You're listening to the affiliate marketing podcast, a podcast for digital and affiliate marketers who want to grow and hack their strategy while driving consistent sales. In this podcast, you'll learn how affiliate and partner marketing is constantly changing. So why not give behind the scenes access to a variety of digital and affiliate marketing experts who share their insider tips, their strategies, the value bonds that will help you launch, scale, and grow successful affiliate marketing programs? 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 big brands and agency use to grow their networks and detail exactly how to get more traffic and increase sales. Now here's your host, award-winning affiliate programmarketer Force.com, thought leader and the drums digital's top 50 UK agency owner, affiliate manager, motivator Leanne Johnston. Leanne, over to you.
SPEAKER_01Feliz Navidad, happy new year and welcome to 2023. Boy, what a big year this is gonna be. If you're new here and listening for the first time, welcome to the Affiliate Marketing Podcast with me, your host Leanne Johnston. This is a podcast for digital marketers who work in affiliate and performance marketing and who want to level up their knowledge and get better program results. We cover everything related to affiliate marketing, performance marketing, program management, tips, tools, trends, and more. And in this first episode of 2023, I wanted to talk a bit about the key things I learned about affiliate marketing last year, give you a sneak peek at what we've got coming up in 2023, and also take a little bit of time to reflect on what was in order to help you all move forward with what I think will be. If you're a New Year's resolution kind of person, you're probably sitting down to plan out what these New Year's resolutions are going to be. You'll be taking time now to plan how you'll implement changes you want to improve in your life, in your work, and maybe in your relationships too. Everyone sees a new year as a new start, but for me, it's more about making new beginnings. When you start something, you can always stop it. But when you begin something, you're more inclined to finish it. So for me, it's going to be a year of new beginnings. Now we've come a long way since we started Affiliate Insider, and we're very proud of who we have become. A thought leader in the industry, a supplier that supports business growth, lead generation, affiliate marketing practitioning, and educating to help fresh new talent get into the space, offering our community a hive of information that is open and free for all to access. But this year, I've got bigger plans and new product launches, covering big industry trends and events that we want to curate and share. Our goal remains the same to help our community deliver successful affiliate marketing strategies and build affiliate programs that drive incremental sales and growth. Now, this week I'm going to be giving you my thoughts on how I think the year ahead might play out, what some of the big trends may be, and I'll be giving you some fearless looks at what I think affiliate marketing might look like in the year to come. But first, I want to say a massive thank you to all of you who have contributed to the growth of this podcast over the last year. We have regularly featured in the top 100 business news category on Apple and Spotify every month due to your five-star reviews, your regular weekly downloads, and I want to thank you for tuning in to listen to our expert guests and their insights and expertise. I mean, who knew affiliate marketing could ever be this popular, right? So keep those five-star reviews coming. Tell your colleagues and friends about this podcast too. Like and comment when I share these in our weekly LinkedIn. And this all helps our community to grow immensely as we share more insights and continue to curate content that's helping you to grow your affiliate program day by day. But more importantly, I want to hear what you need help with. So please take time now to complete our podcast form, which is going to be attached to this week's episode, and tell me more about what it is that you want to learn about and what it is that you want to know. I'll be doing my best to serve up this information to help you to grow your affiliate program and relationships in the year that comes. So here are some of the highlights that I want to share with you as we start a new beginning this year and face 2023 full on. For me, it felt like 2022 was a year where we finally got back to business. Our community doubled in size over the past year, and I'm absolutely thrilled to have you all here each week coming along to learn what's new and happening with me in affiliate marketing. We came out of 2021 strong and got on with building our service, increasing the number of affiliate programs that we serve, expanding our partnerships and navigating the onset of Web 3.0. We navigated regulatory changes that came into the fore in the past year for digital and affiliate marketers around the globe. And we launched our virtual summit series helping thousands of affiliate program managers and publishers to connect, find out what's happening and trending, and learn from industry veterans how to increase performance and bring people together around the world to share their insights and strategies, creating meaningful connections. We trained over a hundred new affiliate program managers through our 12-week live AMP coaching course, which covers everything from e-commerce to iGaming, SaaS and Martech, and so much more. And we really helped you guys get under the skin of building a successful affiliate program together. We grew our agency team and expanded into two new continents. We served more industries. We focused on what we did best. This business has always been born out of my passion to help others to learn, to know and navigate what is new in digital and affiliate marketing, and to gain access to the right kind of support and information that's needed to continue to grow successful affiliate programs. It was born out of a desire to pass on the knowledge that has been amassed that isn't currently written down anywhere, and to foster a safe space where we can all come together and build better working relationships to help support performance marketing and to help brands grow. It was a busy year. I learned some things about running an agency and a business the hard way. I made a few mistakes. I realized that being an entrepreneur is a lot harder than it looks. And I made some tough decisions that needed to be made daily to ensure that we were doing the right things and serving the right people. I'm not gonna lie, it wasn't easy. But I realized that people are at the heart of everything we do and deliver. And we stopped doing a lot of things and focused only on what works for us and for our community and our clients too. When we did this, we did a lot better. Sometimes doing too much can be detrimental to your success. So think about how you can strip things back in 2023. And let's get more focused on delivery and results. You might be surprised at what your partners can serve when encouraged to do this too. Ultimately, 2022 was a year for us to get ourselves clear and centered and get committed to our own goals. We stopped looking at what everyone else was doing and got a lot laser focused on how we can help people do affiliate marketing better. We focused on doing this the way we know how. And that's when the good things really finally happened. So I thought it's fitting to share some of these things that I've learned now with you as we look to start the new year with renewed energy and go at it all again. And I want to invite each of you to get in touch with me on LinkedIn and or to comment on this post in our social media and tell me what you're looking forward to in this new year too. Now, in no particular order, here's a list of things that I learned about affiliate marketing from my reflections on 2022. I learned that the world of affiliate marketing, or that the word affiliate marketing, is actually outdated and performance marketing is no longer a channel. Our industry is getting so much bigger and broader, and the word affiliate just doesn't do it justice anymore. As affiliate managers and practitioners of performance marketing, we need to be keeping up to date with every aspect of acquisition across multiple channels, and we need to employ a learning-led culture in our affiliate teams to keep skills moving forward. True partnerships are channel agnostic, and they will come in many shapes and sizes. So being a good affiliate relationship manager means being open to new ways to partner up, add value, and that means taking time to understand your partners and what they can deliver and how best you can support them to do that. I learned that brand affinity drives affiliate loyalty, and I cannot stress this enough. Without affinity, you're simply wasting time doing cold calling with little to no hope of engagement. People by people. And that's the key to a successful affiliate program. Your affiliate managers are an extension of your brand. Whether you're working in a network, an agency, or brand side, your company should be offering these performance marketers as foot soldiers to your brand success. Making sure that they're supported and engaging partnerships from the first touch point in the right way can truly make or break your program success. How you are building brand affinity in your program right now is something that you should be thinking about for 2023. Think about how you will invest in this for the year ahead. Take a moment and think on that for a while as you jot down some of your ideas after this podcast episode finishes. If you need some help with building affinity for your program, brand, take a look at some of our webinars. I've covered this in detail towards the back end of 2022, and I firmly believe that this is going to be a trend that you need to be looking at in 2023. Your mental health is just as important as your physical health. We work all kinds of crazy hours in digital and affiliate marketing, but work should not take over your life or define who you are. Affiliate marketing is a highly stressful environment to work in, but it's also incredibly rewarding. I often see that affiliate managers are working overtime to get things done, sometimes even burning themselves out and not being able to deliver the right kind of service for the partners simply because of overwhelm. Time management plays a very important part in being a good affiliate manager. So make sure that you have time to exercise, to learn, and to keep yourself balanced. Learn to master time if you want to be successful in your career and build successful affiliate management relationships too. If it's not the right fit, don't continue to wear it. This is something that stuck true for me throughout 2022. Despite being a small independent business, we are heavily reliant on new customers and new income. If something isn't 100% the right fit for us, we now say no. And the same can be said for your affiliate relationships. The days of doing a deal for the sake of doing a deal are really over. We really do need to focus on quality and value in our relationships if we want our programs to succeed. We always want to be able to deliver positive outcomes on strategies we create for our clients, our customers, and our partners. But we will never sell something that is for the sake of selling. We will always provide nothing but honest, no nonsense, practical advice. And sometimes I had to learn this the hard way, where having a desire to help everybody can sometimes be detrimental to the beneficial growth that you can receive by helping the few. The next thing that I learned is that I'm going to keep our humanistic approach to business because that's what I like and that's what I really want to do. I was always resistant to working one-to-one with people as the cost to do so is typically quite high versus in a group environment. But I absolutely thrive on human contact and I love getting out there and talking to partners, talking to other affiliate managers, and getting into the thick of doing the work that delivers the outcomes. It's how I've managed to keep my learning and how I want to know all of our customers personally, despite how big we might be growing. Therefore, I will always be a public and personal touch point in the affiliate marketing industry. I want to assure you that my LinkedIn community is evidence to that. So I say it here and now. If you message me on LinkedIn, if you want to find out more about affiliate marketing, if you want to ask about career advice in terms of how to get into this industry and how to grow your career, reach out to me on LinkedIn because you better believe that it's going to be me that's answering you back. We'll be making improvements to our AMP affiliate manager coaching program, which kicks off again on the 23rd of February. And it's this program that enables me to work with more people one-to-one and across a group setting. Everyone is welcome to come and learn and share and grow with us as we continue to develop the skill sets that are required to run successful affiliate programs. I learned our people are what makes this business great and why our clients keep coming back to us. Hiring the right people with the right skill set is key to making sure that you deliver to your objectives. If you can't find the right people or skills, hire an agency or a specialist contractor who has the expertise you need to deliver exactly what you need at the time when you need it. Take time to find the right people to partner with, the right people that will buy into your business at the same level that your staff do. Hire people that know and can demonstrate what their skill sets are. People are what makes a business grow. And I am so blessed to have learned this early on and found a team of superstars to join us here at Affiliate Insider, who are as passionate about affiliate marketing as I am, if that's even possible. Our affiliate team are currently up for several awards, shortlisted here in the United Kingdom, and I couldn't be proud of starting the year cheering them on for a win. Consistency in terms of content is really the only way to gain momentum. I spent most of 2022 learning about this. I posted regularly, consistently on LinkedIn, and this brought in an immense amount of leads and connections and relationships, which were highly beneficial not only for my own business, but for that of our clients too. Grow your LinkedIn following this year. Get out there on social media. Content is going to continue to be king. So get yourself consistent with it. Social selling for affiliate recruitment is hands down one of the best ways to do affiliate recruitment and business league generation. Come to some of our free webinars this year, and we'll be showing you how we can help you to do this too. Check out our events on Eventbrite because they're also free. And there's loads and loads of information that you can learn from some of the experts that we've invited to join us to continue the development and training that we started in 2022. Last but not least, we still have a lot to learn. New channels, new platforms, new ways of engaging customers, video being the one place that I want to focus on in the year to come. So you might be seeing me a little bit more frequently on certain social media channels. Along with brand-to-brand partnerships that bring real value to the table, these are some of the areas that I'll be looking more closely at in 2023. And we'd love to bring you all along on that journey with us. So definitely sign up to our weekly newsletter so you can keep in tune with what we're seeing, hearing, and learning and come along and join us too. I'm absolutely grateful for a business that has multiple sources of revenue, which we've created from just one niche. I've built a business that has a variety of services that support customers in all stages of their life cycle. Whether you're starting out and need someone to help you choose the right technology, or whether you're a global brand and you need to help find more traffic, we have a range of services in this niche that can help your business to grow. That's why we've refocused our service into three core areas: media and events, where you can come and learn what's happening and what's new in the industry from a range of experienced practitioners. We have a range of options that can help your business get seen and heard in our newsletters, in our podcasts, and on our content posts. Being consistent with your content and branding is the best way to stay front-end mind of an engaged audience. Our agency is set up to help you launch an affiliate program successfully. If you don't know where to start, our agency service can help you get from point A to Z with technology you should use or an in-house affiliate program or even navigating which platforms or networks are the best ones to choose. We handle everything from complex migrations to day-to-day affiliate management and relationship support. Training and coaching. If you have a team in-house already and want them to level up and discover new tactics that can help your business to grow, come and join our AMP training program, built specifically for affiliate managers at any level and to help them scale and grow their relationships faster. Lastly, I learned to understand how fortunate I am as a leader. I've learned that I cannot worry about what other people are thinking or doing or how this compares to what we deliver for our customers. The fact is, people will always follow what they like and resonate with. And because of that, and because of who I am and what I do, I want you to follow your instincts and do what makes sense to you, to your customers, and to your partners too, because the results will follow from there on. I stopped procrastinating about what I need to do in the future and I just got on with doing the things that needed to be done today. I attended loads of new conferences in 2022. I made a step outside of my comfort zone from where I was known and engaged with some amazing new people on the other side of the world as we went to many more events and will do in 2023. I'm glad I did this as I met some phenomenal women in this industry who are trailblazing through the Link Unite conference and really helped me learn how affiliate marketing should be done. I would encourage you to put yourself out there in 2023. Attend more events, reach out and network with more people you admire and agree with and can have more conversations with because you never know where it may lead. Make a new beginning in life, in work, in business, and in your partnerships too, and see where that may take you. I hope this podcast has made you think about how you map out your next year. I'm excited to see again in 2023 the events and conferences that we'll be attending both here and in the United Kingdom and Europe too. I want you to have a wonderful start to this new year and a fantastic year ahead in affiliate marketing. We are looking forward to taking you on this journey of continued learning and helping you to get the best out of your performance program in the year ahead. If you're not excited yet, I hope you will be soon. Come along and join us at our Amplify Summit in January, where we'll be talking about all the latest digital marketing trends. I'm looking forward to seeing you all as we go forward in 2023 with renewed vigour and an excitement for what's to come ahead. Tune in next week for our next episode of the Affiliate Marketing Podcast, and thanks as always for listening.
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. Your 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, staff, and matec 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.affiliated insider.com and click on events to register. That's a wrap for this week's Affiliate Marketing Podcast. If you're picking up what we're putting down in this series, why not make sure to subscribe? Give us five stars because we work for it and subscribe so you never miss another one of these incredibly insightful episodes. Also, make sure to check out our YouTube channel. And why not make sure that you never miss one of our free webinars ever again by subscribing to Boston? Tune in next week for more digital and affiliate marketing insights, friends, tips, and content to keep your affiliate and performance marketing fresh and your partners joining consistent sailors.