And trying to test what needed. And training. And mark mark. And you host. Affiliate program market. Four dot com four data. Industry market data. And you affiliate marketing guide. And Johnson.
SPEAKER_02Welcome to the affiliate marketing podcast with me, and Johnson. And today I'm super excited because I've got somebody very special on the podcast with me this week. Mike Kenny from Performance Marketing Just is the founder. And he's been in this industry for 10 plus years, I can say. So really, really experienced working in the hiring of affiliate marketing folk and really excited to talk through transitioning into a career in affiliate management and what that takes. So, Mike, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast with me today. Thanks so much for joining me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's definitely a joy. Thanks for inviting me.
SPEAKER_02So let's get started a little bit by telling us about yourself and your company and how you landed up in affiliate marketing, because I know everybody's got a crazy story about how they entered this industry. So tell us yours.
SPEAKER_00Sure. I'll try to keep it as brief as possible. I started in online in 1997. I was working for a recruitment advertising agency, uh basically designing ads for the newspaper. And at that time, uh the agency, it was the world's largest recruitment advertising agency. They had purchased a product uh called the Monster Board, which uh turned out to be monster.com.
SPEAKER_02I remember that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was just a minor product, you know, just you know, something to help out, you know. Uh so basically over time the product swallowed up the parent company. And that was kind of like my first taste of you know what online might be or the internet, and and uh, you know, I was just like, I don't know what this internet thing is, but I think it's gonna be pretty good. So I got into uh online full-time, basically running online ad programs for niche-oriented uh financial sites, and I did that for about 10 years um until it got kind of the the point where I was just bored. You're basically just selling niche-oriented audiences, and I crossed paths with affiliate marketing, joined an affiliate network as a business development person, person bringing in the offers, and I did that for about three, three and a half years uh before I started my own agency, uh basically doing the same thing. But then having been a recruitment consultant in the past, one of the services that I started to offer was headhunting uh for the affiliate or the performance marketing space. And performance marketing jobs launched uh just over 10 years ago.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Okay, so obviously you've come from the industry, you know what it takes to do these jobs, and that's what I think makes you a little bit special because you you know what to recruit for and you know what skill set to look for. So we know that affiliate marketing is quite a complex area and there's lots of different areas to work in. And I think that's the biggest thing that I often get asked by clients and you know, colleagues, etc., is you know, what do I need to, what do affiliate managers need to be able to do in order to do this job? Because the other thing that we have is a lot of jargon. Some companies call them performance marketers, some companies call them affiliate managers, some companies just call them account managers. So I think can you can you kind of like tell people that might be listening to this podcast that are looking to get into the industry? What is an affiliate manager and what is their job spec right now in the complex kind of ecosystem that we're working in as part of performance? What's it what does it take to actually become an affiliate manager?
SPEAKER_00Well, on the job description side, I kind of look at things as uh well having worked for an affiliate network, we always looked at advertisers and traffic as church and state. So if you worked on the traffic side, you typically were not involved with the advertiser relationship that much. Uh, you basically represented the publishers and you did publisher development, and you basically got uh independent media buyers or affiliates or online publishers or emailers, basically a traffic source to promote uh a client of yours on a performance basis. And that could be cost per click, cost per lead, a cost per acquisition or a Rev share or cost per install pay-per-call. Uh, but it's it's normally performance basis versus a CPM basis.
SPEAKER_02So you need to have like a really good understanding of media buying, or or you need to want to understand how to do media buying.
SPEAKER_00Not necessarily, not to start. I don't I don't believe so. Uh, you know, like you know, when I when I was looking at um kind of the commonalities between you know affiliate managers and salespeople and people who are involved with digital marketing agencies, the commonality between all of them is that they're they're smart people, they're you know, they're people, you know, the people uh they're comfortable with people, you know, uh people relationships and so on. And I think probably the most important quality if you want to be an affiliate manager is you you have to love to learn. You have to be a sponge. And one of the things that it's kind of funny because having been in online prior to um starting in the affiliate marketing industry, you know, to a certain extent, you have a bit of a chip on your shoulder, you're like, oh, I've been you know doing online for a while. And within days, you're like, I don't know. And you just have to remind yourself, yeah, you have to be excited to go to work, and you have to remind yourself of, I know online, but I don't know enough about affiliate marketing. So I really need to pay attention. I need to be humble, I need to ask people or tell them, I don't know. Like if somebody asks me a question, I'm like, I don't know. Like, let me I'll go find the answer for you, but I don't want to just tell you something that might not be true. Let me go get the the right answer from somebody more senior. And then over time, people respect the fact that you're asking for help.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I love that because you you touched on that point so well. I think to be a good affiliate manager, it's less of the hard skills, more of the soft skills. It's more of the desire to want to learn, the challenge of changing the way that you think about doing campaigns, about how you relationship manage people. And and I wanted to bring you back to your first point. There is a definitive difference between working publisher side within affiliate marketing and working brand side or network side or agency side in affiliate marketing. So I think that's the first thing that I want to say to people listening is if you want to get into affiliate management or affiliate uh marketing or performance marketing, think about where does your software skill set, your person, your personality fit. Is it on the social side where you're kind of bringing in partners, networking at events, happy to go and like, you know, be in a room full of people all by yourself and go make some friends? Because that's a certain kind of software skill set that you need. Or are you more on the creative analytical side of affiliate marketing where you would probably suit working more on the brand, network, or agency side, working with the client relationship versus working with the publisher relationship? So I think those are the two first clear distinctions that you need to think about as a person when you're coming into this industry. And then the second thing is kind of like thinking about the hard skills that you need to have because there's also a very clear definitive path between when you're working client side or agency side or network side, you have to be able to communicate down to your partners and be on the same level as them in terms of what they need for their businesses. But you also need to be able to step into that corporate world and negotiate back up to the C level people that are managing your budgets, your campaigns, your brands, and sideways too. So I think a very key component for me when we're looking for people to join our company or join our team is what kind of the soft skills that you have. And that's what makes this industry so exciting to work in, actually, because you do get a crazy amount of different people with multitudes of different types of experience coming in to actually then work in the performance side. And they bring all of that skill set with them. So we do have a lot of jargon in our space, and we do have a lot of different words for the same thing: publisher, affiliate, partner, you know, and and navigating that is probably the first step to really kind of have a look at where do you fit, you know, where do you want to be, what excites you about getting into affiliate and performance marketing? One thing I did want to say is that there's also a bit of a difference between the UK and the US and the different job titles that you would find depending on where you are in the world and listening to this podcast. So in the US, what are the sort of typical entry-level jobs that you would get if you were looking to get into performance marketing? Where would you start?
SPEAKER_00Well, what I see, um, it's a very interesting point because the markets are wildly different. The comma plans are wildly different. There's some global consistencies, like some of the companies out there obviously have hundreds of employees, and they're in the UK, they're in the US, they're in Canada, and so on. But there's a lot of smaller players that are really strong, and the titles can vary. And what I noticed was that having worked for an affiliate network, there's typically a career path, and you can typically notice the differences by titles. So when you're first starting out, you know, they might give you a junior, like a clearly a junior title, and that could be junior affiliate manager. And then, you know, six months to 12 months down the line, they'll drop the junior and they'll give you a new, you know, business card. It says affiliate manager. And then it goes senior affiliate manager, director of affiliate management, general manager of the network. So over time, the titles will change, but it depends on you know which company you're in, because some companies get fairly silly with titles. And if you're there 10 years, you have 15 titles. And I just think that's completely unnecessary. And you know, um, it does pay to stay with one company for a long period of time. And I actually um was with somebody at the show at Lead Generation World last couple of days in San Diego. And one of the one of the individuals who's actually getting an AFI award at affiliate ball coming up at affiliate summit west, I was looking at their profile and they started as an executive assistant two years ago. Oh no, sorry, 10 years ago, and now they are the general manager of the entire affiliate network. And it, you know, there's there's other folks out there that started as a strategist and now they're the CEO of the company. So, you know, that the second person's been there for 15 years, but there definitely is the opportunity to advance yourself title-wise, responsibility-wise, and compensation-wise, if you stay in the industry, and it definitely takes a certain type of individual to certain kind of be stubborn and kind of be driven. You, you know, you have to be self-motivated. And you know, when I go to trade shows, uh, I'm I'm more of an introvert, so I wear loud t-shirts to kind of get my message across. One of the first uh t-shirts that I ever made was every day is a money day. And that was one of the things that I noticed when I joined the industry was it was kind of like being a stockbroker, is that if you picked up the right offer, like the right advertiser, or if you picked up the right affiliate, the right traffic partner, your profit volume per day could explode, which means that your commission could explode. So, you know, if you go in with the mentality of, you know, every day I have to try to find a solution for, you know, either like you know, the the traffic that you're bringing in or the offers that you're bringing in, um, there's a good opportunity to make a great living. Uh, but you have to have that hunger to seek out solutions.
SPEAKER_02So so we've got we've got a couple of clear points here. We've got you need to be hungry for meeting targets because this is a very sales-driven um industry. You've got to have the soft skills to actually network and go build relationships. And you've got to want to kind of get in and get on with it, because it is a kind of role that you have to learn on the job and you have to keep learning on the job. There's no somebody's gonna train you for three weeks and then you're gonna be an affiliate manager and it's gonna stay the same for the rest of your life because everything we do in digital is changing all the time. So I always like to say that affiliate management is a vocation. It's not it's not just a job because you constantly have to keep learning your job as you're going forward. But you definitely need to have you need to be bought from strong stuff. And and that could be separate, or it could be on the relationship side, but it could also be on the analytical and kind of like corporate side as well. So understanding that there's those two different streams, and like you said, you know, you could start as an executive assistant and 10 years later be the CMO of a of a company. So, I mean the career projection for that that kind of like level jump in such a short space of time. And I think that's one thing that we've actually been quite spoiled with in uh in digital marketing is the fact that because it's such a young industry, you know, it's not like l law that's been around for hundreds of years and you have to do your you pay your dues before you can you can step up. If you're bright and you're clever and you can take action and make things happen and you and you're not afraid of trying new things, you can actually advance your career very quickly, like you just said.
SPEAKER_00Focusing on your personal performance every day, you're not going anywhere.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And being creative, like making t-shirts that say every day is a money day to get to an event, is the kind of stuff that we have to do. We have to be creative marketers in order to kind of get noticed in this space as well. Now, I want to just change the tide of the conversation a little bit. So, yes, it's exciting to work in affiliate marketing, and yes, you can take your transferable skills and get into affiliate marketing. But we are seeing a lot of layoffs at the moment. I mean, this year we're starting the year, you know, facing a potential recession. There's a war, we've just come out of a pandemic, businesses are tightening their budgets, and layoffs are happening. You know, we're seeing some of the big uh companies like Apple and you know, Amazon and all of those companies following the same suit. What does it mean for digital marketing candidates? Like is this an opportunistic market where you can make a quick switch because skill sets are you know desirable at this stage? Are you seeing a demand increase in performance marketing specialists and managers being looked for in the job market? What's your your kind of career advice right now, considering the marketplace that we're in?
SPEAKER_00Well, uh there actually is a huge demand right now. And the reason why there's a demand, like there's a skill shortage for experienced, you know, performance marketing focused uh professionals. And the reason for that, uh to a grand extent, is when COVID hit uh in you know March of 2020, basically everybody was forced to buy online and you know, you know, to run their lives basically online. So the um, you know, um the online content consumption went up, e-commerce exploded, like people who are comfortable with buying online just bought more. Um, but the biggest difference was people who were not buying online were forced to learn how to shop for their groceries, you know, how to uh buy stuff for their house. So you saw a lot of people investing heavily in home and health. And you know, that uh like I saw a stat that basically said that e-commerce grew uh five years in six months. Phenomenal. So the amount of uh opportunity, revenue opportunities for companies that were in the online space was phenomenal. Like the first six months after COVID hit, all my clients were coming to me for Facebook Media Buyers, and that was like smaller niche-oriented companies who could you know get in front of the consumer were able to cash in, you know, like they were growing like you know, like three times the size, right? Like my business tripled basically, you know, overnight. And after that, you know, people started getting to affiliate managers. So now we're kind of at the point where some people in the digital space are being laid off, but their skill sets are very transferable. The only thing that has changed really, well, the the biggest change is is the model, and that is going from a CPM basis to a performance basis. And when you change the pricing model, you change the partners, you change, you change the the uh tracking technology. And but in a nutshell, you know, there are a lot of similarities. You're you're you're advertising to consumers, you're trying to get a reaction, but the reaction nowadays is a leader of sales. From there, you're monitoring the results and then you're optimizing the campaign. So not a lot of things have changed on a grand scale, but how it's executed has changed. So you have to learn the land, like you have to figure out well, how does affiliate marketing work? What partners are involved, which which part of the ecosystem am I most comfortable with? Is it being on the advertiser side or the merchant side, the brand side, or on the service side, so an affiliate network, um, an OPM, like an outsourced uh program management company, um, performance marketing agency. And there are more opportunities on the service side than there is on the brand side, but there are a ton of transferable skills. You understand the online space, you just need to learn the execution side, you know, in regards to, well, how do the ads go out? What's the performance model? What's the tracking, and how do you optimize?
SPEAKER_02So let's say if there's some people that are listening to this podcast that have been laid off, let's let's go into how do they manage these conversations when they're going into interviews? How do they actually transition the skill set and talk about that in an interview with a with a an employer, a potential employer, to actually upsell how they can transfer those skills? What would your advice to those guys be?
SPEAKER_00Well, what one of the things that I think that that has been incredibly uh effective, um, and it this this is a demand that comes from employers. You know, like imagine if you had to review 100 resumes. As much as you're looking for a solution to your problem, which is obviously filling a key role, when you're reviewing those 100 resumes, what you're really trying to do is eliminate people. And people who do not present themselves as that solution quickly, they their resume gets thrown into the recycling bin.
SPEAKER_02And I can vouch for that because we are hiring at the moment, and like it takes me literally three seconds to go yes, yes, no, no. Because that's all the time that I have. And then I want to spend the time with the people that make the cut the first cut, right? So TV presentation and core skill set right at the top is kind of a good thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like for me, I I like to refer to that opening statement. Um, it it's the traditional objective section, uh, but the objective section kind of misses the mark because the objective section historically has talked about uh, well, this is what I'm looking for. And if you're the hiring manager, you're in a different mindset. You're you're like, you're trying to solve a problem. And people who look at the job description and you know, the ideal parameters skill-wise and experience-wise, and they quickly come up with an elevator pitch, or what I like to refer to as a value snapshot. If they come up with two to three sentences that quickly presents the relevant skills to the position that they're applying to, they'll get more interviews and job offers than somebody who's talking about what they're looking for.
SPEAKER_02Very true. So ask not what you're gonna get, but ask what you're actually going to give.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, okay. So ask what you're gonna give or say what you're gonna give, and think about the transferable skills that you have and put yourself forward for some of these jobs, even if the job title has never been in your resume before.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. If you're on the online ad space, you know how to advertise online. But the objective has changed from branding awareness and reach to results. So the tracking platforms have changed.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And the places that you go to have changed as well. I mean, you know, you could you could be a really good social media manager and you could transition very easily into an affiliate program right now who's working with brand ambassadors and influences in social to sell SaaS products, for example. So that's a very easy transition from being more social media focused as a as a practitioner in in digital to actually transition into the affiliate space. And some programs would look at that depending on the on the kind of place that you're applying, if you're going brand side and they would go, that is a skill set that we can use in our affiliate team. So don't look at the job titles of the role, look at the functionality and the requirements of what that role is asking you to do and then go and apply for it and and have those conversations. So we've spoken a little bit about you know what what candidates need to do in order to go and get jobs. But what I want to talk about next is kind of what are the challenges that brands face when they're looking for new staff or like client side if they want to hire people internally.
SPEAKER_00What are some of the common like pitfalls and problems that you've seen businesses have when they try to recruit direct well the biggest challenge is that there's a skill shortage and I don't think a lot of employers have I guess like caught on to that like when I first started in in in the industry filling roles was fairly easy. Like basically you told your employees hey we want to bring on more salespeople or more affiliate managers and they would just recommend their friends. And then you just fill the role but now the stakes have gotten so high that at least in my in my profession because obviously I provide a hedgehunting service that my clients don't come to me for junior candidates. They come to me for intermediate or experienced candidates people who have a Rolodex and that pool of people is smaller. So what what employers need to do what they kind of miss out is like they'll send me a job description I'll read it and my first question is okay if I'm the candidate why would I quit my job and come work for you and employers don't answer that question. And they really need to focus on the fact that experienced candidates have a ton of choices and they really need to up their game when it comes to convincing that type of candidate to leave their current colleagues and their circle of friends and take a chance and come work for somebody else.
SPEAKER_02And one thing I can say as well is that in this industry you pay you know what what you pay for is what you get. So you know like and and I can't speak to other industries but we you know we don't as a rule hire junior account executives because we as a business are offering a white glove service. And for for me, you know maybe other agencies will hire in more junior account managers because they're happy to train and they want to have longevity and tenure with their people. So I think it's it's very important as well that when they sit down with a headhunter such as yourselves that they're actually explaining exactly what they're recruiting for and what the longevity is because that needs to come through in the package as well to make it attractive.
SPEAKER_00Yeah it has to be a good uh situation and in a lot of cases you know you touched on this earlier is that um it's a performance based industry so in a lot of cases salespeople or affiliate managers they have rolling commission checks because they've been there for quite a while so you're asking them to you know give that up for a month or two that roll and commission check and go to another provider. And you know that's not an easy uh decision to make like I was in sales for 20 years. Like you do not want to give up a rolling commission check unless the opportunity is phenomenal.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So thinking about how you make that opportunity attractive is also very important on the brand side. Do you think that candidates properly prepare themselves for performance based marketing interviews?
SPEAKER_00What what are some of the things that you see candidates getting wrong like in the first interview which then impacts how they go forward in that process um I I would say that they they just don't take the time to um read up on the person that they're meeting with and the company and what they specialize in. Like in my case like some headhunters and this is one of the things or one of the reasons why uh I'm passionate about headhunting is that when I was a candidate, I wasn't a huge fan of headhunters because you know you know to a certain extent they're just looking for a commission check. And you would get a lot of calls from headhunters and one of the things that I try to I I guess is is emphasize is my clients aren't looking for tire kickers. They want people who are gonna have an engaging interview. And I tell all of my candidates who my clients are like it's not a mystery opportunity. So I give them you know several days to investigate you know to do their own research on the company that they potentially would be interviewing with and they let me know if they're interested in having that conversation. And because that because they've done their research on the person that they potentially would be reporting to and on the company and their company reputation those interviews are so much stronger because there's there's you know basically two professionals talking shop and diving in each into each other's backgrounds and talking about possible solutions versus the typical boring first interview where you're trying to get to know each other. Like they're diving into the details versus you know doing a personality test.
SPEAKER_02Yeah and I think that's that's also key because diving into those details does represent your understanding and your acumen of of the role that you're being asked to do. And for me it for me it's twofold. I mean I'm gonna talk like an employer now for me I want to see that the person is engaged and I want to see that the person loves what we're already doing and wants to add value to that. Because if you can't meet those two things you're not going to be the right candidate for us. We're very much into the chemistry of people and the chemistry of the people that we already have needs to match with the people that we're bringing in. So it is very important that if you do want to get into this industry that you do your research on the companies that you're working with and you know the partners that you're going to be expected to go out or the partnerships that you're gonna be expected to go out and make um and ask a lot of questions. You know that's that's the one thing I find sometimes strange in interviews and especially when I'm interviewing younger people and I don't know if it's the same in yours on on your side but they never ask a lot of questions and I'm thinking well this is the future you know like you're making a date to commit yourself and tie your you know future career to my business. So why are you not asking me more questions? Or have I just told you everything that you think you need to know. So I I always think that's a surefire sign that you know the person is bright they're making intelligent decisions about being part of this company and that they actually want to get into this industry as well because it is not for the faint of heart. It is a difficult role to have in I I I still believe being an affiliate manager is probably one of the most complex roles that you can have as a digital practitioner. The skill set is so varied.
SPEAKER_00Yeah you wear you wear a ton of hats and you know when it comes to interviews um you made a great point in regards to like I think great candidates ask great questions.
SPEAKER_02And I think that's a perfect place to leave this podcast today. If you want to be a great candidate ask great questions and go and do the due diligence that you need to do in order to get into this industry because there is no certification. You don't have to have a degree in XYZ to be an affiliate marketer. You know a a a good solid background in terms of you know degree or you know digital marketing diploma or certificate from a university or a college is fine. It'll give you the grounding but ultimately everything that you learnt in that degree is going to be completely different in real life and depends on the type of industry that you're working in. So you know I think it's it's a it's one of those few industries that you can still get into if you're very bright and you don't have an education because you're learning everything on the job.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned courses a little bit if you can learn from people who are actually doing the job yeah that's the best solution is you have to seek out well who are the leaders in the space follow them on social media attend seminars take you know free courses take paid courses if you can like go to a show and just have conversations with people. Get them to explain well what do you guys specialize in? And they'll dive into it they'll ask you questions and just tell them like yeah you know I'm new to the industry what would you recommend? Like you know I at the show that I was just at at lead generation world I was I was stating there that I the strongest words that I've heard in the industry is I don't know. Let me go find out. Yeah. Because if you try to make up an answer it's gonna come back and bite you. So you're better off and saying you know that's a great question I'm I'm gonna get you an answer. I'm gonna give at you about that. And then you know you're not gonna have the answers for everything. But the thing is if you're talking to leaders in the space and you're following them and finding out what they're chatting about, what their objectives are their solutions over time you'll you'll turn in from somebody who's lurking on the information to somebody who's asking questions and participating.
SPEAKER_02And I think that's a beautiful word participation. If you're an affiliate manager you are participating in the growth of your own company or your employer that is employing you whether it's a network agency, whatever, and you're also participating in the growth of supporting your partners to grow their businesses too. And I I love that you've said that.
SPEAKER_00Well it was it was a pleasure being on your podcast.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for having the time to spend with us and to talk a little bit more about what it takes to make a career in affiliate marketing. It's been great to meet with you and to just flesh out a little bit how people can actually transfer their skills because we are in a bit of a crazy year. And um I I firmly believe that you know building a career in performance marketing is something that's going to stand you the test of time because it's the one channel that keeps growing year on year without fail.
SPEAKER_00Yeah absolutely I I think we're in a great spot there's a huge emphasis on better results return on investment and that's pushing everybody to performance marketing. So anybody who wants to talk about careers feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_01And we'll put that into the uh blog transcribe as well so thanks so much for being with us today Mike thank you so much want to get your affiliate program noticed need new client needs for your agency network matech and SaaS service we can help you if your business is seen and heard our Google News Content Hub and this podcast speaks to thousands of digital affiliate marketers each week across a range of industries around the globe. We help brands and partners connect and we help suppliers get new business leads all via our expert curated content and podcast advertising. Download our media pack by visiting our site and click advertise to find out more. We'll help you make the right connections all year round that's a wrap for this week's affiliate marketing podcast. If you're loving what we're putting down why not head over to Apple IT and give us a five star review. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast and our YouTube channel so you never miss another insightful episode or one of our free webinars ever again. Tune in next week for more digital affiliate marketing insights, trends, tips and content to keep your affiliate and performance marketing fresh and your partners driving consistent sales