The truth is, you simply won't find this information anywhere else. So why not deep dive into the world of affiliate marketing and program management, discover new digital strategies that fake brands and agency used to grow their network to add detailed exactly to add to get more traffic and increase sales? UK agency owner, affiliate manager, motivated, the founder of affiliate inside.com hostel. Leanne Johnson. Leanne, over to you.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to the tweet affiliate marketing podcast with me, your host, Leanne Johnson. And today we're going to be talking about branding. Now, my friend, some of you may be asking yourselves, what the heck has branding got to do with my affiliate program marketing? Well, let me tell you, it has a lot to do with it. How your brand is seen and how your program relates to your partners is everything that you need to be working on to make sure that the customers you're trying to reach and get a hold of are going to give you a competitive advantage. Design influences whether people try a product or service and how much they're willing to engage with you. And you'll hear me talk about brand affinity in my LinkedIn channel and newsletter a lot too. So it's important for new programs to really invest in their brand and what their brand stands for at the start of their program launch. But before we get too deep into today's topics, I want to introduce you to my esteemed guest, Jason Bayer, the marketing and partnerships manager for CrowdSpring, who's going to be joining me this week to talk about branding for affiliate programs and why this is something that you should be considering in your business too. Welcome, Jason. How are you?
SPEAKER_02Thanks, Leanne. That was a great, great intro to how important branding is. I'm excited.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm excited to have you here too, because I've been watching Crowdspring for a while. And I'm really excited to have you on this podcast because there's nobody better that I could think of to come on and actually talk to everybody that's listening today about branding. So before we get started, let's get you to tell us a little bit about who you are, how you got into partnership marketing, and what CrowdSpring is and does for businesses online.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. So I'm Jason, I lead marketing and partnerships at CrowdSpring. Crowdspring is a 15-year-old brand. We lead with education because the terms branding and brand identity feel a little confusing. And they're really quite simple, but there's an ongoing amount of work to keep cultivating these. And so we lead with a lot of education at CrowdSpring and on our blog and in our education. We are an affordable design and branding platform for custom work. So we are heavy curation of our 212,000 creatives on the platform. So this is this is not like uh Upwork or God forbid Fiverr, where just anybody can jump on and start participating. We're really trying to focus on a quality community that values custom design, intellectual property. And we have 33 categories of branding and design. And so a listener might think, okay, we like our core brand, right? We're not changing, you know, our core brand identity, but there's always the marketing uh assets that are needed, things like custom presentations and flyers and postcards. And then you might need, you know, custom packaging or product or company naming. And so this is all covered under CrowdSpring Services. And we back it all up with a hundred percent money back guarantee. And so uh, you know, you're not gonna be in business after 15 years if you haven't perfected a process for doing this and offering the guarantee. And and uh we we're we're we're quite happy uh with our ability to to educate and and and create strong brands.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So talk to us a little bit about how you got into partnership marketing, because I think that's always a really interesting story. Um, you know, the affiliate industry has grown immensely in the 15 years that CrowdSpin's been in in place, but how did you get into partnership marketing? Because you've also got an affiliate program for your uh platform. So talk to us a little bit about how you landed up here.
SPEAKER_02So I met our CEO, Ross, at his startup lab. A startup lab is where you're creating multiple companies at one time and you're trying to figure out the positioning for that company and and then find the audience and the partners and grow each of those. And so that's how I met the CEO. And we've been working together for uh around six years now. And and you know, what I like about partnerships is you have a lot of tools in your toolbox in order to grow company revenue. I use the term partnerships very broadly. So these might be joint venture partnerships where maybe it's short-term or long-term with a company. It may be education, email-based uh partnerships, and then it may be affiliate-based. It may be, you know, looking at referrals or looking at affiliates. Uh, so I like I like the ability to talk to companies about how to advance both of our goals, right? Because that's really what a true partnership is, is you're trying to figure out, you know, how do we advance uh the goals of the person on the other side of the table, right? Whether they're trying to uh to grow their audience size, uh, you know, grow their brand or grow their revenue if they're promoting our affiliate programs.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and branding plays a big part in that, actually, because a lot of affiliate managers, they're very transactional in the way that they run affiliates. So they'll talk about the traffic, but very few affiliate managers will actually look at the brands of the partners that they're working with and actually give advice on how to improve those things. And for me, I think affiliate managers have to be a sort of jack of all trades and a master of one, which is finding new traffic. Do you guys work with affiliates and publishers to help them or are you more on the brand side?
SPEAKER_02We are, but let's before we get too deep, let's talk about this term brand, right? And brand identity so that we have no ambiguity around what this is, because I agree with you that affiliate managers have to understand what it is about their program that's that special sauce, right? Especially if you're in a very competitive, let's say, e-commerce environment and you're selling, uh you're selling sunglasses, right? It's a very competitive market. I don't need too many sunglasses. Well, maybe somebody does. I just need one and until I lose it. But um, you know, you want to have that clear understanding of what your brand is so you can communicate it. So let's let's start there. Uh, what is a brand? And and it's a very simple definition. A brand is every single interaction that somebody has with your company. Okay. Every single interaction that somebody has with your company. And so this is um, this is your customer service team. This is how you respond or how quickly you respond to emails. This is your your return policy, right? So when we think about somebody like Shady Rays, to go back to the e-commerce example, you know, their brand is built around this idea of, you know, pay once for your glasses and lose them or break them and just come back to us. That's part of the brand. Uh, it's every interaction. So it's it's obviously your website, but it's how the product comes in the mail, you know, the unboxing experience. It's every single interaction somebody has with your company. I can't stress that enough. And this is why it drives us crazy when we're on hold with a company and they say, You're, you know, your your patronage is very important to us. Please wait on the line. Your caller number 37, we'll get to you in 45 minutes. And it's like, okay, there's a disconnect. What you're saying does not align with the brand you're trying to create. And so instead of us, you know, listening to this recording and saying, Oh, okay, your brand means you care about the customers. No, you know, brands try to guide and educate the consumer on what they want you to think about them. But the consumer has the final say. The consumer gets to say, no, your brand is actually poor customer service. You might say it's strong customer service, but it's not. So this is branding. Branding is everything. And then what most people think is branding is the logo. The logo is a subset. Your design is called your brand identity. And this is a subset of branding. And the brand identity is everything visual about your brand. And this is your logo, this is your website, this is the colors and font that you choose to use, that you're packaging. This is all of the visual brand identity. And so that's that's the distinction.
SPEAKER_01So I want to just take a brief minute there because what you've said is incredibly important. And I want to break it down for affiliate managers that are listening to this podcast because we've got quite a big, broad community of people that tune in each week. What Jason has just said there is incredibly important. What does your affiliate program brand speak to? And how is that brand attracting the right sorts of affiliates to come and work with you in your program? And then, second to that, it's not just about what your web, your affiliate website looks like in terms of the logo and the design, but how are you actually treating your affiliates in terms of when they're onboarded? Do they get the same kind of visual that they get from the landing page when they're registered? A lot of affiliate programs forget that piece because they're so focused on making sure that affiliates are promoting their products properly. They're not actually building that brand identity around their program, too. So they're very cool on what the customer branding is all about because they've got a marketing team that develops that. But very few in-house affiliate managers-led teams, if they're not on networks and using agencies, spend time thinking about what you've just said. And I think it's incredibly important because your affiliate is also your customer. And while we're spending all of this time to make sure the customers understand our brand and get what we're all about and what our products are all about, are we doing the same thing with our affiliate partners? And I can categorically say the answer is probably no.
SPEAKER_02Right. Absolutely. And making sure that that brand that we're we're communicating to the affiliate partners matches the company's core brand, right? That there's no, that there's no disconnect. If if customer service is important, if one-on-one conversation is important, that we're transferring that over. I'll give you a great example. There's a company called Termageddon that does um uh updated um uh like live updates for terms of service for companies. And I was doing some secret shopping, and uh, you know, so I signed up for their affiliate program. And we all know uh the welcome email is important, right? I'm not gonna, you know, that everybody just has one.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But what do you say in that welcome email? And when I was blown away by with Termageddon to talk about, you know, not just what they say, but what they do. So Termageddon's welcome email was custom for me. And I knew it was custom because he says, Wow, like I'm really honored to have CrowdSpring. I didn't, I didn't uh, you know, I followed Crowdspring. I'm uh, you know, he gave me very personal details. He was genuinely excited that Crowdspring had signed up for the platform. Now we're a recognizable brand, and so that's that's part of it. But they had the systems in place. And I mentioned this to him. I said, Wow, I was really shocked by this. And you followed up as quick as like an automated email would, right? Yeah. And he says, yes. He says, What we figured is if we're going to create relationships, it should start from the very first email. And he says, not all of them are like CrowdSpring with a recognizable brand that we, you know, we're proud to have on the platform, but we look for something, you know, we find their LinkedIn profile, we find the uncommon commonality between either their brand or ours or us as people and recognize that. And it goes a long way. And so they built the process in place where most people just automated email, thanks for signing up. They have a slight, you know, kind of uh pause where they're looking for this personal connection. That to me speaks volumes to we care about you as a person and care about your business, much more than e any email or website copy that says the same. That's action.
SPEAKER_01Because nobody wants to feel like just another number in a massive program that, you know, I'm only gonna get a personal person to actually talk to me when I've delivered, you know, hundreds of thousands of revenue, you know, sending traffic. So it's a bit like chicken and egg sometimes for affiliate managers, because they they need to have, you know, automated processes in place to manage the masses, the volumes of signups coming in. But you've just very quickly shown that there's there is a way to actually also personalize stuff. Now, I as a smaller business, because we have a lot of smaller businesses that are, you know, choosing to take their programs in-house and not just necessarily rely on networks, for example, but are using SaaS technologies to build their programs. What are some of the things that you can give to small or some advice that you can give to smaller businesses who maybe don't have a lot of budget to invest in huge brand Bibles or agencies to come in and help them develop stuff like this? What are some of the key things that they need to get right before they launch?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. You've got to think about your core brand identity. You know, you've got to make sure that your core brand identity is custom for you because we're trying to build uh a memorable brand where somebody only thinks about you, right? And so those visual assets are critical because we process visuals thousands of times faster than text. And so the reason why a custom logo or a custom design is so critical as opposed to generic is because a custom one can only speak to one business. It's been designed specifically for this one brand. And it's not speaking to a generic audience for anyone in the industry. Think about some examples, you know, realtors, lawyers, uh, you know, have these very generic brands a lot of times where we can just picture the imagery, you know, the keys, the gavel, scales of justice, right? And it's very bland. It speaks to the industry, it lets me know you're you're you're in this industry, but it doesn't tell me about you and your specific brand. And so what we have to get right very early on is if we want our affiliate channel to be exciting, if we want people to be excited to promote us, we have to have a brand that's exciting to promote. We have to have a brand that people want to get behind that looks professional, that looks custom. So it starts with that custom brand. We can't, we can't leave that to chance. We need to make sure that uh it's not generic, that it's speaking just to us. Because think about you personally. I think a lot of times when we think about affiliates, we don't realize that they're people just like us, right? The people at least behind them, they may be brands themselves, but eventually there's a person making a decision somewhere in that transaction. And think about what products you want to promote. You don't want to promote something that looks sloppy, that looks disconnected from the brand, that looks generic, uh, that doesn't have any emotion or feeling or or or purpose, right? So these are all things that you want your affiliates to see through your visuals that you care, that you have something memorable, that you have something worth saying, and that they should be proud to promote this, that it's not sloppy, that it's truly unique, it's custom.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I love that because you know, you don't all of those things are thought processes. They're not necessarily expenditures. They aligned thought processes that start with a concept of how are we going to differentiate our program, product, brand, whatever it is that we're gonna be marketing in a competitive environment. And a lot of people automatically go to price. They will automatically go and say, okay, well, if my competitor's offering 10%, I'm gonna offer 50%. It's a crunch. And I want smaller businesses to think about using other things like branding to actually differentiate their propositions and to go to market with a very clear message because sometimes that's the other thing that's confusing, which I think brand can help, is why should I be promoting this program over another?
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01Branding can actually lead that conversation without you having to use the crutch of pricing.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. And branding doesn't have to be relegated specifically to just the product you're promoting. I'll give you an example. Sticker Mule has a hot sauce. Sticker Mule is custom stickers. They have a custom hot sauce that shows their brand in a in a fun way. You know, it talks, it allows them to bond on a different level, right? Outside of the product, right? And uh this can be a fun way to engage your affiliate audience where you create products that maybe you're not selling to your consumers, but maybe they're, you know, something that you provide to your affiliates that get them excited about your brand and allows them to kind of see inside of how you're unique, how you're different, right? And so if you don't have a product or service that you can allow your affiliates to use, or maybe they don't want to use it, or you know, it's not not for them, you know, sometimes looking at, you know, how can you create kind of the the custom product, you know, the custom, the custom coffee, you know, white label coffee with your own brand on it, things like this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And there's a lot of things like I've I've joined affiliate programs, and on joining, I get, you know, a customized shirt that says we, you know, we love whatever your affiliate site is. And that's even something quite cool. It's it's you know, inexpensive, it's cheap, but it makes you feel human, it makes you feel special, and it brings you on board in a really why right. And that's some of the brand values that you can build into your, not just your design, but the concept of your branding as well around your program. So I want to learn a little bit from you because obviously everybody that comes on our podcast may kind of dig deep into your kind of skill set and your knowledge around brand and brand development. But what have you learned about branding this year that's imperative for partnerships to get right? Because we're now talking about the partnership economy, we're talking about brand-to-brand partnerships and having those brands align. Is that an area that you can sort of talk us through in terms of, you know, before you start, what you need to make sure you're checking out in terms of branding?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. I think you know, one thing is to make sure that there's a willingness on both sides to move forward. You know, much like you can't drag somebody into a marriage, you can't drag somebody into a partnership, right? It just doesn't end well. Right. And so you you really need to make sure that both parties, you know, are coming into this with clear expectations on on what is provided by each partner and and what the other's looking for. So just because you're paying great affiliate fees doesn't mean that's gonna be of interest to the person promoting you. Maybe they're looking for access or they're looking for to grow their audience as well. And so, you know, you have to be clear about what you're looking for in partnership marketing on either side and understand if it's not going to be a good fit, you know, don't pursue that conversation. You know, let it either mature later and into what you're looking for, if it does, or just consider that, you know, not the right approach. You know, the the thing that we learned at CrowdSpring was, you know, the we we offer a very affordable product, you know, and 100% money back guarantee. Designs, low custom logos start at $300, and you get to pick from dozens of different custom designs to get feedback, uh, to give feedback on these designs and see your brand come to life. So very affordable. Uh, this is not like agency level pricing. But one thing we noticed was that you know, some folks are not ready to take that next step.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And so, but how do you get them, how do you get them excited? How do you help affiliates, you know, instead of just selling, you know, the core product, how do you give them something that educates, but also, you know, uh allows them to start building that relationship around your brand? And so what we created was a custom 10-page report scoring your brand. It's done by a human. We score the company's brand uh out of a score of 100, give them actionable feedback on what to do specific to them. And this is a great way for our affiliates to say, look, if we don't want to, you know, promote the paid service on the first interaction, you know, how do we give something a value that um, you know, allows them to uh to to experience the product, to experience our educations, you know. And so I think that's been been critical. Tapfiliate or not tap affiliate, um Termageddon, Termageddon has a great, we we mentioned them earlier as an example. Uh they their agencies are talking to their clients about privacy policies. And so they have a form that they that the agency provides their client and says, look, I'm not responsible for your privacy policy. I need you to sign this to know that I'm relinquishing responsibilities, building your website, that I'm not responsible for getting sued because of your misuse of privacy policies. But there's three options, you know, like I choose to do anything. Uh, I want to use Termageddon, you know, and here's here's the options, or I want to use my own and I'll hire an attorney and and build this out. And so, you know, providing those options to clients to promote you in a way that you know doesn't feel like a sales pitch, you know, feels more educational is helpful.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's great. What are some of the biggest like mistakes that you see companies doing when it comes to their brand? Like what are some of the like major faux pas that you should avoid if you're gonna go down the route of creating a brand for your program and building that kind of um affinity? I like to talk about brand affinity.
SPEAKER_02The challenge I think with many small business owners is realizing what you can and can't do and when you should bring in an expert. There's tools on on the market that are very helpful, something like Canva to design, but design tools do not make you a designer. And so I use Canva personally. We use Canva in our affiliate program. It's not a competitor to CrowdSpring. We're using custom, a custom brand and custom illustrations within Canva's editor, right? Because it allows us to be able to move things around fairly easily, but it's not a substitute for building your brand, right? And so I think the biggest challenge we find is that business owners spending a lot more time trying to build their custom brand identity when they could get it done a lot quicker and a lot more effective hiring an expert, right? Because if you do it yourself, it takes it takes a lot more time for something that's not as effective. And so that's been the biggest challenge is uh educating business owners that you know you may be saving $100 up front. Yeah. But you are losing a lot of sales and you're losing a lot of time. It's not your expertise.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's the other thing. I mean, affiliate managers are tasked with so many things marketing their program, finding new affiliates, you know, onboarding those affiliates, making sure campaigns are working, you know, analysis. I mean, the list goes on and on. The last thing that that we're saying here is that affiliate managers need to go and design their own banners in Canva. But what they should be doing, they probably are. Yeah, they probably are, to be fair, because we are a team of people that just get things done. But the other thing is also be cognizant of the fact that what you are putting out there does speak to your program and it does speak to your company brand as well. So depending on how big your company is, you might have a design team in-house that can help you with the stuff. But if you don't, there are tools and and services available that can help you. But I think you're right, recognizing that point of when is what like my skill skill set enough where it's actually going to become damaging and when do I need to get a you know an expert in to actually help me with that?
SPEAKER_02And you know, working off of that frame of thought, there may be designers at your company, but they have their own, they have their own tasks, their own challenges within, you know, and you're just another, you know, kind of ticket uh in that queue. Whereas what we find is custom illustrations, you know, are a great way to communicate the brand to your affiliate. And what I mean by this is think about uh a lot of people have copied kind of MailChimp's style of, you know, maybe the boldest abstract people. And, you know, that's been kind of now its own style, but you know, you can create your own. You can create your own little characters and that represent, you know, your brand. And they just serve as a unique way of pushing your brand through the communication channels, through emails, through content that people can promote. I know you know affiliate managers have to balance this tightrope where they're working with the marketing team on the brand. You know, what are the approved images we can send for promotion of the company? But to engage the actual affiliates, you know, you have the ability to use things like custom illustrations to get, you know, that smile, to get that engagement where somebody's like, okay, this is a human brand. And while there's many different brands I could be promoting, you know, this one's a little bit more fun. They understand me, they're a little bit more personal. They use some custom illustrations in different parts of their marketing to me. Now, I can't use these maybe as a whole because you know the marketing team hasn't approved those for you know use of the program, but you can use them to engage the actual affiliates and show that you're, you know, a human and interesting and and and worth getting to that next level of conversation with.
SPEAKER_01Well, and then that's a very good point because a lot of affiliate managers come and talk to me about the fact that they're not getting any traction with affiliates with the emails that they're sending out. And here's a really good tip.
SPEAKER_02Because they're boring, probably.
SPEAKER_01Create something that's brand distinctive to you, and perhaps your emails will be opened every time, you know. So I think maybe think about what Jason's saying here and think about how it applies to you and your program as well. So I want to talk about what's important for affiliate managers and you know, brand managers, digital marketers, whoever it is that's tuning in and listening to this, what's important about branding and how can you use it to drive those partner signups? So, what are some of the things that you've tried, you know, in your tenure in the space, um focused around branding that that might have worked, or any examples that you might have seen recently that really drove like conversion? Because there's two two parts to the conversion conversation. There's how do I convert affiliates in to drive more traffic, but then there's also how do I help affiliates to convert the traffic that they're sending me. Brand pays a big part in both of those conversations. So, what are some of the cool things that you've seen in your tenure that could help those two like problem areas?
SPEAKER_02We've talked about some of these with the examples of of Termageddon and the focus on on the illustrations and this, you know, to kind of summarize this point. What we're ultimately trying to do is create something that one gets attention. We all have crowded inboxes. There's times when somebody that I've wanted to speak with has emailed me three or four times, and I finally see it on the fourth email. I'm like, oh, well, of course I want to talk. Uh, you know, I just had a busy inbox, you know. And so we we need to we need to get attention. I think one of the challenges we we forget is we're not trying to go the full sale on the first interaction. The goal of the first conversation is to get to the second conversation. What is the goal of the first line in the email is to get you to read the second line of the email. That's what it is, right? And so we're trying to create this this intrigue, this feeling of emotion, this excitement to learn more, right? And so we've got to be careful. Like I get a lot of uh, you know, affiliate type interaction on LinkedIn, and it falls into one of two buckets. It's either extremely ambiguous, but I can figure it out based on your title. It's like you're not being cute, like you know, you're in charge of kidding me. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or it's overly salesy, you know, it's this massive paragraph of here's all the value, as opposed to somewhere in the middle where we are building excitement, but we're also leaving a little bit of room to have the conversation, right? To continue to get my feedback. Do you want to be a part of this? Instead of selling to you immediately, you know, do you do you want to learn? Do you want to be sold to? It's a very different conversation.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And and having that strong brand, I think, you know, just in closing out this thought is that you you need to have something that people are proud of. You need to have something that somebody wants to represent. Unless you're somebody like Bluehost with a, you know, a massive name and a great affiliate program. It's like, okay, I build websites, people need hosting. Well, of course, I'll just pick the leader. But if you're if you're not that, then you have to have something that people are excited to promote. And money is part of it. But think about how much money I'd have to pay you to promote something embarrassing. Something that somebody's going to come back to you later and say, Really, Leanne, like you recommended this. Like maybe it worked, but it it looks awful, right? And so there's not, you know, most affiliate programs are still trying to, you know, make make revenue. And so there's you're working with smaller numbers, promoting potentially, now you don't see it as an embarrassing product because you're too close to it, right? But you have to think through the lens of the people you're talking with, the other options that they have. Are they proud to promote this? And a lot of that comes back to the brand and the brand identity and working with the marketing team to create something that's exciting.
SPEAKER_01And I want to say that this is very important for one big reason because a lot of affiliate managers are now tuning into the whole influencer and content creator space. So really making sure that your brand ticks these boxes that you've just mentioned right now is going to become more and more important if you want to open up your program to work on a performance basis with influencers. So if you're in travel or if you're in fashion or, you know, the cosmetic industry, whatever it is, a lot of these affiliate program managers are looking to expand their traffic sources and work with even micro influencers. And you're 100% correct because I know people ask me to promote things all the time. And I don't. I don't actually do, even though my community is huge, and I am considered to be a bit of an influencer in the affiliate space, I have to be very careful about what I align myself to, because even just aligning myself to something will be seen as a recommendation. So really thinking about how your program and the products and the services within your program that you're asking affiliates and content creators to push and promote is a very, very important point, especially if you're looking to expand your reach and bring in more diversified traffic sources into this affiliate program that you're running.
SPEAKER_02And I want to be clear, what we're saying is not you should be something for everyone, right? That everybody should want to promote you because you have a strong brand. Strong brands naturally mean you're going to have a group of people that are uh not your customer, that are maybe even opposed to your brand, right? Are are are visually, viscerally uh, you know, not excited about your company and in its space. And that's fine. That's not what we're saying. We're saying whatever lane you've picked, make sure you have a strong brand. Make sure you're communicating strongly to that audience. It's not that you might, you know, you're probably gonna uh offend a different audience or they're not gonna want your product. That's fine. They're not your customer, right? But you want to make sure that at least to the people that should be your customer, that you have a strong brand that people are excited to promote.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 100%. So let's talk about excitement because I always get excited when I talk about the future of affiliate marketing. I want to hear from your side of the spectrum because everybody's got a different viewpoint on what's going to be happening. Where do you think the future of affiliate marketing is heading? And do you think that brand-to-brand partnerships, which I spoke about earlier, is really the next big thing, or has it always been there in the background, but we're only just kind of talking about it now, making it fashionable? What are your thoughts?
SPEAKER_02Well, having been, you know, in this industry with partnerships for a decade, you know, it's it feels like it's always been there, at least, you know, in my tenure, it's just a matter of you know, you know, how how prominent it gets. I think what we've seen is, you know, less of it, it's not as easy now to promote a product. It's not as easy to spin up a blog or to start a YouTube channel and start promoting some products, right? And become a become a millionaire that way. It's a little harder for influencers to get their space out, to, to, to find their community. And so if it's harder, you know, to promote this, you know, the people, the brands that are chosen for these affiliates, you know, the successful affiliate managers that get their program picked up are doing that because they've created a strong brand. They've created something people want to promote. So if you're in a crowded marketplace, uh, just realize it's not as easy as it was 10 years ago to spin up, you know, a newsletter or blog or something and start talking about uh a lot of different different products and make money that way. Consumers have also moved on where, you know, the GoDaddy of the early 2000s, where it's, you know, come in for you know the 99 cent domain, but then buy this product and this product and this product, you know, we've kind of seen through that. We don't mind product placement. We don't mind uh influencers making money on affiliates as a way to compensate them for their work, but we don't want to be sold to constantly, right? We want to make sure that, you know, what you're really putting your faith behind, as you mentioned earlier, sometimes you're not going to share certain companies. We want to make sure that as affiliate managers, we have a strong brand and a strong brand identity that builds this excitement for companies to promote us, right? In an incredibly kind of um difficult time where where it there's a lot of there's a lot of products there and and uh it's it's difficult for consumers. We don't we don't want to overtax them with our with with our products.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I like that because essentially what I think you're saying there is we need to keep it simple, stupid. You know, the the add a the adage like every kiss that your affiliate gets from you needs to have the same message, the same authenticity, the same, you know, like intent from the first day when they signed up to your program. And if you comp you just have to rinse and repeat that and get it right and like nail it completely, get it 100% correct with your branding, follow-up messages, you know, a meeting in person, make them feel the same thing at every touch point that you are experiencing with them in their journey from from when they sign up to when they eventually grow and become one of your top performant performing partners. And it really, I know we we're making it sound simple, but it really actually is. Like I think we over we overcomplicate our lives because we look at all of the flush things that other people are doing. But really, it's as simple as getting it right at the beginning and just reiterating that over and over again so that it slowly grows with time.
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Couldn't have said it easier myself. Thanks, Jason, for being on the podcast. I mean, this has been great because I think you know, we don't really talk about branding and affiliate marketing. We don't really talk about, you know, thinking about our affiliates as if they are our customers. And I think what you guys do at Crowdspring and the content that you push out as well. I mean, I've read some of the kind of blogs and you know videos that you guys have put out there. It's really, really educational, great content that I think a lot of affiliate managers should sign up and read and experience. And if you're an affiliate listening into this and interested in getting into brands, go check out the CrowdSpring program as well, because there might be businesses and customers that you can refer there and earn a really great revenue. So it's been a pleasure to have you on this podcast, Jason. And thank you so much for giving us your time and insights around branding and how that impacts affiliate marketing.
SPEAKER_02Perfect. Thanks, Leana. It's great to be here.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's a wrap for this week's affiliate marketing podcast. If you love what we're sharing, why not head over to Apple ITunes now and leave us a five-star review? Doing this helps us reach more people just like you. And we'd love to hear your feedback too. While you're there, make sure to hit subscribe, join our podcast channel so you never miss another insightful episode, and leave us a comment so we know what you're thinking.
unknownHey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
SPEAKER_00Want to amplify your affiliate program performance? The Amplify Virtual Summit is brought to you by Affiliate Insider. Save these dates, 17th to 18th of January 2023, feel calendar now, and book your free ticket. To come and join us as we explore all the latest digital and affiliate marketing trends. This is not a sales pitch virtual event. So you'll get nothing but great advice and a chance to network with agencies, networks, AS, and Martech to provide what we call an insider scoop on how to amplify your affiliate program and partner performance. Plus, you'll get exclusive access to expert-led in-depth master classes, group coaching, and ask me anything sessions with expert tools show and tell you how to implement tools and tactics helping you save time and money to get consistent results. Get your free ticket to join us at Amplify now. Visit www.affiliateinsider.com and click on events to register.