Affiliate marketing can be a powerful source of revenue for your business, but how do you
attract the right kind of affiliates and set them up for success?
In this video, we’ll provide 5 tips for running a successful affiliate program.
Let’s get into it.
Welcome to “First sale to full scale”, a 10 video series that covers the journey
from making your first digital product to running a full-scale online business.
In the previous video, we talked about building an online community and a little bit about
how community members can serve as ambassadors for your business.
Affiliate marketing takes this idea to the next level.
Affiliates are people who are both excited about your brand, and have some kind of incentive
for referring people to your platform.
That powerful combination could be a huge benefit for your business if you can attract
and empower the right kind of affiliates.
The following 5 tips will help you make life as easy as possible for your affiliates, so
they’ll be equipped and eager to promote your brand to their friends and followers.
Tip #1: Target affiliates who love your brand This may seem like a no-brainer, but if your
goal is to get affiliates who genuinely love your brand and want to help you succeed, it
begs the question... should you just let anyone into your affiliate program?
Having a public affiliate program may be the right move for some online businesses, but
managing affiliates, even inactive ones, takes time and energy.
If you want affiliates who will be worth your efforts, consider the following:
Have potential affiliates complete an application An application gives you an opportunity to
share and set expectations.
It can also thin the crowd a bit since people are less likely to complete an application
unless they’re truly enthusiastic.
Run an invite-only program Some customers or members could make great
affiliates if they fit certain criteria, like they’ve purchased a certain number of products
from you, or they’ve been a customer for a certain amount of time.
Using invite-only allows you to set that criteria and puts you in total control over who’s
in your affiliate program.
Recruit from within your community If you’ve built an online community for
your brand, it’s probably filled with members who would make great affiliates.
These are people who share your products and content online, regularly participate in discussions,
and who seem genuinely invested in your success.
An online community is valuable in a number of ways, but in this case it can be a great
incubator for the kinds of affiliates you’re looking for.
Tip #2: Set a competitive commission rate While it’s nice to find people who are excited
about your brand, no amount of excitement is going to replace commissions when it comes
to getting affiliates to sustain their marketing efforts.
The most popular form of commission is percentage based, where your affiliate earns a percentage
of whatever product or service they sell.
Other forms include a fixed dollar amount per transaction and free or discounted access
to your digital products.
You may choose one or some combination of these commission types.
To help you decide, do the following:
Scope out the competition.
Find competitors in your niche and look at their affiliate program for ideas for how
you might structure yours.
Being competitive doesn’t necessarily mean offering the highest commission.
It’s important to make sure that whatever you choose is sustainable for your business.
When looking at competitors, determine what differentiates your brand from theirs, consider
your business’ needs, and structure your commission accordingly.
Look at affiliate programs from non-competitors: If you only look within your niche, it’s
easy to get trapped in a conventional affiliate structure.
Looking outside of your niche can uncover new ideas and help you determine a fresh,
more attractive approach to your affiliate program.
Tip #3: Have an onboarding strategy The most important question after “how do
you get affiliates?” is “what do you do with them once you’ve got them?”
The best way to capitalize on the initial excitement from an affiliate who has just
joined is to use an onboarding strategy.
An effective onboarding strategy should consist of the following:
A welcome message - to welcome and thank affiliates for joining the program.
Information about payouts - including how commissions are calculated and when and how
they’ll receive them.
Frequently asked questions - to address some of the most common questions and concerns.
Tips for getting their first referral - so they can take action right away.
Links to marketing assets - so they have everything they need to share your business with others.
Speaking of marketing assets, that brings us to our next tip.
Tip #4: Provide marketing assets
This one is important enough that it deserves its own section in this video.
Providing things like social media graphics, branding assets, promotional materials, and
marketing copy, can remove some of the friction of sharing your products because the affiliate
doesn’t have to try to come up with those things on their own.
Consider having a dedicated place, like a cloud folder or web page, where you keep up-to-date
marketing assets your affiliates can access any time.
You may also include script templates they could use in their posts, articles, or videos.
All of that said, the most effective marketing comes from affiliates who are able to articulate,
in their own voice and from their personal experience, what they love about your products.
Be sure to encourage your affiliates to tell their own stories in their own style, even
if it means straying a bit from your branding guidelines.
Tip #5: Track and tweak The long-term success of your affiliate program
depends on your keeping track of affiliate activity and making changes when necessary.
Use the following 3 practices to ensure your affiliate program will continue to run smoothly:
Check in with your affiliates.
Keep the lines of communication open with your affiliates so they can share their thoughts,
concerns, and ideas with you.
An affiliate might come up with a game-changing marketing strategy that hadn’t occurred
to you.
Communicate changes and special promotions.
Go above and beyond to keep your affiliates in the loop about changes and special promotions,
and make it easy for them to integrate those things into their strategy by providing updated
marketing assets.
Look at analytics and make changes if necessary.
When it comes to any marketing strategy, data is your best friend.
It’s easiest to improve something when you can measure it, so when choosing where to
host your affiliate program, it’s important to find a provider that gives you real-time
data about your affiliates’ activities.
At Podia, Affiliate marketing is available for our Shaker and Earthquaker plans and works
seamlessly with your Podia site and products.
It features a dashboard where you can keep track of your affiliate activity and where
it’s simple to set, manage, and pay out commissions.
Because affiliate marketing is offered through Podia, it integrates with other great Podia
tools like email marketing and messaging, so you can easily communicate with your affiliates.
If you’re not already a customer, you can check out this and many other great Podia
features free for 14 days, at Podia.com/signup
Those are our 5 tips for running a successful affiliate marketing program.
Our goal on this channel is to help creators succeed, so if you have any tips we didn’t
mention, feel free to share them in the comments below.
In the next and final video of our First sale to full scale series, we’ll put everything
together and talk about the most effective ways to scale up your business.
Meanwhile, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.
If you found this video helpful and you want more content like this, subscribe and hit
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Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time.