefine online partnerships for bootstrapped businesses. I believe in working with top talent to expand your sales channels and enrich the lives around you, not just the pockets of big corporations.
[00:00:22] Alex: Today, I’m going to talk about one of the biggest reasons that affiliate marketing remains such a popular model for scaling a business and expanding your revenue.
[00:00:33] Alex: Picture this. You’re a small business owner selling handcrafted leather goods. You’ve got a great product, but you’re struggling to reach customers beyond your local market. Now, imagine waking up to find that influencers across the country are showcasing your wallets and your bags to their thousands of followers.
[00:00:51] Alex: Your sales are skyrocketing, your brand is going viral, and the best part? You only pay for the results that you get. That’s the power of affiliate marketing, and it’s exactly what we’re exploring in today’s episode. Whether you’re a startup founder looking to bootstrap your growth, an established company aiming to break into new markets, or an entrepreneur seeking to maximize your revenue streams, this episode is going to cover how to scale your business through strategic partnerships.
[00:01:18] Alex: Now, if you’ve listened to this podcast before, you already know that I’m all about partnerships and that’s what affiliate marketing is all about. It’s much more than a buzzword, though. It’s a game changing approach that’s helped companies like Amazon, Shopify, and even Airbnb become the giants that they are today.
[00:01:35] Alex: Affiliate marketing is a win win model. It’s like having a sales team that only gets paid when they deliver. It’s a pretty sweet deal. Really. You’re basically borrowing the other people’s influence to boost your own sales and then paying them in return. The best part is that you only pay when you see results.
[00:01:52] Alex: It’s a super efficient way to grow your revenue and allows you to reach new audiences and tap into fresh income streams without burning through cash on traditional marketing. How does it really work? What makes it so effective? And more importantly, how can you implement it into your business to see this exponential growth?
[00:02:09] Alex: Stick around because we’re about to embark on a journey through the world of affiliate marketing. We’ll break down how it all works, share some strategies for bringing the right people on board, and show you how to squeeze every drop of performance out of your program with the right tools. Trust me, you’re not going to want to miss this one.
[00:02:27] Alex: Let’s get into it. When it comes to scaling business revenue, the biggest challenge is often tied to the resources required to reach new customers, be it time, money, or staffing. Traditional growth methods like increasing your ad spending or launching new products can be risky, expensive, and slow to deliver results.
[00:02:46] Alex: The bottom line is these old school tactics usually mean you’re shelling out big bucks up front with no promise of a return. I mean, think about it, developing and launching a new product line can take months or even years of research, development and testing. Similarly, ramping up your advertising efforts across different channels can eat into your budget, especially if you’re targeting competitive keywords or ad placements.
[00:03:10] Alex: This is where affiliate marketing really shines. It offers a much more efficient and cost effective alternative to those traditional methods. Whether they’re influencers, content creators, or industry leaders, partnering with affiliates helps you access a broader market with a relatively low investment.
[00:03:26] Alex: Affiliates can make great brand ambassadors and drive awareness and trust with their authentic content and their genuine recommendations. But what makes affiliate marketing more effective than other forms of promotion? Well, that’s kind of the cool thing about affiliates. Well, at least the good ones.
[00:03:42] Alex: They’ve already built an audience and their niche. And that audience already trust them. They’ve already done that hard part for you. It’s a lot like having a friend recommend something to you. When these affiliates talk about products and services that fit their vibe, their followers are all ears. It’s like having a ready made fan club for your stuff.
[00:04:02] Alex: Now, when an affiliate talks up your brand, it’s not just another ad. It’s like getting a thumbs up from a trusted friend. It feels real. It’s not some faceless company shouting, buy our stuff. It’s someone people actually listen to saying, Hey, check this out. It’s pretty cool. Say you’re selling eco friendly home stuff.
[00:04:19] Alex: Now imagine an environmental blogger with a bunch of green, loving fans, giving your products a shout out. Suddenly you’re reaching thousands of people who are already excited about sustainable living. That’s way more powerful than blasting out ads to everyone and their dog, hoping that somebody bites.
[00:04:36] Alex: Hopefully not the dog, but here’s the kicker. These affiliates can introduce your products to people who might never have stumbled across them otherwise. It’s like having a team of cheerleaders who really love what you’re doing. And they’re spreading the word in corners of the internet that you didn’t know existed, or at the very least didn’t have access to.
[00:04:54] Alex: And that’s why affiliate marketing can be so powerful in a lot of ways. It’s like a multiplier for your own personal sales efforts. So how do you tap into this potential? It starts with having a solid strategy for recruitment and management of those affiliates. The first step is to identify people who align with your brand values and have an audience that matches your target market.
[00:05:14] Alex: You can get started by reaching out to influencers or content creators in your niche. Offering an incentive to join your affiliate program can turn your loyal customers into enthusiastic promoters. This approach not only drives sales, but also encourages existing customers to create authentic user generated content, which can be extremely high impact when it comes to promotion.
[00:05:36] Alex: When searching for potential affiliates, remember to look beyond just the size of their audience. Consider factors like their engagement rates, their content quality, and their audience demographics. For example, an affiliate with a smaller but highly engaged audience in your niche is probably going to be more valuable than one with a larger but less focused following.
[00:05:54] Alex: Now that we’ve kind of talked a little bit briefly on how to identify potential affiliates, let’s talk about how to recruit them to your program. To do this, you want to focus on presenting a compelling opportunity that aligns with the person’s goals and their values. One tried and tested strategy is to create a dedicated landing page for your affiliate program.
[00:06:13] Alex: This page should clearly outline the benefits of joining, your commission structure, and any unique selling points of your program. Include testimonials and success stories from current affiliates to build trust and credibility, and make sure the page has a clear, Easy to use application form to reduce friction during the signup process.
[00:06:31] Alex: Another approach is to leverage your existing network. You can do this by reaching out to your business partners, suppliers, or even complementary businesses in your industry. These connections already understand your market and might be eager to tap into a new revenue stream themselves. Another option, of course, is your email list.
[00:06:50] Alex: Remember that your subscribers are already interested in your brand, and some of them might have their own audiences and have an opportunity to promote them. But do be careful with this because customers don’t tend to be great affiliates. People who like your product and trust your product and advocate for your product can certainly promote your product.
[00:07:09] Alex: But there’s a level of scale that has to happen to make sense for them to actually be a traditional affiliate. And that always comes down to the audience they have and the content they write. So just sending out a generic blast to your customers is probably not a great strategy. I actually just did an interview with Katie Keith recently where she talked about this exact thing.
[00:07:29] Alex: I’m going to share that in the show notes below. I also have another episode where I talked a lot about finding affiliates and identifying where they are. I’m going to share that episode in the show notes below as well, because it really goes a lot deeper into that than this kind of big picture episode that I’m doing right now.
[00:07:44] Alex: A really great strategy is to use an SEO tool like Mangools or SEMrush and find keywords that you wish you were ranked for. Identify what content is being written for those topics, find the writers and reach out to them as a potential affiliate. Because they’ve already reached the level that you want to reach.
[00:08:04] Alex: They’re ahead of you in that regard. And they have that keyword on lockdown instead of trying to beat them and compete with them, you can give them an opportunity to join you and to work with you and promote your product on that keyword. This can be not only applied to SEM rush or SEO tools like that through Google and things like that.
[00:08:20] Alex: This can be applied through social media, through Tik TOK, through YouTube, whatever platform you’re seeking affiliates through by doing that, you’re able to kind of build this pipeline of what I would consider leads as a sales process, where you’re able to find these people and put them into your sales system, and then reach out to them individually, nurture those relationships and see if you can, Create an opportunity in an offer that is compelling enough for them to consider selling your product to their audience.
[00:08:47] Alex: I actually talk about this approach with Derek Hernandez in another interview in the past. I’m going to share that in the show notes below as well, because it’s a really good episode that covers a lot of these kinds of growth strategies that I think is super relevant to this topic. Remember. At its heart, affiliate recruitment is an ongoing sales process.
[00:09:07] Alex: You’re going to refine your approach over time based on what works best for your brand. But at the end of the day, this is a sales process. You are going to be looking for these people and recruiting them and reaching out to them in a traditional sales kind of way. That’s where you’re going to find the best affiliates that work for you.
[00:09:25] Alex: Most of the time, they’re not going to come to you. You’re going to go out and reach out to them. So if that isn’t something that you have the stomach for, then affiliate marketing might not be the best thing for you. However, I will say as an entrepreneur, you’re probably already a pretty good salesman because you have to be in order to be a good entrepreneur, you have to be able to sell in some way, shape, or form.
[00:09:45] Alex: So whatever tools you’re using as an entrepreneur to sell your product, you can probably apply a lot of those skills and a lot of those. Practices into selling your affiliate program as well. If you treat your affiliate program like a product, you’re going to be able to actually sell it and find people who want to join it, and then they will be able to sell your product, which is also using your practices that you’ve already been establishing, selling your product yourself.
[00:10:15] Alex: You can actually teach your affiliates how to sell your product. By doing the practices and showing them what you do yourself so you can give them prewritten sales emails prewritten Content examples of good content that has worked examples of landing pages that work. There’s so many resources you can give them just by being that salesperson yourself and by using your skills and those practices that you’re taking and applying it to your own program in a way that allows you to not only teach them how to sell your product, but also using those skills to find more affiliates who can then sell your product and multiply your sales efforts.
[00:10:54] Alex: You’re going to be in a much better place than just selling it by yourself. So in my opinion, I think that it makes a lot of sense to just take a step back and realize that even if you think that this is a lot of extra work. And you’re right. It is a lot of extra work. You are multiplying your efforts.
[00:11:11] Alex: You can think of this as kind of a foundation. You’re setting up the foundation to be able to outsource yourself as a salesperson and multiply yourself as a salesperson, where when you succeed as the entrepreneur selling your product, you can then take that success and educate your existing affiliates.
[00:11:29] Alex: On how to do that as well. So there is a process here. Of course, there is a lot of sales and there is a lot of extra effort that goes into doing this really well. There’s a lot of extra effort that goes into creating an affiliate program that works and grows and is successful, but you’re nurturing something that allows you to grow beyond just yourself.
[00:11:51] Alex: Now, once you have a few affiliates on board, it’s really important to make sure that you’re investing in building a strong relationship with them. Think about things like training resources and ongoing support. You want to make sure that your affiliates have everything they need to accurately represent your brand in a compelling way.
[00:12:08] Alex: I just talked about this a little bit, but as the entrepreneur and as the founder of your business, you’re probably the best salesman in your own business. You understand it. You have its vision. You have all of those things intact. If you can figure out how to communicate how you’re able to succeed and selling your own product to your affiliates, you’re going to do great here.
[00:12:28] Alex: So of course, communication is absolutely essential here. You have to remember to regularly update your affiliates on new product launches, new promotions, and any changes in your strategy. This can inspire them, make them feel like they’re an important part of your business because they are, and not just a sales tool that you just say, Hey, Here’s an affiliate program.
[00:12:48] Alex: If you can figure out how to sell my product and do everything for me, we can make money together. Don’t do that. Instead, focus on making it as easy as possible for them. If you go to an affiliate and you say, I have a proven sales process that is converting at this percentage. And based on that, I think if I gave you this commission with your audience, you’re going to make this much money.
[00:13:07] Alex: If you follow these steps, they’re going to say, where do I sign? If you can literally tell them, I have these things, I have done all of the work, all I need is to multiply that work. They’re going to say, where do I sign? I want in, I want that. But if you come to them and you say, I have a product, I think you might like it.
[00:13:28] Alex: Do you want to sell it? They will probably say, sure, I’ll sell it. How much do you want to pay me to write that content? It’s two very different things, right? The value proposition of the first one is I have a way for you to make money. I know how to do it. I have all the tools. You have all the tools. All you have to do is follow a few steps here that I think aligned with what you are already doing, is that something you want to do?
[00:13:51] Alex: That’s really compelling compared to I have something that I want from you and I might be able to pay you if you happen to succeed. I can’t promise anything, but that could be really cool. Nobody’s going to care about that. That is not going to stand out. That is not going to get the affiliates that you want.
[00:14:07] Alex: The only people that’s going to attract are going to be people that make money. From writing content, not making money from selling products, right? So you’re YouTubers who say, Oh yeah, that’s a sponsorship, right? That’s what they would look at that as, as a sponsorship. I don’t care if there’s no guarantee.
[00:14:24] Alex: I need a guarantee. So if you can’t give them the guarantee in your sales process by saying, I have seen these numbers. These are the things that work. This is going to work. I can’t guarantee the exact dollar amount, but I can guarantee you’re going to make some money. And I have a feeling based on my numbers and my understanding of my process and my understanding of your audience, that this has potential to reach as much as X amount of dollars.
[00:14:47] Alex: They’re going to look at that and say, okay, Let’s talk, but if you look at them and you say, I have no idea how much money you’re going to make, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to get your money out of the time that I’m asking from you. They’re not going to care what they’re going to say is, okay, in that case, why don’t you pay me as a sponsor to do this, right?
[00:15:05] Alex: Two very different conversations. If you want to get the right YouTubers and the big names with lots of traffic and lots of things like that, you’re going to have to make sure that you have some kind of guarantee that they’re going to get something out of it. So that’s why I keep coming back to Take your sales process, your successes, and the template of things that work and make sure that you’re able to apply that whenever you’re selling to your affiliates to get them to sell your product.
[00:15:34] Alex: So that means talking to them about the things you’ve done, the steps you’ve taken, give them the entire thing, lay it all out for them, roll out the red carpet is another way I would say, right? And. Explain to them how the time that they spend doing this with you is going to become a great ongoing relationship where they’re going to be able to make a lot of passive income, because that’s what affiliates care about.
[00:15:58] Alex: And if you can give that to them. You’re going to find that your sales are going to start multiplying, but you have to get there first. And if you can’t get there today, then the, you’re going to have to accept that. You’re probably going to have to pay out of pocket for these partnerships as a sponsorship or something like that.
[00:16:14] Alex: And I’m not even saying that that’s a problem or that’s a bad way to do it. I’m just saying that in absence of the guarantee, the affiliates who are going to actually bring you money are not going to show up and they are not going to listen to you. So the first thing you have to do is make sure you got your sales process down, Pat, and you understand what’s going on there.
[00:16:32] Alex: And once you get that down and you get that figured out, you’re then going to be able to take that and multiply it with your other affiliates. Once you get some affiliates though, you can have a dedicated affiliate portal where your partners can access their marketing materials and track their performance and stay up to date on the latest news and offers that you have.
[00:16:50] Alex: This not only makes their job easier, but it also helps maintain consistency on how your brand is presented across different platforms. Affiliate management also means monitoring their performance and providing useful feedback. So this is on the other end of this, where affiliate management tools can actually be really helpful.
[00:17:06] Alex: For example, these tools often come up with dashboards that give you real time insights into your affiliate program, showing you which affiliates are driving the most traffic, generating the highest conversion rates and bringing in the most sales. But the benefits don’t necessarily stop there. Affiliate management tools can also highlight areas for improvement or where individual affiliates might be struggling.
[00:17:29] Alex: Having access to all of this data helps you provide your affiliates with constructive targeted feedback that’s actionable and helpful for them. For instance, you might notice that an affiliate is driving significant traffic but has a low conversion rate. This insight makes it easy to offer them suggestions, such as a better call to action or, uh, some other things, perhaps providing them some examples of things that you’re seeing that works at the phase where they’re failing.
[00:17:54] Alex: Another really great use of this data is you can use what we call a reinvigoration campaign. This is also something that Derek Hernandez talked about in my interview with him as well. Fantastic strategy. But basically what you do is you say, Hey, I have. This lower percentage of affiliates right in my program who are not driving these sales, right?
[00:18:15] Alex: Because almost all affiliate programs at the end of the day, really good ones, 10 percent of their affiliates are driving the overwhelming majority of their sales. That’s considered a really good program because that’s a pretty high percentage of affiliates that are performing. A lot of them, we’re talking one or two out of a thousand affiliates who are actually generating most of the sales.
[00:18:35] Alex: You don’t really want that. Ideally, what you want is 10 really good affiliates so that you can spread it out so that you’re not so dependent on just one person. So, in order to be able to create that healthy environment, that healthy affiliate program, They, a very effective program is called a reinvigoration campaign or an invigoration campaign in general.
[00:18:56] Alex: And basically what it is, you take that lower 90 percent or that lower percent of the affiliates who are not generating any sales at all, or generating very few sales. So you, then you take that lower percentage of affiliates and you send them all an email and you say, okay, for this month and this month only, I’m going to offer A bonus of some dollar amount, right?
[00:19:18] Alex: That says for the single person who makes the most sales this month, out of all of my affiliates in the bottom 90 percent or whatever, you don’t send it to your top 10 because they would win it. You don’t want them to win it because that’s not the point of this. You’re trying to figure out which affiliates can drive sales, but just aren’t.
[00:19:37] Alex: Right? So you say, all right, bottom 90 or bottom 80, 50, whatever, some percentage. I want you to try to sell here’s some instructions. Here’s some things that are working. Here’s what’s working with other affiliates, my top affiliates. Here’s what they’re doing. Can you apply in your context or translate in your context, the things that’s working on these other top affiliates?
[00:19:57] Alex: And you say the top salesperson for this is going to get a bonus on top of course, the referrals that they’re getting as a result. And what that does is it allows you to figure out which affiliates in your program are capable of generating sales. They just aren’t. And what’s great about that is then after that’s done, you’ve got all this momentum from all those affiliates, right?
[00:20:19] Alex: So you’re going to find that several of them probably will never respond to you and will probably not generate any sales whatsoever. And honestly, you could probably just cut them out of your program altogether and just be done with it. Right? Because if they’re not interested in working with you and they didn’t respond to that, they’re probably never going to work with you in any circumstance anyway, it’s probably best to just consider cutting them out and keep your affiliate numbers low.
[00:20:41] Alex: There’s a lot of benefits there in terms of overhead and management and things that come with that. So clip out the ones that don’t do anything, keep the ones that generated any sales at all. And then you’ll probably have a couple outliers. Hopefully you would have a few outliers who did a surprising number of sales.
[00:20:59] Alex: That didn’t in the past. So now you can reach out to those people and you can say, Hey, congratulations on winning. I’m going to send you your bonus. Let’s have a meeting to talk about next steps because these people can, this person has proven to you that they can be in that top 10. They’re just not right now.
[00:21:16] Alex: So now you’re going to schedule a meeting with them. You’re going to have a one on one and you’re going to determine how you can help them. Continue this relationship and continue that momentum. Here’s the great part. You don’t even have to do it with just that one person. You can do it with the top 10.
[00:21:30] Alex: So you can send them a message and just say, Hey, it was great. This was really successful. You didn’t win, but you came really close. I would love to schedule a call with you or send you more resources to continue this momentum, because I think you could sell a lot of our product. So by using your statistics and using your analytics, historical data, You can then create this campaign to generate and improve the health of your own program.
[00:21:55] Alex: So that’s just one example of what you can do after your program is going. So once you got that sales process going and you’ve got those affiliates coming in all the time and you’re having those conversations with them and you’re working with them and you’re giving them all they need to succeed. But the reality is.
[00:22:09] Alex: Most of them are going to fail. They’re still going to fail because maybe they aren’t interested in it in the moment. Maybe they had the best intents and they signed up and they didn’t have the time to set up the program or something like that. But something like a reinvigoration campaign can give them that little bump.
[00:22:27] Alex: Hey, it’s time. So what’s great about all of that is not only are you going to be able to find those affiliates and nurture those relationships and improve all of that, but you’re also probably going to get a whole lot of sales from that as a result, because you’re probably going to have a whole bunch of affiliates who are previously inactive.
[00:22:46] Alex: Become active, even if they don’t sell a lot, they might sell a few tons of benefits to that, and it directly benefits your bottom line and every step of that process. I also think it shows commitment to your success, which is going to strengthen your relationship with them as well, because it allows you to identify and nurture your top performers, but it also allows you to create more top performers, which leads to much better results.
[00:23:10] Alex: So if you’re able to properly monitor your performance and provide useful feedback, what you’re really doing is you’re creating this positive cycle, right? Affiliates will feel supported and valued, which is going to motivate them to put more effort into promoting your products. Also, as their performance improves, so does your revenue, which ultimately allows you to offer better incentives and more things and then attract more high quality affiliates to your program.
[00:23:35] Alex: So you can see how it snowballs. This also applies a lot to one of my key mantras of affiliate marketing, which is, I always say partners, not numbers. I emphasize this all the time because successful affiliate management is not just about numbers. It’s about building and nurturing really strong relationships.
[00:23:53] Alex: And it’s up to you to build and nurture those relationships. That’s your role here. Whenever you’re building an affiliate program, build and nurture those relationships. And if you’re using the right tools to maintain and open those lines of communication, you will create a thriving affiliate network that becomes a powerful engine to drive your business growth.
[00:24:12] Alex: To put this into perspective, let’s look at a few case studies of businesses that have successfully scaled through affiliate marketing. First off, let’s look at Bluehost, a web hosting company. When Bluehost first started out, they were one of the many competitors in a very crowded market. By implementing a strong affiliate marketing program, they were able to tap into the networks of influential bloggers and web development experts who recommended Bluehost as a reliable hosting service.
[00:24:39] Alex: The result, a big boost in their market share and their revenue. Today, their affiliate program is one of the most well known in the hosting industry, and it continues to play a vital role in their Bluehost’s success can be attributed to several key factors. First, they offered competitive commission rates, which incentivized affiliates to promote them.
[00:24:58] Alex: Second, they provided affiliates with a bunch of different marketing materials, from banners and text links to custom landing pages. This made it super easy for affiliates to integrate Bluehost’s promotions into their content seamlessly. Finally, they focused on building long term relationships with their top performing affiliates by offering them additional perks and support to maintain their loyalty.
[00:25:20] Alex: Another great example of this is Shopify. As a leading e commerce platform, Shopify has used affiliate marketing to establish themselves as a go to solution for online store owners. Through strategic partnerships with bloggers, content creators, and industry experts, they position themselves as the recommended platform for entrepreneurs looking to start their online stores.
[00:25:40] Alex: The affiliate program was so successful, in fact, that it has become a cornerstone of Shopify’s marketing strategy, and it helps them grow exponentially and dominate in the e commerce space. Shopify’s approach to affiliate marketing went beyond just offering commissions. They created a comprehensive ecosystem for their affiliates with educational resources, webinars, and even in person events.
[00:26:03] Alex: This not only helped affiliates promote Shopify more effectively, it also fostered a sense of community among their partners. By investing in their affiliate success, Shopify earned a steady stream of high quality leads and signups. These stories illustrate how affiliate marketing is so much more than just a side channel.
[00:26:21] Alex: It can be a critical component of your growth strategy. Driving substantial revenue, multiplying your efforts, and cementing your position in the market in the process. So, what tools and platforms can help you track and optimize affiliate performance to achieve results like these? Things like the reinvigoration campaign, as well as the sales strategies that I talk about can all be done with the help of Siren.
[00:26:44] Alex: One of Siren’s unique things is that it has a way to offer multiple affiliate programs at one time. You can create different programs that have different rates. You can create Bonus programs. You can create incentive programs. You can create one time bonuses that happen only one time. You can do all of the things that I’ve talked about using siren.
[00:27:04] Alex: If you wanted to create a special bonus for reinvigoration campaign, for example, you can do that and it’s built right into the same system that your affiliate program is already built into. This is not something that’s common in other affiliate tools. In a lot of ways, Siren is more like an incentive program builder than it is an affiliate platform.
[00:27:23] Alex: It can do affiliate marketing really well, but that’s just one of the many things you can do when building with Siren. Let’s explore that a little bit more. You can customize Siren however you want. Do you want tiered rewards, product specific rates? It does both. Why is this so cool? It lets you motivate your affiliates in ways that actually line up with what your business needs.
[00:27:45] Alex: When your top performers see that they can earn more by focusing on your priorities, they’ll be all over it. I talk about this in another episode where let’s say that you are selling pants. You’re a clothing store and you’re selling pants or something like that. Maybe in addition to your affiliate program, you also have some kind of temporary bonus program to incentivize your affiliates to sell these specific pairs of pants, right?
[00:28:08] Alex: This is one example of exactly what I was just talking about, where maybe you’re trying to get rid of them. Maybe you have an overstock or something like that. So, maybe you’re trying With siren, you would just spin up a new program and you would say, Hey, all of my affiliates are now on this program. If you happen to sell these pants, you’re going to get a 20 bonus or a 10 bonus or whatever on top of your regular commission with everything else.
[00:28:28] Alex: So this offer gives you a way to be able to build and add little like special conditions inside of your program without it being one giant monolithic program. That’s complicated and difficult to maintain. Whatever you choose, you still got to bring your a game, of course, with a solid strategy to keep your affiliates fired up.
[00:28:48] Alex: You have to track performance accurately, and you have to optimize your efforts for maximum ROI. Okay. So let’s talk game plan. So we already talked a little bit about how powerful affiliate marketing can be. And we’ve even talked a little bit about how you can integrate it into your business strategy.
[00:29:02] Alex: First things first, you’ve got to nail down your goals. Do you want more traffic? Do you want better conversions? Do you just want to get your name out there? Whatever it is, having a clear target helps you build a program that fits your big picture strategy. Since you’re pushing a specific product line, you might want to team up with folks who do killer product reviews, for example, but if you’re all about brand awareness, influencers with big social media following could be your ticket.
[00:29:26] Alex: An affiliate program can provide you with all of the things that your business needs to be able to multiply your sales effort. It allows you to take your own personal sales process and your own personal talents and your own personal skills and apply them to other audiences for you. It allows you to find people who can take your strategies and your approaches and tailor it to their own systems and their own platforms and their own approaches as well.
[00:29:54] Alex: Combining your sales strategies with their own unique blend to sell that stuff directly to their audience who already knows, likes, and trusts them. This allows you to have access. To markets that you may not have otherwise had access to have access to keywords that you didn’t otherwise have access to and have access to places in general algorithms on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, all of these platforms without necessarily needing to do all of the work needed to actually be able to compete with the very people that you’re looking to turn into affiliates.
[00:30:24] Alex: By doing those things, you’re going to not only grow your business and multiply your sales, but you’re also going to set up a foundation that allows you to be able to transform your business from just a single person selling and trying to do all the things themselves to having a wide variety of people who are also going to be able to take some small risks and make some small tweaks and do some things and experiment in ways that you really can’t.
[00:30:50] Alex: You don’t have the opportunity or the ability to do so. And you’ll probably find that some of them will do things that you didn’t even think to do because they’re all brilliant marketers too, because that’s what the best affiliate marketers are. They are marketers, right? They are salespeople. They understand what they’re trying to do and they’re really good at it.
[00:31:09] Alex: So you can watch them and learn what they’re doing and then apply that back into your own process as well. So it becomes this kind of a two way. Flow where you’re educating the people on what’s working for you. And then some of them are going to step up and actually educate you on what’s working for them.
[00:31:26] Alex: And then you can take that and bring it back into your own system and learn and apply that knowledge and then help multiply that back to the rest of your system in their own way. So by doing this, not only are you getting more sales, generating more opportunities, multiplying your efforts and getting in those keywords and getting in that algorithm, like I talked about, but on top of all of that, you’re also getting really good feedback from marketing professionals on how to promote your own product at the same time, you just have to pay attention.
[00:31:55] Alex: But above all, you need to remember that this isn’t just about building sales. It’s about building relationships. If you treat your affiliates like the partners that they are and give them what they need to succeed, then they’ll become your biggest cheerleaders. And in a lot of ways you’ll become theirs.
[00:32:10] Alex: So just to recap, affiliate marketing is a very budget friendly way to scale up. You’re going to be tapping into ready made audiences and borrowing that trust. Planning is key from setting goals to picking the right affiliates and the right tools can make managing and optimizing your program a breeze.
[00:32:28] Alex: Put all of this into action and you’ve got a recipe for sustainable growth and multiplying your efforts. Thank you for joining us in this episode of Partnership, where your network is the wind in your sails. I hope you found today’s discussion insightful and inspiring. Remember, the strength of your business lies in the partnerships you build and nurture.
[00:32:48] Alex: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and leave a review. For more tips and insights, visit our website at partnership. fm. This is Alex Standiford, sailing out.