This podcast is brought to you by AMP. The Affiliate Manager Performance Program is designed for ambitious affiliate program managers working with brands, agencies, or affiliate networks that are looking to grow and scale their affiliate programs and partner performances. We've already helped hundreds of affiliate program managers from a range of industries get the best out of their affiliate partnerships and build consistent sales within their affiliate programs. With just one hour per week over a 12-week period, this program is unlike any other. You learn proven tactics, tested strategies, and access decades of experience with industry veterans who have launched, scaled, and grown multi-million dollar affiliate programs around the world. Book your seat on our next cohort by visiting our website, AftiverseMedia.com, and hit the training menu. From there, you can register your interest for our next cohort launch or simply contact our sales team to find out more. You're listening to the Affiliate Marketing Podcast brought to you by AlphiverseMedia.com. The chapter and verse of everything you need to know about running a successful affiliate program for your business. This is a podcast for digital and affiliate marketers, publishers, networks, agencies, and matec providers who operate, support, or manage affiliate marketing programs around the globe. If you want to launch, scale, and grow a successful affiliate marketing program, you're in the right place. In this podcast, you'll learn how affiliate and partner marketing is constantly changing. And tune in to industry experts who are getting behind our mic to share tactical insights and practical knowledge to help your affiliate program grow. Here you'll discover what's new and trending in affiliate and performance marketing, how to run your affiliate program successfully and gain industry insights from experts and practitioners from around the globe. The truth is, you simply won't find this information anywhere else. Now here's your award-winning affiliate and performance marketing host, an industry veteran, your affiliate marketing guide and the founder of Affiver, Leanne Johnston.
SPEAKER_06Welcome to this week's affiliate marketing podcast. It's the end of yet another jam-packed, exciting season where I explored affiliate marketing with a smallest board of industry veterans from all walks of our affiliate performance marketing community. This week, as we round up the season, our best yet, I wanted to start with a few housekeeping points for those of you who tune in regularly. First up, I want to remind you about our next and final cohort of the year of AMP, our affiliate marketing performance program. This will be the final time that I'm running this course this year, and I'm telling you, if you want to spend 12 weeks with me learning exactly how to grow your affiliate program like a pro, you'll want to book your seat now to join it. This is a mastermind like no other. Each week we hop in on a live teach to learn various aspects of affiliate program management from the ground up. If you're doing it yourself and you want someone to coach you through the hard times, this is for you. Check it out for yourself on our website on affaversemedia.com. Next, I want to remind you all of the awesome in-person training workshop that we are curating in partnership with Hello Partner at PR Live Europe called AM Leaders. Now, if you've been hiding under a rock, you wouldn't have seen that why AM Leaders is the event not to be missed. So check it out on our social media, listen into what our speakers themselves are saying about why they're coming to share their insights and knowledge at this particular event and get your ticket booked today. Nobody has said it better than my friend Sarah Bundy, who has been working in affiliate marketing for more than two decades and will be coming to AM Leaders to share this experience with you, as well as the insights about what she thinks the future of affiliate marketing is going to look like.
SPEAKER_03Now, I've spent 20 years in this industry and I've learned so much over the years. I've learned what to do, what not to do, things to watch out for, things that partners can be at risk for, things that the affiliate manager can be at risk for, things that the brand can be at risk for, opportunities that maybe other people might overlook. We've seen and tested some really cool innovative stuff over the years. And I want to share that information. I want to share, you know, here's things that we've tried that have worked really well, you know, giving people an opportunity to have these aha moments, you know, and take that back with them and action that and see the growth from some of the gold nuggets and tidbits from, you know, two decades of experience that I'm able to share on stage with this group, I think will be very valuable for them, especially as they continue to grow in their own profession and their own expertise.
SPEAKER_06So if you're in London in October and you're already booked to come to PI Live, get your AM Leaders ticket and get a 50-pound discount to attend this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn with industry legends and to take the opportunity and to invest in your own personal development by being in the same room as these guys for just a day. Book your tickets by visiting AM Leaders on the PI Live Europe website. This is a use news you lose warning as the tickets are going to be limited to this event. Now let's get on with this season's roundup and catch you up with anything you may have missed. I'm starting off this week with the highlights of some of my most favorite episodes, and that means I've got to start with Todd Crawford, the co-founder of Impact.com. I think affiliate marketing has moved beyond the basics of the four P's of marketing. You have to be thinking innovatively and you have to be engaging with your partners, whoever they are, whatever kinds of publishers they are, because they are really at the forefront of innovation. That is their job. They do it every single day. And I think the programs that I see really succeed versus the programs that just trundle along with a little bit of, you know, net profit every month, are the ones that do lean in and do simple things like that and actually get really close to their referrals and say, how can I actually like tap into that additional market opportunity? And that's really a really important message that I want people to tune into today because it isn't just about onboarding and recruitment. It's also about what do you do with those partners when you have them. And that's the bit that I think people leave and they just they kind of just let partners trickle along on their own. And that's where you're missing out on growth opportunities and value opportunities as well.
SPEAKER_01To your point, I mentioned earlier about CMOs with performance experience, performance marketing experience or in more demand. The difference between being a performance marketer and a media buyer is if you're buying Google or Facebook, it's basically a slot machine. You know, you're putting in a dollar or a pound or a euro or whatever, and you're getting trying to get back more than that, right? Two, three, four of those. And there's no relationship, there's no conversation or meaningful. I mean, you can call your Google rep, but keywords don't have any feelings. If you stop bidding on that keyword, it's not upset. But when you're working with a partner and you tell them you have to stop working with them, or you're not gonna buy premium promotions, or you're not gonna, you're gonna have to lower the commission because of whatever the data shows, people are not happy about that. And there's a lot of give and take. But the most important part is that people are having conversations to do business. And that's where my new advice that I've been kind of on my uh soapbox about is that brands are very focused on how they measure the success of a partner, right? I have return on ad spend, I have conversion rate, or just sole you know, revenue volume, things like that, or new file, whatever it is I'm measuring. But where I think we miss the mark is we don't ask publishers, how do you measure me? How are you benchmarking me? And I'll give you a good example. If you work with CNN underscore, they're measuring you based on effective CPC or revenue per page visit or page view or CPM measuring. And if you don't understand that, and you don't ask them, how do I benchmark against my competitors? You know, I think I'm paying you a fair commission, but I might be under benchmarking. And so I need to understand that because you're not gonna lean in as hard when your demand for your content is so high that I've got to be on top of my game and I've got to understand how you're measuring me, not so much how I'm measuring you, in order to get the best placements to get you to lean in and work with Mumore. And that comes out in conversations. Likewise, maybe there's something I'm not in love with about this publisher. And I need to talk to them and say, how have you solved this with other brands? How have you helped other brands champion or make me like what you're doing even more, right? As opposed to being kind of blasé about it.
SPEAKER_06I think most people that land up in this industry, they become lifers. Like there's very few people that I've met that came into the affiliate space and bounced out and never came back again. Like they may have changed vertical, they may have changed working network side or agency side or brand side. But I think once you get into this industry, you kind of love it, and very few people actually hate it. I've never met anybody that hated it because it's it's such a diverse job. Like nobody can get bored working in affiliate marketing because it is constantly changing all the time. You have to learn new technical things, new development things. It takes a broad mix of SEO, media buying, relationship management, biz dev sales, as you said, and it combines it all into one role. And to me, that is super cool, but also it means that it's a job that requires constant on-the-job development and learning. And one of the things that I would like to see this industry do is invest more in that. And I know you guys have created a fantastic training academy to actually help affiliate managers or or brands just understand the channel a little bit better, which is awesome. Do you think that companies will start to invest more in skills development in this job genre? Because typically what I've seen is people come in from a kind of customer service or client-facing side, or they come in from a sales side and they learn all the other skills as they go through on the job. If you're very lucky, you've come into this role from a media buying side, so you already understand traffic and the kind of commercialized part of the of running a program. But do you think that we'll see more education and development being kind of invested into this channel as well?
SPEAKER_01Well, obviously, we we feel very strongly about it. As you said, we've started our Partnership Experience Academy, PXA. If you just Google impact.com and PXA, you'll get to that the link for that. And it's free to anyone. They don't have to be a customer of ours. They can be our competitor. There's tons and tons, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of hours of training constantly developed. We have a huge team reaching out to the industry to create this content. It's not just us creating it. It's to give people more information, more education. And, you know, when you complete these courses and get certified, they can be added to your LinkedIn as a certification. So, you know, it's it's it's all about build, like I said, growing the pie, building the industry, creating more mind share. I mean, we want to be the nucleus of the industry. I mean, we can't be the industry, but we want to be we think we we can be a material player, a role in the ecosystem. And so, you know, we're trying to provide this education. And, you know, you know, look at HubSpot, that's where we got the idea. They they've they did it, it's super valuable. And uh, you know, you need to constantly, as you said, you need to constantly be learning. You probably have more knowledge as someone in this space than anybody that's done paid search for 10 years or media buying for 10 years. It's it there's way more to it, more nuances, better data, et cetera. It's not so flat. And uh, like I said, it's not that coin-operated machine. And I'm not trying to dismiss anybody's role or contribution, but there's way more moving pieces and it's way more exciting and dynamic. So yeah, I love it, and we're way committed to PXA and helping the industry evolve and grow and learn.
SPEAKER_06Next up, we invited Sharon McFarlane, the founder of Digital Footprints, on the pod to talk about how to include influencers in your affiliate marketing strategy to scale. We talked about everything from how to engage them and how to support them, including when and how to use gifting to get content created. Tune in on this pod, which will help you to leverage influences in your own program too. I think a lot of people they'll always ask, how do I engage? Like, what's how how do I reach out to these people? What's the kind of the information that I need to put into that first email or that first message? Like, what are some of your tips in terms of engaging those partners and actually bringing them in?
SPEAKER_00I think it's always a good idea to have researched the content that they've posted and before that and use that as an open discussion. So you're not going to contact anybody anyway who's not, you know, previously pushed anything that's um out with your interest group. So if you're selling a beautiful beauty product, for example, and you've got a new product launch, you'd go on and see if there's anything of similar that they've pushed before and use that as a starting point. It's quite similar as to how you would start like an affiliate relationship, which is good news for listeners. It's not you know a cold email issue is an information you've shown that you've done a bit of research and understanding that it's a partnership between two people and it's not just although it's a paid-for service, I think it's um wrong to assume that the influencer automatically wants to work with you, and I think that's quite important. So to understand that it's a two-way street, so that you know you know you've had a really their content, it fits well with your brand and what you're looking to do, and then sort of start to give them an idea of what your your KPIs and your goals are, whether that's to push a new product, whether that's to get more engagement on your social channels, whether that's to generate more reads and open discussions that way.
SPEAKER_06So I think that's quite important actually. You kind of need to map all of that out before you even start outreaching, is you're gonna have to do the listening bit, and there's tools that can help you to do that. You're gonna have to then wiggle down into the data and make sure that the audience segments that you're kind of collating together in terms of volume make sense. And then from there, you need to figure out like what is it that you actually want this influencer to deliver? Is it top of brand final awareness? Is it pushing a new product and directing sales just on that one product? Is it kind of like evergreen? You want them to just you know be an eternal influencer or brand ambassador for your program, no matter what it is that you're discussing. So, and that will then tailor the outreach to the partner and actually get them on board. What are your thoughts? Because I often get asked, and we're getting a little bit off piste here, but I often get asked about you know gifting for influencers. Like, is it necessary to have free products available and and or will some influencers work without actually trying the product, or will they invest their own money to buy the product? Like, what's your experience in in that kind of free-way, you know, choice of how you approach it?
SPEAKER_00Typically, we would we call it rewarding loyalty effectively. So what we would say is like we would like you to review this product and and you know to see if the answer is maybe provide you with it. We that kind of tends to work to work well with influencers. Don't get me wrong, some will you know, buy it straight away if it's something that they're really, really interested in. But the good thing is is if you implement those seeding campaigns that I was talking about earlier, the chances are that you actually might find an influencer that's already purchased a similar product or service and maybe would be looking to to purchase something else anyway. And I think that's why it's super important when you're you're you know you're reaching out to them that you've you've chosen the right interest group because then they'll be more likely to do that.
SPEAKER_06Alright, so it really is on a case-by-case basis, this isn't a one-size-fits-all program here in terms of gifting or freebies or actually just you know, asking them to purchase the product or at a discounted rate.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And it's all depends on the size and the scale and the experience of influencers, really, you know, what your budget is within that campaign. But I think that's that's the beauty of influencer marketing, that it's not like a a kiffiker sort of approach. You can be as creative as you want to, and you can create the kind of partnerships that you want to as well. It's it's like the only limit is just imagination, effectively.
SPEAKER_06I love that. The only limit is just imagination. I think that's going to be our catch point for this thing. Okay, so you mentioned working with agencies, and I want to go back to that because a lot of affiliate programs they'll outsource you know PR to a PR agency, and that typically has always included influencers, but now we're starting to see that shift. So, what's the benefit of working with an agency in terms of kind of expanding this segment of your affiliate program and going with a specialist team to help you to develop that? Like obviously, I'm I would imagine the first thing is well, fast track because you'll be able to fast track the research and and and get the data a lot more easily. But what are some of the other benefits?
SPEAKER_00I think the thing with influencer marketing and sometimes social media marketing, actually, in general within affiliate businesses, is that it's usually left to maybe somebody within operations or if you don't have a big and it's often sort of implemented, but it's not been um at the forefront of what their job role is. So I think that maybe our mistake is to you know spend heaps of money within this campaign, but if you don't have the resource to do that, then you're kind of spending all your money and we don't know what it's going to do. So it's really sort of fast tracking these campaigns. I think what you would have as specialized in funds of agency would be that knowledge and creating these partnerships and agreements as well, which can be quite important, especially if there is anything that's to take to be taken into consideration when it comes to like refined a regulation, you already know how to deal with that, and that may not be something something within your marketing team might be. I think that when it's sort of an agency, the onus is on us effectively to provide you with the utilities that is your return on investment. And I think it's a myth because it's sort of known as a fluffy marketing technique rather as a performance-based thing, that you can't do that because you can. There's all sorts of social media lesson tools that will help us as an agency provide you as a client with, you know, of course. And it can be, you know, as soon as this post came out, that's just how many times your brand has been mentioned, as opposed to last year. And they say, you know, there's all sorts of qualitative and quantitative data that an agency can push that may not, you know, be within the skill set of the existing team that you guys have. If you know influencer marketing is something that you're just sort of delving into or dipping your toe in the water for.
SPEAKER_06We all know how powerful social media is, but few are really using it to leverage their own affiliate program growth. And in this episode, I brought in the wonderful Dean Sedden from Maverick to talk about how affiliate managers can leverage their personal social media to help attract new affiliates into their programs. Believe it or not, there's an art to this and a strategy is required. So listen in on what Dean had to share in this short clip. What are some of the simplest videos that affiliate managers can start out and maybe break the ice with to pop their cherry and get into the habit of creating content that's that drives their medium?
SPEAKER_07Let me just caveat that, but even the big brands are aware that to actually keep up with social media, they can't afford big budgets either. I was talking to the head of social media for Uber. So you think about they've got tons and tons of money for budgets, right? They are doing more phone content now than they are doing heavy big productions, particularly for social media. So they're doing a lot on Cap Cut on their phone. So a quick app, Cap Cut, it's heavily promoted on TikTok. It's the easiest way to shoot videos. In terms of filming videos, uh, I don't like filming videos. I'm pretty good in a live situation, but pre-record I'm horrific. So the way I do it is that uh it will always be better if you're talking to camera. You can do kind of faceless videos, but they don't work so well.
SPEAKER_06What about AI videos? Because that's something that I discovered this week. I mean, everybody's talking about AI. What are your thoughts on that? It's not authentic, right? It's it's fine for like a demo video if you've got a SaaS product or you want to uh you know teach something, but I think people still want to see people.
SPEAKER_07I think that's my take. You know, I use AI every day, but uh a lot of what we're seeing right now is the same wave that we saw with NFTs, right? With AI. It's like NFTs, you're gonna make loads of money and Eric's gonna change the world and well it kind of will, but not in the way that the hype is saying. So I'm I'm not as sold on AI videos for uh humans. I I'm sold on them as explainers and things like that. I think they'd be pretty cool. But I think it's just a novelty, it's like a a trend that we're seeing of AI. We do your own AI. What's really cool, what's really cool is the AI voice. If you think about us doing a podcast right now, you can literally go, I've wrote an article, I can get my own AI voice and basically AI my own podcasts. That I could see working.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I mean that's quite good, and and it's quite easy to probably edit with some of the AI tools that are available. I think for me, I'd still want the affiliate manager to be authentic, to actually be telling me stuff that they want to share. And then if I met somebody at an event, which our industry Is very like big on like every second month there's an event where you go meet somebody. If that didn't match what I was hearing, it would be a bit of a disconnect for me personally. But I think you kind of have to work with what you're given. And the main thing is to still step up from behind the screen and become an ambassador for your affiliate program. And I wanted to talk about that because I know you're hot on personal branding. I mean, your personal brand is just phenomenal on LinkedIn and you've spent years building it. But how did that journey begin? And what where's the first step? Because everybody wants to become known, everybody wants to become seen. But what is that first step and is it a quick journey? Can you become an overnight influencer or brand ambassador for your program and have all the affiliates contacting you? Is that even possible?
SPEAKER_07Yes and no. So on LinkedIn, unlike say Instagram and TikTok, LinkedIn and Instagram is 100% an attraction model. Yeah. You have to make the content that attract the crowd and convert the crowd. LinkedIn's a bit different. So I'll give you an example. We did a video with a client on their phone, and he's not in the video that much, but he's comparing two different things in the video. And he got 876,000 views on the video and 45 inbound messages talking about multi-million deals. The video itself was simple to make. The strategy behind the video was hard. Because you're like, how do we do something that people will catch on with, that will find interesting and engaging, that will have broad appeal but will resonate with very specific people.
SPEAKER_06That is the problem on LinkedIn is unless you've got very specific job titles or very specific, and let's face it, affiliates don't have job titles. They're entrepreneurs, they're founders, they they could be everything, but every single affiliate I know is on LinkedIn. So it is the one place that I know LinkedIn and Twitter, well, X actually, let's we're gonna talk about that next. But that's kind of where affiliates are hanging out, where publishers are hanging out because it's a content-based platform. I guess the question is what content do you create as an affiliate program manager to attract the right affiliates to you? What's the process that you start with? Because you can't just use job titles, it's it's almost impossible to do.
SPEAKER_07Well, LinkedIn's the more grown-up social network. That's that's the if you look at all the other ones, it's a little bit scammy in the other places. This is a grown-up network. So when you're trying to create content to attract like particular people, what do they want to see? They want to see how the platform works, what the rewards are, but also whether they can trust you. Yeah. Uh my industry, social media marketing is sketchy, affiliate marketing has its sketchiness as well, right? So the showing up and showing that you actually can do what you say you can do is just the core part of it. And then talking about how those bit their business one of the really strange things is you can attract a lot of affiliates by talking about how they can improve their affiliate business. It's like a magnet, basically. What are the affiliates interested in? What are they interested in for their own business that will encourage them to hang round you? And that's what the way you've got to think about it.
SPEAKER_06Anna Hech joined me from Global Savings Group to talk about how she'd like affiliate managers to pitch their programs for content collaborations. I get a lot of affiliate managers telling me how difficult it is to get content up on large media sites. So listen in, my lovelies, as she breaks it down on this episode, step by step, on how to perfect and position your big media partnerships pitch. From a content perspective, I mean, I always feel because there's a big conversation that happens around gifting to or, you know, like giving free products or free trials or whatever the case may be to content creators, but I honestly believe that if somebody can touch and feel and use a product, they're going to write about it very differently to if they had to just get like a fact sheet about here's all the product stuff. And have you actually seen that that make a difference, like in your own personal writing experiences?
SPEAKER_02Yes, totally. I mean, I think if our main goal is to add more value for the reader than a retailer site alone could. And if we can't get more information than what we can just see on a retailer site or read in reviews, we're essentially not doing a huge service to the reader. So even though we can't test every product we write about, the goal is that we get to the point where we are actually testing and you know, like you say, touching and feeling every product that we're talking about, because that will just add so much more value. And like you say, the way you write about a product, if you've actually used it and tried it out and seen how long the battery life really is or how it really connects to something versus just reading what people are saying online. And I mean, we are we consider ourselves shopping experts. So I think that it makes a big difference if we can actually see if it's a quality product. What happens if it's not a quality product then? Unfortunately, we we will say that. So that's kind of the thing, also, is you if you go onto our website, we for almost every product you write about, we do have pros and cons. And that's just to drive up trust with the reader. So almost every product you have is gonna have pros and cons. And we try to be fair and balanced about it. But we will like we even had our content planning session two days ago, and some of our editors were talking about doing reviews, and they were like, Well, I didn't actually like it. And we're like, perfect, write about it, you know, because it's, you know, we have to give our honest opinion to our readers. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_06And and that's not necessarily a bad thing for a brand, because I often get clients asking, Oh, I don't want to be on the site because they're not gonna give me a positive review. Well, if clients only see positive reviews, they're not gonna trust what they're reading anyway, because let's face it, we're all human and we know nothing is perfect. So as long as it's not factually incorrect, it's not, you know, blasphemous to your brand where somebody's just taken a complete, like, you know, left field turn and and you know, been very emotive about the fact that something they don't like about the brand, then you know, it's okay to have, you know, small things that might be incorrect because clients will still purchase you anyway. Like I know for shoes, for example, you know, I don't find Puma shoes very comfortable. I'm a fair I'm a I'm a bit of a shoe addict, but I love Nikes. And it doesn't mean that Puma's any worse than Nike, it just means that that's my personal preference, and I know that they're not as comfortable because my feet are wider. So, you know, there's lots of different things like that that happen. And I think affiliate managers they sometimes get scared about branding and they they overthink it a little bit, but actually what you need to think about is how much value is that SEO link going to bring me and how many customers are actually gonna see my product, regardless of whether it's not presented as 100% perfect. And what's the outcomes of me doing this long-term collaboration with a content creator to boost the rest of my program?
SPEAKER_02So I totally agree with you. We do try to be, you know, fair about it. I just want to add one thing because it's not like we're going to just say overall this product is like terrible. You know, we're what what we typically do is like if you're buying something for camping and you need it to have a longer battery life, you know, we may say if you're not a serious outdoorsman, this is a fine product for you and it's a great price point. But if you're needing it to last you for two days, probably not. So it's more of like on a use case basis that we try to tell you what's good or bad, good or bad about a product.
SPEAKER_06So it's context, right? It's always about putting that product into the context of what it's going to be used for and how often and how long. And that's not necessarily negative branding. It's it really isn't. Now I want to talk a little bit about the elephant in every editor's room, which is AI content creation. Some people are very pro in terms of using it to come up with ideas and, you know, write rough drafts and do basic content pieces. Some people are very negative about this should not be happening and it should not be infiltrating into our space. What are your thoughts on this?
SPEAKER_02This is a topic that we are talking about constantly, but it's sort of like when is it appropriate for a team to be using it and when is it not? And of course, what are the SEO implications long term of using AI, which most of us don't really know yet, I would say. And so essentially I have had kind of a slow burn with it. So I when I mean when we first started talking about using AI a few months ago, I of course kind of had a bit of a, you know, heels in the sand kind of reaction to it because I really value the human content that we are creating. And I know that for such a long time, Google has been telling us that if it feels like it's written by bots or if it looks like it's overoptimized, you will be penalized for this. So it is kind of a weird shift just because I know Google is going in more of an AI overall direction anyway, with how they're going to set up their SERPs. So I think that if they're doing that, they can't really tell us not to do it. So now we have to figure out what is the balance between the type of content that we create using AI, what will make us faster and more streamlined and able to keep up with the competition, and what's going to be actually harmful to the brand where we become so generic that we are not even a brand anymore? You know what I mean? So I think that what the way that we're approaching it now is we're considering, we're doing some testing. So we haven't started using it yet, but we're considering whether we could use AI for things that are like listicles or where it's actually very simple writing, you know, because every single website is going to have like the best air fryers, you know. And so could we actually use AI to at least give us an output that starts us off on having some kind of framework of content to work with? And then and we will still have editors looking at that content and fact-checking every piece of it and making sure that it's very sound from top to bottom. And there are also just different types of content that you can't really use AI on yet. You know, for example, like if we are doing a piece of branded content for like, say, I'll just throw out there like Marriott or something, and they want us to write a piece of content on the best sustainable hotels curated by Marriott or something. I'm just making this up. And then, you know, chat GPT tends to be kind of two years behind in terms of the data that it outputs for you. So you can't really write that brand new newsy piece of content with the data that it's currently crawling. So if it was a piece on how to travel sustainably, then you could potentially think about using AI to supplement some of your content.
SPEAKER_06For a long time now, we've been exploring the expansion of non-traditional affiliates into the partnership economy's ecosystem. Now, when you add them and how to work with them, and more importantly, how to track it all, you need to be able to measure the uplift. And in this episode, I brought in a fellow South African, you'll notice his accent is similar to mine, and CEO of Phinexa UK, David Picard, to talk us through the challenges and solutions that they've built to help brands track everything in one simple place. From paper call partners to lead generators and traditional affiliates, affiliate managers need to have a wider view and better data to optimize their campaigns and make informed decisions about commercial modeling. Listen then to what David discusses on this next clip. We are going through a bit of a revolution in terms of affiliate marketing, where traditional affiliates are not the only kinds of partners that we are bringing into our programs. And this is one of the things that I really wanted to talk to you about. But before we get started on that story, I want to go down the most common question that affiliate managers sort of talk about and get asked about, which is lead generation. Why has it been given such a bad rep under the affiliate umbrella? And what has changed from then to now? And why is it that brands should actually be investing more in non-traditional affiliate partner types like lead generators?
SPEAKER_05Sure, yes, that is the common question. It's kind of a negative connotation on the word, I suppose. And the battle that a lot of us are trying to have often is kind of an education process, right? When you're talking to whether it be advertisers, brands, uh, about the space as to why it's something to look at. And I guess the the tool that we have that that helps us is data, right? And numbers that kind of let that's my methodology. You'll probably hear me say a lot in the rest of this conversation is you know, let the numbers do the talking. You know, if you're if you're trying to attach personal feelings and emotions to things, you gotta be prepared to be wrong at some point because the numbers are gonna catch up with you and tell you to do something different. So put your ego out of the way, put your put your you know, whatever you think is right or wrong out of the way, and just build a methodology based on numbers and tracking and performance, and and then you can only end up in a good place, in my opinion. So, in terms of, I guess, why it's it's got a bad rep, whether you want to call it misrepresentation and that kind of thing, I suppose, is a lot of people think of affiliates as people that you know the the get-rich quick kind of people they want to make a quick buck, um, they don't want to put effort in, they they just want to dangle the carrot, incentivize people to carry out and go down funnels that ultimately don't necessarily end in the consumer behavior that you want, you know, the positive outcomes that you're looking for. You know, what corners can I cut in order to deliver the numbers that they're looking for, or not even deliver the numbers that they're looking for, but but how many corners can I cut to kind of get there as quickly as I can? And absolutely right, that methodology should have a bad connotation about it, and uh, and and you know, if that's how people are going to approach it, absolutely, it's right to look at it in that way. But uh ultimately, like I said earlier, if you're if you're truly attributing things based on numbers and statistics and performance, those behaviors should be able to be kicked out of the industry. And I guess to that's the old way, I suppose, to speak about how the old way was you know, paying for partner and performance marketing outcomes without clear understanding of sources that drive the quality that you're looking for, and you know, a disconnect between various types of customer interactions and all those kinds of things. When you come to now to talk about what's changed and what tools people have available to them in terms of, you know, I can speak of the advancements of technology, particularly to help protect the brand, the advertiser, and ultimately also the consumer, because ultimately, as long as we're putting the consumer at the center of this, which they always should be, then in theory you're you're going to be able to build something that has some longevity to it as well. So, you know, being able to automate validation, distribution of your consumers to deliver a truly personalized experience along the way, you know, reporting on every step of the journey can only possibly have positive outcomes here. The consumer's happier because they've received what they're looking for quickly. Uh, and everyone else in the journey is happy because they've got the tools they need to optimize performance at every stage of the lead cycle.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. So the the bad rep is kind of hereditary, but where we are now is that lead generation can actually play a very important part of your affiliate program if you embrace it, because we have better data segments and because it's easier to track things in real time.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's it's easier to evidence that that actually the the rep the reputation is is correct if the numbers tell you it's correct. You know, if if the outcomes are carry on being negative and consumer experience carries on being negative, yeah, absolutely it should have a bad thread. But if if you can actually prove the opposite, which is what you need tracking and data for, then who can argue with that?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, 100%. The numbers never lie, right? So if a brand is starting out and looking at kind of skipping over outside of traditional affiliate partners, which are like your SEO affiliate, BPC affiliate, paid advertisers, and now even influencers, what are some of the things that they should look at in order to incorporate, you know, pay-per-call tracking, which is absolutely huge in the US? And I know we've got a lot of US listeners that are tuning into this as well. But what do you actually need to advise the affiliate program manager to do to build their momentum and to watch out for fraud? So, what is the best piece of advice that you can give them if they want to step outside of that traditional affiliate funnel and start to look at wider lead generation on a performance basis?
SPEAKER_05Sure. So I guess you would you would break that in. So you'd want to, I guess, start start at the start, I guess, as it sounds obvious. But you know, look at look at what the problem is, which is typically, you know, acquisition is is is not transparent, attribution is complex and difficult, and not all sources along the funnel generate the same quality, you know, performance differs. And then you come to your your why, which will be paying for outcomes, whether that's paper, call or lead, it is risky because again, it lacks that transparency across those across those sources. Uh, and then the the you know, the immediate issue is the fact that navigating through multiple marketing channels creates internal inefficiencies, disturbances to workflow, hampers the company's ability to maximize the RI. And there's a compound, compounding effect throughout that process, which is everyone ends up with lack of confidence, you know, in in publishers and partners, which can be crippling, you know, if if if ultimately budgets need to be spent somewhere, and that tends to come from confidence in something. You've got to be able to hang your hat on something and put your stake in the ground somewhere, and that comes from having confidence in being able to evidence that that you're achieving what you're what you're trying to achieve. So, in terms of advice, I guess what I would say is first of all, you have to have a good idea of what success will look like for you prior to launch. And most importantly, and I say this from experience, be ready to be wrong.
SPEAKER_06And there you have it, folks. The highlights of season 13 and all that was contained within it. If you want to go back and listen to a few more episodes, you still can because soon we'll be launching season 14 with another jam-packed session covering more interesting affiliate marketing topics. Keep on tuning in each week as we tell the story, share the latest insights, and keep you learning more about successful affiliate program management and affiliate marketing tactics that can help your business to grow. Now, if you don't want to miss out on any more insights, webinars, contents, guides, head on over to affiversemedia.com and sign up for our newsletter because each week we'll be bringing new industry insights to your door and share the things that you need to keep abreast of as you're growing your affiliate programs. Till next week, keep on learning and always be testing to keep your affiliate programs growing from strength to strength. Thanks for listening to the affiliate marketing podcast and a special shout out to my Link Unite ladies who are tuning in from the US. Can't wait to see you all again really soon. And this time we'll be catching up on UK soil. So stay tuned and listen up for season 14, which is coming to your door really, really soon. This podcast is brought to you by Phinexa, where all your customer interactions from affiliates, lead generators, or paper call marketing sources can be tracked and managed in a single operating suite. Advertisers, networks, and affiliates can get more visibility into their performance because all their incoming needs can be tracked in one simple solution. Phinexa saves you countless hours juggling reports and spreadsheets, giving you more time to maximize the revenue you can make from leads, calls, businesses, and affiliates you can trust. Whether you're a one-man organization or a company that generates thousands of leads or calls per day, visit phonexa.com to schedule a consultation today.
SPEAKER_08That'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 ITunes 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.