You're listening to the Affiliate Marketing Podcast brought to you by affiversemedia.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 Martech 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 Affiverse, Leanne Johnston.
SPEAKER_00Welcome back to the Affiliate Marketing Podcast with me, your host, Leanne Johnston. Now, last week we shared part one of what became a Mammoth episode with Declan Dunk, an industry OG who began his journey into affiliate marketing way back in 1997. Today we're picking up where we left off to continue our talk with Declan, starting with his pet affiliate manager Peeves, his view on the future of affiliate marketing, and also his take on how AI can be used by affiliate managers.
SPEAKER_02There's this thing I hate, which has sort of become an axing, which is cool. Fake it till you make it. Here's the deal. Forget faking it. Try to find out who you are. And what you bring in a unique style that no one else does, because we're all like snowflakes, we're all unique people. And I'm telling you, when they get that, the coolest thing is to actually get working with somebody who's not trying to fake it. And there isn't a thing in our market which sometimes encourages this. I would say, you know, because at the end, if you fake it, you're not going to make it because you're not you. You're somebody else. And I can't tell you how to have faith in yourself because you're going to stumble, you're going to fall. Don't consider them failures. It's like, okay, I hate the word failure because it's like marketing. If I convert 5%, that's good, right? One to two is average, stinky, sometimes not stinky, depending on volume, it's reality. Five is nice, ten to twenty is great. Think of that. That means like at 20%, 80% doesn't work. Is that a failure? Reverse your paradigm because you're when you start thinking and getting your mindset right, it people will pick up on that. And you'd be like, they're like, wow, people always tell me, like, you're so wow, you're so candor. You're like, it's just the if the business demands that we know if it doesn't work and we've done our best, that's all we can do. We're gonna work it hard, nurture them, help them grow it. But growing an affiliate channel is also realize that there's a small percentage that will drive most of your sales, and not to eliminate them, but don't overfocus on the ones who just aren't gonna be able to make it happen. And I know that's hard, but sometimes the deal just I've I've had it where it seemed perfect fit and it just doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00Uh there's a lot in that sentence that you've that you've just shared because I think affiliate managers, when they come into their own, and I've seen this through people that I've coached over 20 years, I can spot a good affiliate manager a mile away. And the reason why I know they're gonna be a good affiliate manager is not because of what they know or the skills that they have, because they have to learn them on the job. It's about them being comfortable in their own skin and about really being in the mindset that they bring something unique and having that belief. And and I think our own it's it's it's crazy that we're actually talking about this because I was literally on a voice box interview with Julia Lynham at PR Live, and I said exactly this. So, and I don't know if this is because this is coming from experience, both you and I are not, you know, spring chickens, but we're not that old either. But the point is that we've lived through this together, and we both are very aligned in that, in that when your self-belief is high, your achievements are high too. We we limit our own success by not being comfortable in our own skin and comfortable with what we can contribute to a partnership. And so I really want you guys that are new three to five years into your roles who are loving this industry but feeling like maybe you're not good enough. You are enough and you will be enough. You just need to keep on learning and investing in yourself. And to me, I want to see less people spin out of this industry because they're overworked, misunderstood, you know, maybe feeling the pressure because they feel like they're not good enough, because they look at everybody else that's you know 10 years ahead of them. We all had to go through this learning experience, and you know, you need to toughen up if you want to be in this industry because you are gonna get the 80% of rejections, but it's the 20% that you live for, and the ones that you really nurture and grow that make, you know, working in this industry great. And I just wanted to share that with you guys today because it's it's so true what Dak Lynn has said. I want to ask you with a crystal ball, because you know where we've come from, and you you kind of see where we're going to because you're a growth marketer, you're always looking at the future. What is the future of affiliate marketing from your perspective?
SPEAKER_02We just moved affiliate marketing. That the most wonderful part in the early days, it was almost just coupon rewards. It's actually one of the reasons I left the space for a little bit, because it's just it was like just coupon rewards. And I was like, that's so narrow-minded. And it's it was just the way the industry was. Okay, I'm not saying they were being narrow-minded functionally, performance-wise. That's what it was. And people used to look at this, and you wouldn't get the respect of the big corporations because they say, oh, you're some hustler, coupon rewards person, which I'm not trying to, I think that's a false bias on the part of them. But it was a thing, oh, here's the affiliate industry, little people who do coupons rewards. Then we opened up to these content partners, influencers, who bring a whole different approach to the game. And I see that not only growing, but I really see that affiliate marketing is starting to not be a separate budget within a company, but it needs to be part of an overall ad budget. And it's really funny when you work with companies, because I actually work with big companies and they I understand they don't get this, and I understand the person I'm speaking to has got to speak to three to four people and sell me to those people, which is totally unfair, by the way. Which is one of the little asides, I always give a little one-page PDF that hits the right point so that person, it doesn't have to go. I give them the script. I'll even record a little two-minute video, which is like a video voicemail. It's huge. I close like crazy because they can't, oh, excuse me, here's Declan for a minute or two, no longer. Okay. I'm basically reading the document to them, not just to read it, but I point out two items in it so they actually read the document because people never read anything, especially executives being a CEO. Where I know how we don't tend to read unless we're prompted. So when I'm going in to make a deal, I want to make sure that that part that I understand that the person who I'm talking to has to sell it internally. And that's what, Leanne, to bring it to your question, we're facing more and more of those people who have corporate structures. Everything is consensus decision making. There is no single decision maker anymore. Uh, even good CEOs don't want to just make the decision themselves. It's not a good business practice. So I see the future of affiliate marketing, and I've actually seen this first, come from unusual places. The really, there's a tier of media buyers. And I actually met them, they were above Skim Links, which is odd because we worked a lot with Skim Links for various reasons. It was functional for us, but they were actually media buyers. And what I mean by that is performance marketing was part of the channel. So they would come to me and say, wow, we found you were doing this kind of performance driven by the data. And they had metrics where, by the way, they could pay me way more than if I went directly to the affiliate program. Way more. Because we have performance, by the way. Okay, so it's not just that they were chucking out big numbers, but when they're doing a media buy, our numbers in the affiliate world actually started looking really cool. Like it actually made a lot more sense to them. So portion, so it allowed them to get giant profitability while they're spending tens of millions of dollars. We became this portion of a giant pool. And I see that. That's where I talked about like being acting like a media buyer just means thinking about it that you are spending time, the publisher is spending time, that time should be measured. Even if you put a number to it, that's okay. But understand a lot of people in the affiliate world don't respect time. Time you can never get back. Money I can get back, time I can't. And it's a game of time. And so I see the world of the affiliates that that bigger media buying mentality is coming down. Because when you work with influencers and stuff, it's not a paid placement. That's an old my generation word. They will not do anything for you, and they're gonna do it one, two, or three times because they would lose their whole social following if they became your zealot. So, how can we actually get them? How can we use microinfluencers? In other words, working within this world, and that's where I mean by bring it back to what a media buyer is. They put their bets on different tables with social. You've got to put them. If you bought little placements on five or ten or twenty micro influencers, much more attention than you're gonna get from Kim Kardashian, just name-dropping, you know, these big numbers. And that's where the affiliate world has to say, how do we fit? Not as, oh, let me teach you what the affiliate world is. We're performance marketers. And there's this giant world. I started seeing these tens of millions and hundreds of millions. I'm not seeing those budgets, but I'm part of this bigger thing. And those people are all driven by data that's so different than what we're seeing down here. And I see us going up, being more accountable, using the amazing data and AI that's coming on to actually let us pinpoint and start thinking of ourselves not as affiliate marketers, but as true performance marketers, because Lianne, I'll leave it with this. The most perfect form of advertising is affiliate, because when somebody clicks, they buy. That is the perfect form of advertising. That's the way I pitch people. And if nothing else, they're getting traffic for free, but nobody really cares about that. Free traffic is not a sales pitch. We're all driven by metrics. So the affiliate world has to get into that discipline that every channel has to create more sales, and you're facing it as managers. You're getting brutalized with some of this stuff. But how could we actually make it work for us and start realizing that what it does as a media buyer? If something's not working, I cut it off. I try, I try to iterate, I really work it, but I also realize at a certain level it's not there. And I keep my programs small and select. I did this with my company, uh Elster that I helped for years, my buddy uh Peter is the CEO. We'd only take 50 to 100 partners a year because that's all we could serve. And he didn't believe, and I love him for this, I love engineers, he didn't believe that putting more stuff meant more would come. He goes, find out what my users like, give them that, make a deal with them. Even though they don't know us, they think we're weird, we're an app. People actually use us because they love us. Nobody understood. It wasn't, and we did no coupons or rewards, right? In fact, I had to say no to them. I'm like, Peter, couldn't we just take a coupon? He's like, no, I hate coupons. That was his thing.
SPEAKER_00We do not hate coupons. I don't want to say that because I love coupons and rewards. No, everybody.
SPEAKER_02No, no, that was that's that's his no, but that's as a publisher, that had no place with us. So to your point, to be honest with people, I would really broach that up front because this is I believe me, I I I tried open coupon channels. I'm like, dude, there is so much opportunity you're missing here. Peep, you may not like him. It's not about you, but in a good way, his business is rocks, he has tens of millions of users, he's awesome. So he knows his audience.
SPEAKER_00I think that's the golden gem. I think that's the golden gem right there. How do you see the future of affiliate marketing? Affiliates affiliate marketing moving up and into all of the other channels. Yes. And actually getting more considered about which partners we want to be working with and how deep we go with those partners. The intelligence that we can glean from from the data sets that we're having, and we didn't have that 10 years ago, 15 years ago. So we had to have a different strategy and segmentation mix. And I think you're right. I think you've that is the golden moment, is we're gonna get more considered in the way in which we work with partners and create partnerships for our businesses because the data is going to direct which way we go and which partners we use at different times and at different placements to make the overall margins work for sales. Because you're right, affiliate marketing is the best kind of advertising. It's a click to a sale.
SPEAKER_02But we also have an intelligence that most media buyers don't have. Media buyers are mercenaries. Not all of them. I don't want to label everybody. Okay, there's great media buyers, but it's a mercenary business, right? Our intelligence that you have as a performance marketer, by the way, as an affiliate manager, if you want to even go up outside of the affiliate, all of this makes you so much better informed. People don't even think at the level affiliates do. And part of our thing is not to try to say, okay, learn how I think, provide that intelligence, listen to them, fill their gaps. And because they're presenting it to management, and don't be this little budget in the corner, which affiliates, oh, we're the affiliate program. Well, I'll give you a really quick example. I was working with a big program and we did really well with them, but I actually want our data feed, it was way too big. And I knew these guys did machine learning, which we all call AI now. But I knew that if I went in and asked the company to for the affiliate, I'm an affiliate, like I'm a little person. Broaden yourself, have confidence. You're an affiliate. We're performance marketers. You're giving me a million SKUs. It's just, what am I, a genius? I got to figure out a million products, what they like. I said, Do you all do machine learning? And they're like, of course we do, right? But they all do. And a lot of I've gotten pushback from a lot of my buddies that go, well, I couldn't sell that. I said, because what you sell is, oh, can you give the affiliate program this? No, I'm selling the CTO. And let me tell you, one thing in AI or machine learning, I don't care. You don't even have to know what it is. It's a fake phrase, anyway. It's like a big reference to everything in existence with data, is what AI is. I knew that CTO needs more impressions. So I went to them and said, if you actually put this in the affiliate program, you're missing all these impressions that could train your machine learning. That CTO gave it a check, not because it was an affiliate program, because I spoke, and I'm telling you, as a vice, that is the all of them, there is not enough impressions. So that's your advantage. We brought it in, got 100,000 products. All that were the top selling products, dynamic, put it into our feed, sales doubled for us, profits doubled, they doubled, they could put it out to their channel, more impressions. We created a win-win partnership. And how did I do this, Leanne? I didn't know this stuff. I studied it and I found that all these people, because I know I'm not talking to the affiliate manager, I need to arm them to talk to the CTO in this case. Think about the next level, speak, and that's where we're coming as an industry. Start speaking to the executive, even though you're at an entry level. That person has got to speak to their boss, and that's their job. And now I've made them my friends, my one of my first mentors is women entrepreneurs who taught me this, and they used to call it angel investing. And they go, no, we're not talking about like getting angel investor like we're a startup. They go, inside each company is a person that's our angel. We want to make them successful because then they'll work with us and they'll be buddies with us and we know them. It was brilliant. We ended up closing deals, bunch of hippies in San Francisco. Everybody else was in suits, and they talk and they meant it by nurturing and doing what we do in the affiliate world. Nurture those people and realize they've got to sell it to their boss. And it's really actually simple to figure out what their boss wants. Like this is like a Google search, a Chat GPT question. This is a really easy. Executives don't think much. They have one or two things. And so just to bring that back, studying, learning, knowing you're communicating, you want to get this program bigger budget. Stop trying to push this person on some fake sales and impressions and give confidence to that person and give them something that they can also share. That's why I love the PDF, by the way. Because they're going to forget about you. And now they've got a tool to go sell you inside the company. And that's where affiliate marketing is going. We're now selling. Even in small publishers, you rarely, if ever, get to that C level or to that founder level. You've got this entry person. How can you make them your angel investor? That they're a hero, you're a hero. And it may not work out, but boy, I tell you, people love it because I actually don't tell them. I'm like, I'm going to make you a hero, but I care. Like, and they feel that. And that, Leanne, is what you're saying. That's what you have. That energy flows. Everybody else is like, what's their pitched? They're just going to be like, they'll shut down. And everybody's overpitched. Everybody's overpitched. That's where the industry, which is a pitch industry, we have defense. Okay, it's hardcore. But you don't have to act like a pitch person. And what's funny is that's why I bring it back to people like say, oh, Declan, you're playing hard to get. I'm not playing. It is hard to get. I'm not playing like I'm cool or exclusive. That's a persuasion technique. I'm recognizing the industry as hard to make things work. And when I do that, they're going to appreciate that that's what I'm bringing to the table. That's why I'm contacting you. I'm not contacting everybody. I'm not spamming you. I picked you because our data said you're a fit. And that's the approach I like to take.
SPEAKER_00Love it. I want you to just wrap us up now and finish this last sentence. In 2024, I want to see affiliate managers.
SPEAKER_02I want to see if now I run the AI Optimist podcast, so I am an AI optimist, which is most people in the industry are afraid of AI, which by the way, is wake up. There is a move in 2024 among all executives, especially the people I work with. It's called AI First. How can I get AI to do this? Now I'm not trying to say don't be replaced, but let me tell you something. If you are not upskilling what you do with AI, you are going to be left in the dustbin of time. Because the efficiencies you can do, and I don't mean just creating content. In fact, if you're writing content, I want to see affiliate managers actually write it and then take it to AI to critique it and challenge you. I want you to actually use Chat GPT, cut and paste a few discussions about affiliate products and put it in there and ask it to give you an action plan and a summary of what that is. That allows us. I want you to stop doing identify repetitive tasks. This industry is filled with wasted time putting spreadsheets together. I'm an old dude. People have hated spreadsheets. No one likes them. Now we can pull in the data, and this is not crazy. This is stuff you can get off the shelf. But make sure you're not wasting time. What task could be shortened and why this? For example, if you do a meeting and record it, you can have that transcribed for free. You can put it into any clawed chat GPT summarized. You can have that sent out with Zap Beer automatically and done. You can write a piece of content, put it in Google Docs, send it for approval when it's approved. You can then send it to Chat GPT to do a summary and a critique of it, and then all of this automatically, not having to do it. So find out where you're trying to communicate with people and where you can use AI to upskill it. And don't think of it just as a content generator. In fact, if Leanne, if I could encourage them, don't just go to ChatGPT to write your content because you're going to spend as much time editing it as if you actually wrote it yourself. Write it, challenge yourself, have it challenge you, and have it tell you what it likes, and then say, rip me to death. I get my customer's voice. I call the customer voice, social media posts, I copy and paste it, study this voice. Now tack this like you don't like it. Tell me, I want to know the binary, what's good. We all go for love, and I I want that, but I also want it to critique me and have it come out because that sort of content. Content is going to be gold because a lot of people right now, the opportunity with AI is everybody's just like, oh, it can do my work for free. No, it can't. All it does is it knows what other people have done, and you're just copycatting. It's the worst. SEO is filtered with it. And it's going to be an onslaught because it's mediocrity on steroids. You don't have to be, and you don't have to be a writer. Be brief, work on it, and let it be your coach, your mentor, your tutor not replacing you, but upskilling. So I would say I want to see affiliate managers upskill. Because to me, the industry has this knee-jerk reaction against AI. Because you know what? It will replace you if you ignore it. It really will. But it can't do what you do. It really can't. It really can't. And don't be afraid of it. See where it can add 10 hex anything you're doing. And if it can't, don't bother. If you're doing great, cool. If it's not broke, don't fix it. But the thing is, think about what you can do that will save you time because time is the currency that we really deal with in the affiliate world. Good use of time will equal good use of money. It really will.
SPEAKER_00I love that to leave us on this podcast. Declan, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you on here, to have your 20-some years experience. It really is a pleasure to learn from people that have been in the industry as long as what you have and to understand, you know, what's changing, what's coming up next. So really big thanks for being here on the other end of my mic and for sharing all of these tidbits. We're going to break it down into little shorts, and we're going to probably be marketing this podcast episode for a very long time after. It's been a pleasure to have you here with me. Thank you so much for all of the advice and for being here on the affiliate marketing podcast this week.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much for having me and all the affiliate managers out there. It's a great industry. Just enjoy it because it's going in directions we'd never have imagined. And that's the cool part, Leand. Let's like you said, keep learning. Never give up learning. You don't know anything, is the best approach to take.
SPEAKER_00Love that. Take care. Thanks for being on the podcast.
SPEAKER_01This podcast is brought to you by AMP. The Affiliate Manager Performance Program is designed for ambitious affiliate program managers working at 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'll 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, affiversemedia.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. 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 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.