Josh Hadley 6:52
I love that Lauren, thanks for giving us a solid overview of what affiliate marketing is, and the different kinds of networks that are already existing. And I think for our audience, where a lot of them are selling on Amazon, and they found success on Amazon. And most of us have all created our own Shopify stores. But there’s very little traffic going to those Shopify stores, right, like, that’s why so many people sell on Amazon, because Amazon brings all of that traffic to you. Whereas when you start your own Shopify store, you’ve got to figure out how you are going to drive traffic there. So Lauren, give us a lay of the land if somebody’s a succeeding well on Amazon, right? They’re doing over a million dollars on Amazon. And they’re going to create a Shopify storefront, just to kind of boost their brand credibility, make sure they have a presence there. But they don’t know how to drive traffic to the storefront, but they see it as a possibility. Like, what role do you feel like affiliate marketing can play there amongst all the different options because they could turn on, you know, Google ads, they could turn on Facebook, Instagram ads, you know, you name it, they could turn all of those on? Where does affiliate marketing come into play in terms of like, which is the best strategy?
Lauren Lee 8:12
Okay, this is a really exciting question. And genuinely, when you were asking it, I was like, Well, I can’t wait to share. There are so many things that I think brand owners should pay attention to right now, first of all, if you’re successful on Amazon, congratulations, that’s exciting. You know, your business is really humming and taking off and you’re thinking about what else can I do. But I just wanted to add a little additional note that you can also leverage affiliate marketing for your Amazon store. So you can partner with an sorry, you can partner with influencers, ambassadors, publishers, to drive traffic directly to your Amazon store listing. And that often isn’t top of mind. You mentioned the thing that is always top of mind, right turn on those ads, start pumping cash out. And that’s how you’re going to drive most of your traffic. Leverage affiliates to do that for you. So just want to put that aside, like congratulations on your Amazon storefront, keep driving traffic there, you can also leverage affiliates to do that we could talk about, we can get in the weeds, you know, how do we do that? But remember, that’s an option. Okay, so let’s pivot a little bit to the person who has started their Shopify store and you’re here, you’ve got your product, and it’s looks amazing. And you use all the plugins and all the cool features that Shopify has. And now you’re like, how do I get people to come to the store, which honestly, is very typical, like you’re not alone, you’re not the only person. So I think that’s important to remember. You can leverage affiliates to be able to drive traffic to the store. And I think this is a really important strategy that you can start today, right? Again, remember it’s Low risk, low cost to be able to join a network and start facilitating your affiliate program. But where do you begin, right? How do you drive this traffic? So I’m going to talk from the perspective of the company I’m working for now, which is ClickBank. And we have a particular type of affiliate called performance affiliates. The reason I want to bring up them, and we can talk about some of the other networks that I mentioned, and just my experience working with them. But you mentioned about turning on those ads. And I think that is top of mind for people. And most ecommerce brands are not aware that you can leverage affiliates to do that for you. So what am I talking about? Let me break it down. A performance affiliate is a media buyer, and affiliate who is a media buyer. So it is an individual, it’s an agency, they’re big organizations, and they’re buying media on your behalf from the places you mentioned, Google YouTube, right, Facebook, Instagram, tick tock, these social platforms, they’re buying that traffic, and they’re pointing the traffic to you to your store to your landing page, you get to you get to determine where is that traffic going to land. So the the reason that’s important is because you don’t have to pay for that traffic, you’re only going to pay for that affiliate, when there’s actually a conversion happening versus the other option, which you mentioned, which is I’m going to turn on all these ads, and I’m going to kind of eke out some cash, see what happens and monitor it over time. Maybe I hire an agency to start helping me helping me with that. You can leverage affiliates first, get a really good lay of the land. Where’s my traffic going? Is it converting what’s happening, you get to do this testing platform, while allowing the affiliates to do a lot of the work for you. So I think that’s a really important strategy. And ClickBank allows you to join the platform, join the network, and connect and get access to these affiliates to drive traffic for you and drive traffic to your store. And we can talk about how that happens. But I want to pause for a second and just make sure that that is tracking with you. And maybe you have some questions about that.
Josh Hadley 11:47
Yeah, I mean, the ultimate question then kind of leads into sounds like it fits right. I like the idea that it’s low cost, right and low risk, right. And I think that’s where the benefit is for affiliate marketing, from my perspective, at least. And in addition to that, you’re going to get some great user generated content, that’s kind of a side benefit. But compared to just like, hey, I’m gonna turn on some Facebook ads, or a Google Ad like, man, you could easily light that up. And it’s like lighting, you know, money on fire, so to speak sometimes, right, unless you know exactly what you’re doing. And it’s kind of much easier said than done. So I think all of us enjoy the Low risk, low cost investment of affiliate marketing, I think the big question is like, where do I begin, right? I’ve decided that this does seem appealing, like, how do I actually start executing on all of this? And I even think that wherever we can, like, if, if we can use some of the same analogies or examples of like, even if you want to find an affiliate for your Amazon storefront, you could follow the same kind of methods and strategies.
Lauren Lee 13:00
Absolutely. Okay. So let’s start breaking this down, you’re interested, and you want to start your affiliate program, and you want to leverage this particular strategy, which is of performance affiliates. So step one, you need to join a network, similar, you know, a network like ClickBank, there are other ones, obviously, you can start to look within the market. So it’s easy and completely free to join and sign up. So you set up an account, right. And we also have support system to help you do that. But aside from just joining the network, creating your account, and just having an account available for you to start connecting with affiliates, you need to craft your offer, right, you need to be able to have a campaign. And again, I’m trying to use more e-commerce terms, because ClickBank has other terms within our ecosystem. So you want to create a campaign, a landing page, that this traffic is going to be driven to anything, this is a really important part of the strategy. Even if you are just going to like flip on and turn on some ads on Facebook, you again still have to create that asset and that content and the copy and what is that experience going to be? So same exists here. For those affiliates. Affiliates want to drive traffic to high converting pages. So we create something called a direct response offer. And a direct response offer is essentially a campaign. It’s a landing page. It’s outside of the ecosystem of your your.com store. And again, we’re getting in the weeds so we can always circle back on any of these points. But the key here is that you’re going to start to craft an offer a campaign around where the affiliates are going to drive traffic to. So in your business, you want to start to look at what is my what I call your hero product. What is the product that most people are either coming in to check out that you have the most success with that you have the most response from people like what is that product? Is it is it something that you can craft an offer? round a message campaign. So start to look for that. And then you want to start
Josh Hadley 15:04
on that. Yeah. So I’m gonna interrupt you there. Yes. You know, when you talk about creating like a message or a campaign, you know, some of that may seem a little overwhelming, you know, depending on how much you’re talking about here, like, tell me more about like, what does this mean by creating an ad campaign? Are you talking about just creating a landing page? Or is there more to it than that? Yeah,
Lauren Lee 15:28
excellent question. So a campaign can be a landing page. And the landing page can be as long as it needs to be meaning, you want to include, obviously, like, what is the product, but more importantly, you want to solve a solution, you want to be a solution for somebody. So that is the message that is the campaign, that is what you’re building around. So let’s take like a real life example. Right? We work with a company called Organifi, they’re based on Amazon, they’re in most retailers, and Organifi is a green drink, like a supplement vitamin green drink that you can take daily. And so they were creating a campaign around, you know, healthy weight loss or healthy mindsets and body. And, you know, I don’t remember exactly what it was, but they were solving a solution for people who are looking for a healthy version of this particular drink. So they built a whole campaign around that. And so that campaign looks like solution based content and copy. It looks like testimonials. It looks like product images. And I know that sounds like a lot and people are like, Oh my god, this is so much work. But I promise you, you have so much of this already. Right? You have your company you’ve sold on Amazon, you’re selling and created your store on Shopify, you have these creative assets, you probably have copy and content that you’ve already created that you can pull from. And so you start to craft this campaign, you want to think about the actual offer, what are people going to buy? Right? They’re interested, they love the solution you’re offering. They love the content, they love the testimonials, they like the story of the brand. They like the ingredients, or the what the product is made of, or maybe some other, you know, stories behind it. Now they’re ready to buy. So you want to think about what is that? Right? What is that offer? And you want it to be compelling enough where it’s a no brainer. And that does not mean you have to be drastically discounted. It just means that based on the experience they’ve had in the campaign, when they get to the place where they see the product price, it’s like, oh, yeah, of course, I want that in my life. And I’m gonna go ahead and transact is I help paint the picture what you’re okay.
Josh Hadley 17:43
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It’s kind of just a e-commerce funnel, right? I think many people are used to, you know, a single long page, you know, format of an e-commerce website. And I think that this could be relevant for Amazon sellers, in the aspect of you could create your own landing page on your storefront site, right? You don’t have to link it to any other aspect of your store page, right. So it’s basically hidden in a way. And this is only visited when somebody comes from a specific link that you give them, right. And so you can I think it’s a good mindset shift that you could still do all of this on Amazon. And ultimately, it’s like, pick your hero product. step one. Step number two is identify what is the main problems and then solution that we’re offering, right? Because there’s many different angles to different products, right? So with the organic by example, are you going to appeal to bodybuilders? Or are you going to appeal to people that are trying to lose weight or just older people that want to stay, you know, healthy and fit in general, right? Like, you can’t cater to all of those audiences cater to one problem and solution first, because I think that’s going to turn full circle in terms of the affiliates that you’re going to work with, at the end of the day, right? So you’ve got to create that, like, what’s the problem solution specifically for this. And then on your Amazon web page, you start with all the different, like, state the problem at the top, then you dive into like, here’s the different solutions and testimonials. And then at the very end, you have the link to actually purchase your product, but it sits at the very end. So it’s just a different mindset shift that people selling on Amazon need to have, but I love that it’s 100% relevant that I think that is the key. That’s why you’re talking to me about this at the front is you’ve got to have the right problem and solution to begin with. Because if you don’t, this is where the rest of this strategy starts to break down.
Lauren Lee 19:53
Absolutely. And you’re so right like you are really build essentially you’re building a funnel but it’s an acquisition funnel. All and most of the times, we’re thinking about acquisition only from paid content, you know, paid ads that we’re putting out there. And we build these beautiful acquisition funnels. And you should do that strategy, like that’s very effective. So you want to take that same hat and bring it over here and create this acquisition funnel, but you’re leveraging affiliates. And again, the page needs to be high converting. And so you’re absolutely right in terms of, you want to craft the content and the copy and the images to attract a certain type of customer. And you know who that is for you, right and your brand, you know, who you want to start to attract. And I think that that’s really, really important. And I don’t think like to your point, most ecommerce brands are just an entrepreneurs in general, like you’re doing 20,000 things, and you’re worrying about so many variables within your business. And this is a strategy that you could implement today to be able to see tangible results. And it’s just not always top of mind. So I really am glad that we get an opportunity to talk and share about it.
Josh Hadley 20:59
I love it. All right. So we’ve created our campaign, and we’ve identified our product. Where do we go from here?
Lauren Lee 21:06
Yes. Okay. So you have Thank you for keeping me on track, by the way. Okay, so you have this offer, and you’ve created it. Now you’re like, Okay, what do I do with it, and essentially, this landing page you’ve created, you need it to be transactional, you need people to actually order from there. And that’s where ClickBank comes in, we are actually the order payment processor of your funnel. And so you will put your landing page links into our system, we will kick out this hop link for you, or the tracking link that we call hop link. And then what happens is, you will include this link onto the Buy Now button or your call to action on your landing page. And it will actually take the customer to an order form and ClickBank is the host of that, what that allows us to do is number one, we are going to pay out your affiliates, you do not have to manage that. And that can be a headache in its own in terms of oh my gosh, okay, now I have 10 people or businesses and they’re promoting my landing page and my offer and it’s successful, and I can’t manage the payouts and figuring out commission. So we handle all that for you automatically. And that happens. We also handle all the taxes which people don’t want to deal with when dealing with affiliate. So that’s great, too, right. And then we give you special features, like you can do upsells and down cells and order bumps and one click Post purchases and just kind of helping you really capture that intent of the customer and be able to increase your AOB as much as you can, right? So a lot of times ecommerce brands at this point are like, Okay, that sounds great. But like you’re the payment processor, so what about that customer data and order data? Do I get to have that? And of course, the answer is yes, we are, again, the network that facilitation between the relationship, we want to support you as much as possible. And the end, we want you to get that customer. So we’re gonna give you all of that customer data, all of the order data. And again, you’re going to be you know, the person who’s fulfilling so of course, we, we want that to happen. For Shopify brands in particular, it’s really exciting this year, we have a brand new integration with Shopify, so it makes it so much easier, it’s going to happen automatically. It looks like just any other order coming into your Shopify store, it doesn’t disrupt your fulfillment, or customer journeys post purchase. So that’s what happens after you’ve created your offer. After you’ve got your landing page up and running, you need to put it into a system that will then connect you to affiliates. And you know, ClickBank is allowing you to do that.
Josh Hadley 23:29
I love it. So then kind of what’s the next step after we’ve, you know, made the purchase, you know, and you’re handling the affiliate thing? I think the kind of the analogy for that in Amazon terms is Amazon has their brand referral bonus, right? Which, you know, you as the business can get a 10%, kickback, right from that product. But you can also leverage an affiliate link right? From am from that affiliate, using an affiliate link that Amazon gives them to that page as well. And then Amazon can handle all of that as well. So what you’re sharing is still applicable for any channel that you’re operating on. I just want to drive home that point that like this still works if you’re an Amazon focused brand, but some of these extra ideas is if you’re ready to diversify some of your your sales channels like this is a great area to maybe start with. So Lauren, I kind of want to point our attention to how do I find these affiliates? It all sounds great. But how do I find these affiliates? How do I manage the relationship with them? How do I make sure that the offer I’m going to give them is enough percentage of the deal or of the revenue share? Right? So there’s a lot that I think we need to dive into there. So let’s start first with like, So how in the world do I go find the right affiliates. If I’ve decided that with Organifi? I’m targeting more, let’s say A people that are trying to lose weight, right? How do I go find the right affiliates that are focused on talking to an audience that’s wanting to lose weight?
Lauren Lee 25:09
Yes, that’s a great question. And basically, we’re taking somebody through the whole journey, right of what I’m starting, I’m starting from the ideation stages and just of interest, and now you’re, you’re ready to connect with affiliates. And so you by joining in the network, you get access to the affiliates. And that’s one of the benefits of joining a network. And that’s that outside of a network, you can absolutely connect with people on like Facebook groups, and maybe on LinkedIn. And it’s kind of ad hoc, right. And it does take some manual efforts. So that does exist, that just natural facilitation of relationships. But once you’re inside a network, and a company like ClickBank or another network, what they allow you to do is to join a marketplace, and the marketplace is not consumer facing, it’s for affiliates. And affiliates are coming every single day to be able to see what offers are there and what they can begin to promote. And so you want to be in that marketplace, you want to be just like you’re on Amazon, right? And you are in that marketplace, it’s kind of very similar in the sense of what products can I promote as an affiliate. And so that’s how you’re really going to start to connect with affiliates. So pick up your offer. And so there’s some strategies around there, you know, you can get your offer and require that affiliates, you know, provide information so that you can start to create this, this network of affiliates that you’re connecting with by email by contact, and you also can learn what is their traffic source, maybe one affiliate is really good at YouTube, and one’s really good at Facebook, and you can start to be strategic around that. That is the main facilitation, the main way that you’re going to connect with affiliates. There are other things like events and networking, and like I mentioned, kind of this ad hoc relationship that does happen. But you want to ensure you’re you’re connected on the marketplace.
Josh Hadley 26:55
Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So the first thing would, you know, a network that you join in the marketplace would kind of do a lot help expedite things? Do you have any tips or strategies? If somebody is just, you know, they’re networking with people or they’re in Facebook groups? Have you seen any good strategies that way to maybe recruit some affiliates that you’re getting personal? Yes,
Lauren Lee 27:19
absolutely. Okay. So I think one thing that often gets overlooked when you create your funnel, and create your campaign, you’re super excited. But you want to be able to have some data around your campaign, your offer, is that converting what is the conversion rate? You know, what is the average order value that you see people transacting with on your on your funnel and your campaign? Those are gonna be really attractive metrics to share with affiliates. And so if you did go on a Facebook group, or you go to a networking or conference, right, you’re prepared to be able to speak to the benefits of running traffic to your offer, right? It’s high converting, it’s got X amount of payout. And we could talk about determining payouts for for affiliates, because I think that’s a big part of the equation, right? Like, you want to be competitive and you want to share, you want to ensure that it’s beneficial to you and your business and the margins that you have. So we can talk about that too. But those are the strategies that are really important. You want to test your offer, like you know, with within your own network, maybe even driving traffic to it, get some benchmark metrics to be able to share so that you feel really confident going into the marketplace and also talking to any affiliate.
Josh Hadley 28:34
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. If you’re on the ClickBank network, does it display what your average order value and conversion rate is then to people that is Yeah,
Lauren Lee 28:45
yeah, they can see that. And there’s an algorithm that lives on on the marketplace that will rank offers in and you know, but also people are searching by category by vertical by payouts and the dollar amounts and, and so on. Yeah.
Josh Hadley 29:00
Awesome. Very good. Are there any other strategies if people are trying to, you know, go at this alone, right, like if they’re trying to find an affiliate for their Amazon brand? I know there are some networks I think reversion is one of them. Are there any other networks that are Amazon specific? Or if they have to go at it alone? How do you recommend that you go approach people with maybe some cold Instagram DMS or things like that?
Lauren Lee 29:29
You know, Shopify has an amazing platform called Dovetail. It was originally another company I don’t remember the original company name but Dovetail and it allows you to search by really you can filter by so many different things. So like reach of an influencer, and it’s influencer specific so that an individual with a audience on social media, so you can look by vertical by category by audience size, by content that they produce by conversion rates of that content that really goes in the weeds for you. But I think that that’s an amazing tool. And if you’re already on Shopify, like absolutely leverage that, because it’s, you can then just reach out to them. It’s not a cold DM they’re expecting and anticipating, because they’re on that platform to receive messages from brands like you, and they want to promote you versus kind of that, I don’t know, there’s some resistance to sending a cold DM to people and anticipating that that might work. This is a real platform network version of being able to do that, for influencers. And you can do it at scale. So it’s not one by one, you can just select the ones you want to message and send them all on message, which is really great. Yeah,
Josh Hadley 30:38
that’s awesome. I think that that is super important that, you know, finding people that are already comfortable with affiliate offers, is probably your biggest battle, like you don’t want to have to cold DM somebody and then try to convince them that they need to start trying to monetize their channel, right, like you’re fighting an uphill battle, it’s not worth your time and energy. Are there any other platforms, or networks that you would recommend people reach out again, like anything specific to Amazon, or Shopify, Dovetail was great, any other ones that come to your mind?
Lauren Lee 31:11
You know, I think if somebody’s looking for like an entry level version of a network ShareASale is a really good one to look into. It’s on the smaller side in terms of size, but provides a lot of the same benefits as some of the larger networks, and has a lower costs and barrier to entry of entry. So I think ShareASale is a really good place to start. And most networks, and this is kind of a general statement. But most networks have the ability to facilitate Amazon driving traffic to Amazon, I think most have been able to mold themselves to where so much of the shopping experience is happening. So I don’t have one in particular, outside of what you’ve named, but I think you’ll be in good company joining any of them.
Josh Hadley 32:04
Awesome. That’s great insight. All right. So we now know how to kind of identify some of these affiliates. I think the other thing you alluded to that will be important to discuss is how do I determine what my payout ratio is? Right? Like, what percentage of the sale am I going to give to these affiliates? So that’s it’s enticing enough, right? I don’t know, is 1% good enough? Or is it needs to be 50%? So what are some guidelines and rules of thumb as it comes to payout ratios for affiliate marketing?
Lauren Lee 32:38
Yes. Okay. So this is a big question. And not only is it a big question, but don’t go in blind, you know, don’t be like, Oh, I think this is the right percent for my business, like, you really want to look at this. Because let’s say you have an affiliate, and it really scales really fast. And it could be a publisher who may be published your coupon code, and now you all of a sudden have like an influx of traffic coming in and conversions. If you didn’t set a rate that you know, is beneficial for you and your business. Like it can quickly be something that could you might not want to, you know, experience. good problem to have that money, many sales, but you want to be clear on your margins. So again, start there, what are your margins? What can you afford to send out to affiliates? And so you also remember that in the beginning of this conversation, I mentioned kind of the lay of the land in terms of the types of affiliates that exists, right. And so you want to be clear on am I going the influencer route am I working with? Am I creating this ambassador program? Am I really just targeting publishers like bloggers and publications that are online like that my route? That’s where I want to be focused in terms of my strategies for affiliate marketing? Or do I want to take this route of performance affiliates we’ve been talking about? So that will help shape what is the percent I pay? I think a general rule of thumb for like influencers and publishers is anywhere between five and 15%. And that’s per transaction, you’re paying this influencer or this affiliate, that type of commission for driving sales to your business. And you can go up or down and you can also be strategic with that percentage. Let’s say you are working with a business or an individual and influencer and it’s really performative. So reward them, give them a higher rate than you would anybody else right. Now on the performance affiliate side, it’s completely different. And it is more about acquisition than it is rewarding them for driving the sale. And I think that’s important to remember. I’m going to repeat it. It’s more about customer acquisition, then rewarding them for the sale. And the reason I’m saying that is because remember what they’re doing. They are buying traffic that you don’t have to pay for and driving customers to convert on your funnel. So they’re acting as if you were turning on that switch we were talking about and sending out money to be able to get to acquire a customer. So the payout for performance affiliates is much higher. It’s around 50% And up. And so you want to think about what is my AOV for that offer? Right? What is the margin I have available? Can I bundle products together? Can I increase my margin at any capacity? Can I offer free digital content along with my offer? You know, you’re really thinking strategically in terms of how do I get to be able to offer something like that at 50%? And remember, the mindset, this is an acquisition funnel, not a reward for driving one sale. Right?
Josh Hadley 35:45
So Lauren? Well, I think as, as I hear that performance affiliates, they’re going to come with a higher price tag, so to speak. But what you need to do as a business is make sure that you understand what your customer lifetime value is, right? Because you’re not trying to make money on the front end sale, you know, that on average people buy five times from your brand at this average order value. So there’s my customer lifetime value, right? You’ve got to know your data. And you also have to have a way to get repeat sales from a customer. So I think that this would be, you know, performance, affiliate marketing is not meant for those brands, that do not have a way to monetize or to create repeat purchases. Again, I think this lends itself well to anybody that’s in the replenishable category, or supplements, things like that, that people need on repeat, and you could put them on, you know, subscription programs. But if, in general, a customer only needs to buy your product one time, and then they don’t really need to hear from you. And you don’t have many other products to upsell them on, you know, probably steer them towards the publishers and the influencers, would that be a correct assumption?
Lauren Lee 37:00
I think you bring up a really valid, extremely important point. And you are thinking about the lifetime value of the customer, right? That you’re acquiring. Again, it’s an it’s an acquisition funnel, right. And so you want to think about that. And that’s an extremely important point on the influence or Ambassador publisher side, you don’t necessarily have to think about it like that, because you’re really rewarding people for a single sale. You do want to consider, right the customer that you’re acquiring what you want to do with them after no matter which channel you choose. But the other thing that you know, its its health, its consumables, its supplements that work really well within that performance affiliate model. But we’re really opening up and discovering, you know, what else is working. And so we’re looking at other verticals like accessories and jewelry, and, you know, just outside of the norm. And the other thing that I wanted to mention is that digital products. So if you have an app, if you have subscriptions, if you have an ebook, if you have a course like all of those things you can also use performance affiliates for it doesn’t have to be only the physical good.
Josh Hadley 38:13
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think you gave us all a really good lay of the land of how that would work. So my follow up question to that Lauren would be, let’s say I’ve got a brand that typically serves customers only one time, right? Especially on Amazon, most people if you don’t have a follow up method, right, you typically only get one order from a customer. It’s challenging. So what recommendations do you have for if they need to work with influencers or publishers, are they still able to join some of these networks that you talked about to find those type of people? Or is it no longer in the cards there and they’ve got to go it alone?
Lauren Lee 38:52
No, no, no, you so you can go alone to affiliate marketing. But now you are, what you’re doing is you’re taking on the role of being able to figure out how I’m going to track how I’m going to pay them? How am I going to ensure that like the link I provided that is going to track it is going to actually work? So you’re you’re starting to actually create more work for yourself, if you want to go at it alone, definitely join one of the networks, like you definitely want to do that in order to facilitate those relationships with influencers, Ambassador programs or publishers.
Josh Hadley 39:26
So I guess get that on that is, is there a difference? Like if you join ShareASale or ClickBank? Does it distinguish, hey, this person’s an influencer, this person’s a publisher, this person is performance affiliate, right so that you understand like, who you’re trying to target, like, does it have those labels?
Lauren Lee 39:47
Yeah. Is there an end to date? The only place I know that you can get access to performance affiliates is ClickBank. There’s, like I think, maybe one other network. So really when you’re joining the In other networks, I feel like we’ve said that word like 100 times in this conversation, but like ShareASale, or Commission Junction or LinkShare, they will be able to give you access to identify, Okay, I want to talk to publishers, and I want to connect and you’re, you’re basically connecting with them to join and let them know like, hey, I want you to promote me. And it’s, again, you’re having that relationship. And so I wanted to circle back in terms of you said, like, what if I have a customer who is or somebody who’s like, I only have one product that they need to purchase? Well, I think there’s many things you can talk about just just strategically like the business you’ve set up in terms of only like one and done kind of experience for our customer. But also in that model, what you’re doing to incentivize a publisher or an influencer, to start to promote you is the offer, again, looks differently. So it’s really traditional in terms of like, it’s a 15% off code, or you have a sales section that they can drive traffic to, or select products and campaigns. So again, you’re you’re, you’re meaning to think about what is the affiliate going to promote? Is it just a standalone code? Or is it something more so strategic? So I think you need to think about those things. When you’re going into the influencer ambassador or publisher space.
Josh Hadley 41:20
Yeah, I completely agree, Laura, and this has been so much value for our audience so much to absorb. Is there anything else you think we need to convey to our listeners about, you know, affiliate marketing, that we haven’t yet touched on yet?
Lauren Lee 41:36
I think just I’ve said this on, you know, many shows, but don’t give up. A lot of people are like, okay, affiliate marketing seems like a good strategy, I’m going to try, but I’m gonna like half do it, and then see what happens. You need to commit to the strategy, whichever path you choose, but commit also to your affiliate marketing program, right, like don’t give up too early to be able to see some of the results. So stay with the strategy, just like you would stay with your marketing strategy or your product development strategy, like you don’t give up. Right, to keep going.
Josh Hadley 42:09
I think that is a that’s a great point. Maybe a follow up question to that is, how long does it genuinely generally take to get, you know, some traction with an affiliate program, so that you don’t throw in the towel? You know, too early?
Lauren Lee 42:25
Yeah, I think a good rule of thumb is to think two quarters, right? So let me get my program up and running. Let me determine the affiliate, I want to build a strategy around. Let me figure out my offers and my margin and the payouts, let me start reaching out to affiliates and start getting some relationships and some traction there. Let me see what happens in the next two quarters. And then from there, begin to pivot and, you know, adjust your strategies. But don’t give up. If you don’t see the immediate results of like the amount of traffic you are anticipating or conversion and sales, just begin to pivot and adjust your strategy. So you’ve
Josh Hadley 43:03
got to start refining. So it’s gonna be about six months to really kind of get this off the ground, and then to start getting some data. And then from there, what you’re saying is just continue to refine, right? Maybe it’s updating or optimizing that landing page to try to get that conversion rate just that much higher, or anything like that. So I think those are all super, super important points. Lauren, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode. Here are the three takeaways that I noted Lauren, but let me know if you think there’s something I’m missing. All right. So number one, is you have to determine first, what type of affiliate you’re trying to target. Right? This is where this all begins, like you need to identify how affiliate marketing works in your business and your comprehensive strategy. Because how you set this up is going to make a big difference. Are you trying to target a performance affiliate, where you’re going to maximize the customer lifetime value on repeat purchases? Or are you looking more towards gearing something towards the publisher and influencer, things like that, you’ve got to first set that strategy and walk into your affiliate program with a concrete strategy. Okay, action item number two would be then determining which product in this kind of correlates with your strategy. But you start first with your hero product, right? So in my brand, we have over 1200 products. So creating an affiliate program for 1200 products would seem overwhelming and daunting. But if I take that advice, and I say, I’m going to pick our best seller, that’s the only one I’m going to focus on. And let’s just do this one. Maybe I focus on that for six months and if I have success there, maybe I emulate a similar strategy for my second best seller, and third, and fourth, and so on, right. So I think that’s an important takeaway is like, please don’t see that if you have 100 SKUs, you need to do all 100, start with your best seller, test it out and go from there. And then my last action item number three, would be to actually optimize a landing page that talks about the customer problem, and then how your product serves that customer and resolves that provides the solution to that problem. And whether you sell on Amazon, or you sell, you know, on Shopify, or any other sales channels for E commerce, I think that principle of creating sales pages that are focused on a specific problem, and how your product serves and provides the solution is a strategy that will always win. And so focusing on that, and I think there’s some creative strategies that you could do to create a funnel like page on Amazon, to do something like that is unique. But Lauren, those are my three takeaways. Is there anything else that you think I’m missing as a takeaway for the audience?
Lauren Lee 46:13
I think you did a great job at summing this all up and putting it into a nice little package for people to be able to digest easily. So yeah,
Josh Hadley 46:21
thank you. Awesome. Well, great. Well, Lauren, I’ve got questions for you. First and foremost, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read? And why
Lauren Lee 46:30
Oh, boy. So this is not gonna relate anything to e-commerce, so I apologize. But I have the book is called The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh. And it’s a phenomenal book. And it really is just an incredible resource. And so it’s been very influential to me.
Josh Hadley 46:51
Awesome. First time, we’ve had that book recommended. So I always like to hear new books. It’s great. Next question is, what is your favorite productivity tool or a new software that you’ve recently discovered that you think is going to be a game changer?
Lauren Lee 47:05
Okay, so we here at ClickBank started working with this company called Guru. And it’s such an amazing tool and resource for teams to be able to share knowledge and share information. It also has an incredible Slack integration that allows you just to like, type in the question and pull up the answer. So for somebody like our company, that’s just we really have a lot of different knowledge based resources that we need to be able to pull in through many different conversations. It’s been a really, really great tool.
Josh Hadley 47:40
Awesome. That sounds like it a good tool to use if you have lots of team members working in different silos and different departments. A great tool for collaboration there and sharing that info. Alright, my last and final question here is who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space? And why?
Lauren Lee 47:59
Oh, man, um, gosh, who came to mind was and his name is escaping me but you know, the the founding family of Patagonia I think they have done some very radically compassionate things and really take the time to really understand their customer like to heart and I’ve done to some really profound things in the e-commerce space that I think is very commendable. So that’s who I thought of.
Josh Hadley 48:29
I love it. Well, Lauren, this has been awesome. If people want to connect with you, Lauren, and learn more about this affiliate marketing strategies and learn more about ClickBank, where should people go to and visit?
Lauren Lee 48:41
Okay, the best place is LinkedIn, you can find me there, Lauren Lee, ping me, message me there, connect. And then also, we’ll provide in the show notes for you to be able to connect with me. We have an e-commerce resource hub at Clickbank which is really great in terms of just bite size information to understand like who we are, what do we do? What kind of affiliates again, and how do I work with them. And there you can be able to book a call with me if you if you’d like. So those are the two really good places to connect.
Josh Hadley 49:11
Awesome. Well, Lauren, thank you so much for your time and sharing your valuable, valuable knowledge with us all and we appreciate it.
Lauren Lee 49:19
Thank you so much, Josh. It’s been a pleasure.
Outro 49:22
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