Lauren Lee is the Director of Sales and eCommerce at ClickBank, an e-commerce platform and affiliate marketplace that connects customers, product owners, and affiliate marketers. Lauren has partnered with top Fortune 100 companies such as Amazon, Walmart, and Apple to spearhead their affiliate marketing strategies. Additionally, Lauren helps brands develop solutions to scale their businesses and exceed their goals.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• What is affiliate marketing, and how do e-commerce businesses benefit from it?
• Leveraging affiliate marketing for traffic and sales
• Creating a marketing campaign
• How do brands find affiliates to partner with?
• Determining payout ratios
• Understanding which affiliates complement your business

In this episode…

Affiliate marketing allows influencers, ambassadors, and publishers to promote a brand’s products or services in exchange for a commission. With so many marketing strategies to employ, why should brands use affiliate marketing?

Lauren Lee, an e-commerce expert, explains that this type of marketing is low-risk, as businesses only pay for results. Affiliates can track campaigns and provide real-time feedback. It’s also an effective method to reach new customers with the utilization of a performance affiliate. Performance affiliates serve as media buyers to purchase ads from Google, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, driving traffic to a company’s website. There are various types of affiliates to choose from, so it’s vital that a brand understands which program is compatible with its mission and goals.

In today’s episode of the eComm Breakthrough Podcast, Josh Hadley interviews Lauren Lee, Director of Sales and eCommerce at ClickBank, about maximizing customer acquisition with affiliate marketing. Lauren explains how to leverage affiliate marketing to drive traffic, the benefits of creating marketing campaigns, and how to find affiliates to partner with.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Josh Hadley on LinkedIn
• eComm Breakthrough Consulting
• eComm Breakthrough Podcast
• Email Josh Hadley: Josh@eCommBreakthrough.com
• Hadley Designs
• Hadley Designs on Amazon
• Lauren Lee on LinkedIn
• ClickBank
• ClickBank on YouTube

Special Mention(s):

• Kevin King
• Ryan Deiss on LinkedIn
• DigitalMarketer
• Michael E. Gerber on LinkedIn
• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
• The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering Into Peace, Joy, and Liberation by Thich Nhat Hanh
• Guru
• Yvon Chouinard
• ShareASale
• Commission Junction
• Dovetail
• LinkShare

Related Episode(s):

• “Kevin King’s Wicked-Smart Tips for Building an Audience of Raving Fans”
• “Why You Need to Experience a Mindset Shift When It Comes to Hiring Leaders With Ryan Deiss”
• “Unlocking Entrepreneurial Greatness | Insider Secrets With E-myth Author Michael Gerber”

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure ecommerce owners grow to eight figures. Of course…

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

As a special bonus to my podcast listeners, this month I’m giving away one $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit session at no cost. Email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com with the subject line “Strategy Audit” and tell me why your business should win the free audit for the chance to win and don’t worry, if you don’t win the free strategy audit this month, you’ll automatically be entered for future months.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:04

Welcome to the eComm Breakthrough Podcast. Are you ready to unlock the full potential and growth in your business? You’ve already crossed seven figures in sales, but the challenge is knowing how to take your business to the next level. Join Josh Hadley, eight-figure e-comm business owner and investor, as he interviews highly successful business owners get ready because you’re going to learn specific actions you can take today to help your business reach its full potential and leave a lasting impact on the world.

Josh Hadley 0:36

Welcome to the eComm Breakthrough Podcast. I’m your host Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Michael E. Gerber, author of the E-Myth, and Ryan Deiss of Digital Marketer. Today, I’m speaking with Lauren Lee, ClickBank’s e-comm expert. And we’re going to be talking a lot about how you can maximize your customer acquisition with affiliate marketing, which is a cost-effective strategy that you simply can’t ignore. This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting, where I help seven-figure companies grow to eight figures and beyond. Listen, Lauren, I started my business back in 2015. And I grew it to an eight-figure brand and seven years. But there were a lot of mistakes I made along the way that made the path of getting to eight figures take a lot longer than it needed to. There were times where I had a lot of self-doubt, in myself as a leader, whether my brand could actually survive, whether we could have the cash flow to continue, I wish I would have had a guide along the way that would have helped me overcome those obstacles a little bit easier and provide me with the right stepping stones. So to our audience, if you have ran into similar plateaus are obstacles, and you’re looking for the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to eCommBreakthrough.com. That’s e-comm with two M’s to learn more. And as a special bonus to my podcast, podcast listeners, this month, I’m giving away one $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit session at no cost. All you need to do is email me at Josh@eCommBreakthrough.com. And in your subject line, say Strategy Audit. And then tell me why I should choose your business to work with for this month strategy on it. And if you don’t win this month, you’ll be entered to win for future months to come. But today I am super excited to introduce you all to Lauren Lee. Lauren is ClickBank’s e-comm expert who works with e-commerce brands to unlock new sales channels with affiliates. She believes that there’s always a solution to scale brands. And you can always find a way to exceed your goals. Lauren has partnered with top Fortune 100 companies like Walmart, Amazon, and Apple, leading their affiliate marketing strategies and offer campaigns and is helping brands like yours, craft scaled affiliate channels. You can find her hanging with her husband and daughter when she isn’t supporting clients, traveling the P N W aka the Pacific Northwest, and assisting in Buddhist meditation teacher training. So with that, welcome to the show, Lauren.

Lauren Lee 3:17

Thank you so much, Josh. It’s nice to be here.

Josh Hadley 3:19

Well, excited to have you on the podcast. Obviously you’re the e-comm expert there at ClickBank, so I know you’ve got lots of experience in the e-commerce space. Our listeners are going to be super excited to hear the strategies that you have to share with us today. Lauren, why don’t you give us kind of a quick nuts and bolts breakdown of what what is affiliate marketing, and why is that so important for e-commerce businesses?

Lauren Lee 3:47

Yes, thank you, Josh, for asking that question. I get asked this a lot. And I like to give an overview of what affiliate marketing is. So this is an umbrella term, right. And there’s a lot of things that fall fall underneath there. I think one of the most important things to remember about affiliate marketing and there’s many different strategies within the umbrella term of affiliate marketing. So people who are listening today probably are very familiar with affiliate marketing in terms of like influencers, ambassadors, maybe you’ve worked with select publishers, or maybe you have b2b partnerships that work in an affiliate model. There also is a term called performance affiliates. So there’s many different types of affiliates within affiliate marketing. And I think that’s really important for people to know upfront. The other thing that I think is really important to remember is that there are companies that facilitate the relationship between a brand and an affiliate, anything going into affiliate marketing, that’s key to remember that that facilitation already exists. There are platforms and networks that are allowing you to have that relationship. They help you track they help you pay out and they help you to see what you’re competitors are doing what other brands are doing within that network. So remember that word network, those are real companies that are facilitating that relationship, let me give you a few. So that you can start to look into that there are companies like Commission Junction or LinkShare, or ShareASale. And these are networks you join, to be able to launch and have an affiliate program. And it also allows you, again, to facilitate that relationship between you and getting access to those affiliates. They help you track so you make sure you know your campaigns are working, you can get that real time feedback, is this driving sales for me? Am I getting the clicks I want, you want that type of insight. And then the company I work for is called ClickBank and we are also a network, we sit within that same space. And we’re going to facilitate that relationship between you and our affiliates and make sure we’re making that connection. At the heart of it. Affiliate marketing is allowing other people to promote your business on your behalf, and rewarding them with some sort of payment or rev share or the model you can come up with, you know, cost per acquisition or whatever it might be. You’re rewarding them for driving sales and traffic to your business. That’s really what affiliate marketing is. And so it’s a really you ask, why would we implement this? Why would this be a strategy that you’re going to start within your business. And the reason is because one is extremely low risk, right, you don’t have to pay out to be able to have an affiliate program, you’re only paying when somebody is driving a conversion or driving sales to your driving traffic to your your business. So that’s really important. And number two, you can, you can leverage this in a really smart way by using affiliate marketing for acquisition strategies and for traffic sources. So those are some really top reasons why you’d want to consider affiliate marketing program.

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