Marie Mack
All right, welcome back, everyone, to Partnerships on Purpose. I love all the topics about partnerships, but I think this one is the most fun. In our world, inside of partnership promotions, inside of affiliate promotions, inside of launches, all of these different things, we have something that's called leaderboards.
So if you're new to the partnership world, a leaderboard is used to incentivize the people that are promoting a certain launch. And we do it in tons of different ways in the partnership world, and it really does depend on the types of partners who are promoting a launch. Now, I'm saying a launch because that's where we see it used most often. There's not usually, ~like,~ evergreen rolling leaderboards out there.
Anne-Marie Pasquino
Yep.
Marie Mack
It's something to do with somebody's having a book launch, and they have a leaderboard. Somebody's having a launch for their membership community; they have a leaderboard. Somebody has, ~you know, ~a short little stint that's happening for their summit, and they have a leaderboard. And leaderboards are, I think, some people have a love/hate with them. I am sort of competitive. Don't know if you knew that. So I love
Anne-Marie Pasquino
No, I didn't know that.
Marie Mack
No, you didn't know. No, and most of the people that we work with, they've also just got a little bit of a competitive streak in them, so they love to see their names on a leaderboard. So today is all about leaderboards, how to gamify some of the promotions that are happening out there.
And, of course, we're gonna just open the curtain and tell you all about it because I think this is helpful. Creating a leaderboard is really super simple. I'm gonna give you ~kind of ~some things that I think are really important to put on a leaderboard and when to send them out, and I know Anne Marie's got some examples because, ~you know, ~real-life examples are a lot of fun.
So leaderboards, how do you put together a leaderboard? So first, it's all about your affiliate tracking. So we've talked about this in other episodes. You have to have an affiliate program set up. If you're brand new to the partnership world, understand that this can be super simple, right? Create a new page that just one person promotes to, check out the form that's consent in with that, track the numbers, right?
Super simple. Most people have some kind of affiliate program. We're inside a GHL, so we use an affiliate program on GHL. Some people use ThriveCart. Some people will use whatever they are in, maybe Kajabi and things like that. But at the end of the day, it's about the tracking and the numbers that are there.
You've gotta have the numbers to be able to actually put together the leaderboard because, as it says, this is the list in order of who did the most at that moment. So just know you've gotta have some kind of affiliate program set up. We usually set up a spreadsheet, typically. But ours is all around who is going to be promoting a specific launch, and let's just use a launch for an example because our clients have done this for a really long time.
We're really good at supporting launches out there. So you have everybody that's gonna promote your launch, all your partners. You've got all your deals set up. You know that they're gonna be, and we'll just say 10 people that are gonna be promoting your launch. You have them all listed out, you know what all their other tracking is, and then when they're going to promote. That's the biggest thing. When are they gonna promote? And Anne Marie and I will stand on the soapbox forever, get dates, friends.
Anne-Marie Pasquino
Yep.
Marie Mack
Get dates. So you're putting together your spreadsheet, you've got everything together, and then what's you need to, what you need to do is you need to just track the numbers as they're doing their promotions. These numbers can vary. I'll give you some examples, but you figure out what works best for you. When an when a launch opens and people start promoting it, you might be tracking the clicks into a certain page. When the cart opens, you might be tracking the purchases that happen in your membership or whatever you're promoting for that launch.
So those are the two primary ones. ~Um, ~sometimes we do track webinar views or something like that if you have some kind of live that you're doing. And it's all about putting those numbers in order. And then when you have those numbers in order, you need to email that out, and you need to send it to that list of people to say, "Hey, listen, here's the leaderboard for the current launch. Now we start to get a little bit of our competitive streak going. People like to see themselves at number one.
Anne-Marie Pasquino
Yeah.
Marie Mack
Like to see it going on. So at the end of the day, it's a super powerful tool. I have been talking for so long. Anne Marie, what else you wanna add?
Anne-Marie Pasquino
I know, like, oh, okay.
Marie Mack
There you go. I just laid it all out there. Now you can just add to it then.
Anne-Marie Pasquino
I'm just gonna throw things on the wall. Okay. So yes, to leaderboards. Love them. Most of our clients love them. I use them for a couple of different things. So I'm just gonna add. So Marie did say- yes, track different metrics. A lot of people will do opt-ins, and then will do sales, right?. So they'll share their leaderboards, but they'll say, "Hey, first, second, third for all of these things." What we didn't say is what people usually get. It's usually money. I'm probably gonna get
Marie Mack
Oh, yeah. Like, why do you get on the leaderboard?
Anne-Marie Pasquino
Yeah, exactly. What's the incentive?
Marie Mack
Yeah, totally missed that. My bad.
Anne-Marie Pasquino
80, 90% of the time it'll be, "Hey, you win money." ~Um, ~I've seen, ~like,~ first prize $1,000. ~Um, you know, ~so that's a pretty good incentive for people to be like, "Hey, yeah, I wanna keep, I wanna stay on the leaderboard. Or if they're, ~you know, ~in a certain position, what that also allows you to say is, "Hey, how does my promo calendar look? Can I add a couple of days to make sure that I stay on top and stay where I need to be to win the leaderboard?" So there's that. The other thing is if you're going to do a leaderboard, so let's say your launch is seven days, you want to send an email out every day, right?
You wanna get people excited. It's annoying for the people who are getting the emails sometimes 'cause you're getting... But it's great because you know where you stand all the time. Don't forget, so you have your people that are on your leaderboard. Usually you'll mention probably the top 10 is what I'm seeing most of the time. Like, these are the people in the order. Make it fun. Some people use images. Some people are really creative. I've seen people, ~like,~ put people's pictures on, like different
Marie Mack
A graphic or something?
Anne-Marie Pasquino
Oh my God. ~Like, ~yeah, I've seen some crazy... But it's fun, right? People are like, "Oh my God, that's so funny. Oh my God, I saw this person here. Oh my God, these three people together." So, ~you know, ~if you, if that's your personality and you have it in you, make it fun. ~Um, ~the other thing is, don't forget to thank the people, the other people that didn't make the leaderboard. So you'll usually see that in the email.
It'll be like, "Hey, these are the people, you know, ~runners up. ~Like, ~"Hey, ~you know, ~so and thank you so much for supporting. You still have time to make the leaderboard." So it's really important to recognize all of the people that are promoting you during that period. So I think it incentivizes people. You know, ~people will put things, ~you know, ~I'm just looking at a leaderboard email right now, and one of our clients is supporting a launch. And, ~like,~ it's just cool because, ~like,~ they'll personalize what they're saying about the partner, right? So it'll be like, "Working her visibility magic behind the scenes as always," right?
So just kind of like the person's name and then that, and then they put it in order. So I think leaderboards are great, just like you. I think if you can, you know, include them as part of your launch, if there's some incentive for people to, you know, stay engaged and add and play and, you know.
Sometimes there's... It's interesting 'cause we all, we see very often the same people playing, so we know who the competitive people are out there. So it's fun, right? It's like, "Hey, I wanna beat that person. I'm gonna do a little bit more. I'm gonna push it," ~you know? The other thing for leaderboards too, which is really great if you take it from the other side, is I'll use it to actually look at, hey, are there any new people out there that, or any people out there that I haven't connected with or don't know and who are doing partnerships, right? So that is a great way. I always look at leaderboard emails and say, "Hey, do I know these people?" If I don't, either I'll reach out, or I'll ask for an introduction or something like that, because I know they're in the world of partnerships. So I wanna have a conversation with them.
Marie Mack
It's a prospecting tool
Anne-Marie Pasquino
Really.
Marie Mack
Yeah, ~yeah. And especially if somebody is on a leaderboard, we know that they're interested in partnerships, and they probably have a similar audience as you because they're connecting with your partners. So it's like those second degrees of connection that are super easy. So- I'm sure we have an episode about prospecting, but just really quickly, it's around how do you connect to the people that have your audience, and you have to find those prospects consistently, and if you can get an introduction, that's gold. So it's a prospecting tool for sure. So we've talked a lot about, like, why all the leaderboard stuff and like ~how to set it up, and I just wanna, like, make sure everybody understands it is an extra effort to do this.
Anne-Marie Pasquino
Yeah.
Marie Mack
You have to put it in your planning. We've talked about how planning, planning out your launch in the future, making sure that your people, your partners are all set, that they have their calendars all set to be able to support that. Internally, this is a secondary layer, right? If you're taking a launch and you have to do all your emails to your own people, you have to make sure all the partners have their promo copy. You have to make sure that they are promoting, and now you have to go in, and you have to be able to send out your leaderboard emails.
And a lot of them can be drafted beforehand- the copy, probably, what the, ~you know, ~reminder links and stuff like that. We have a lot of different ways that we like to do leaderboards for our clients. But know that you can't necessarily prep it beforehand, right? You can't send it beforehand. You can't schedule it beforehand because the leaderboard's gonna change based on how people are interacting, and you want that data to be live. So give yourself some time. Give yourself enough time to put a leaderboard in there as a part of your promotion, and then enlist some help, right? Get a VA who can help you out. ~This is, ~this is something that they can do. We have one client that we have an entire document, all it is leaderboards, and then each time somebody has a launch, we go through, and we say, "This is when these different emails are gonna be sent out, and who, and what the links are."
And so we'll take, ~you know, ~almost a month beforehand to prep all of that stuff so that the VA can handle it, and that way the host is really focused on the people that are coming in and supporting the actual conversions because there's a lot that happens in a launch. So I'm just gonna say that because it's a powerful tool, it's a fun tool, and it does take planning. If you try to do it last minute, you're gonna be completely overwhelmed, and it's gonna feel like that to your partners. And you're putting your best foot forward, right? You're gonna give them some extra money probably because they do well, and it's funny you say that. ~Like, ~we definitely have competitive people.
I know we have; I know you know this. Yeah. I know we have partners who will say, "Is there a leaderboard? Is there a cash prize?" And they'll only join a launch if there is. ~Like, ~I've had a guy negotiate with me being like, "I know I can win number one. What if we bump that up?" ~You know? Like, ~they're looking for that extra paycheck, which is great. ~Like, ~if you're using promotions from partners, you want to make this as easy as possible because these are warm leads. I mean, we can get on the soapbox all day about how good referral marketing is for launches, but it only happens if you've got it all set up. So love leaderboards. I think we've laid everything out. Anything else you wanna say before we finish up?
Anne-Marie Pasquino
Yeah, just one thing. It's really important, I think we did an episode on this. It's really important that whoever is participating in your launch has access to their metrics, right? So how are they performing, ~you know, ~so that they know that if they're on the leaderboard, "Hey, okay, I'm on the leaderboard. I'm in fifth place. Well, I sent out emails," so they know you'll know when you're sending out emails, but you'll know how you're performing overall. So that is really important that you're giving your partners access to that kind of information
Marie Mack
Yeah ...
Anne-Marie Pasquino
So that they can make decisions, say, "Hey, yeah, I wanna bump it up. I wanna do this. I wanna do that." ~Like, ~if, ~you know, ~let's go get another 100 clicks or 50 sales or whatever the case may be. So that's ~really, ~really important. Yeah, that's it. That's all I have in mind.
Marie Mack
All right. I love it. Well, if you ever have questions about leaderboards, let us know. Happy to get on a call and chat through it because at the end of the day, this is gonna make your launch so much better, and partners love it. So thank you all for being here, and we will see you
Anne-Marie Pasquino
Thanks, everyone
Marie Mack
On the next one. Bye.
