Hi, and welcome to the affiliate insider podcast with me, Leanne Johnston. This is a podcast for digital and affiliate marketers in the gaming industry. Listen up as I explore the latest digital and affiliate marketing trends and give you the insider scoop on what's occurring in affiliate marketing. Join us as we explore affiliate strategies, host expert interviews with leading affiliate in tech entrepreneurs and discuss the latest affiliates and digital marketing trends. If you want to stay at the cutting edge of affiliate marketing, you're in the right place. Join me for this week's episode and let's get started
Speaker 2Today. We'll be joined by Dean seven from Maverick who is going to talk to us a little bit about social selling today. Hi Dean, how are you?
Speaker 3Yeah , I'm good. I'm uh, despite being a prisoner , um , like everybody is I'm really good.
Speaker 2Awesome. Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. I'm super excited to talk to your day today about social selling, which seems to be a new buzz word that people are using, but wanted to just get under the cover of that a little bit for affiliates and affiliate marketers , um , that are working in my industry. So talk to me a little bit about what social selling is and why affiliates and affiliate managers and entrepreneurs should be using this to build new business leads.
Speaker 3Okay. Can I be a pain and tell you what it isn't and then you'll know what it is? So, so what is people doing is literally digitally cold calling, literally getting a hold of people and going, Hey, here's my stuff . Whether you buy it or, Hey, here's my stuff. Will you talk to me? And the problem is that we, you know , as human beings Mo the majority of human beings find it very hard to be rude to somebody on the phone, generally speaking. Um, and so they'll say not interested, thank you, and put the phone down. And we've also been trained to basically not express any interest cause know what will come next. Yes. So when you come to social selling and digital platforms, you've got this huge opportunity to reach people. You didn't even know existed like LinkedIn, you can search and find anybody in the world, but what we're still trying to do is use it in the way of , um, the cold call and what we've got to do. We talk about it in the way, or we've got to get conversation before consideration. And so social selling bluntly is a way to build awareness, belief, and relationships before you sell. So it makes the selling really easy.
Speaker 2So I'm going to talk about that in just a little bit in the context of an affiliate manager's role. Now, there, there's a big selling piece that happens in affiliate management, where they need to go out and actually find new affiliate partners to work with. And traditionally, we've always gone to live events, to network in person. Um, now that's not currently happening this year due to COVID and travel restrictions. So just, I want the listeners that are listening to this podcast to understand that social selling is probably one of the easiest and fastest tools that they can currently use to start conversations and start that engagement with potential new publishers and affiliate partners that talked to us a little bit about the conversation, part of what it is that your agency does and how you actually map that.
Speaker 3Yeah, so, so , um, one of the things that we , uh, we think about conversations is it's a back and forth. It's a two way conversation. And , um, if, whether you're, whether you're selling, whether you're selling your affiliate program to an affiliate, whether you're selling it through, you know, whether you're selling SEO service to a business, the principles are exactly the same. And I'll use a very crude way of saying, I'm sure your audience has grown up to , to take it. You've got to get people on the hook. You've got to, you've got to get an appetizer out there that people say it's worth looking at. Yeah. And not just dumb policy information on people. And they go, Oh, I'll get round to it. Sometime we're creatures of habit. We don't like changing. Uh, we don't wanna change at all. And so you have to have those hooks to get people, to give you the time of day to go. Hmm . I need to look at this only to investigate this.
Speaker 2I can tell you that in my industry, the amount of like sales average emails that I receive , where there are templates by design, they're all about the brand and not actually about what I need and what my problems and solutions could be is like a dime a dozen. So just talking about having this conversation and actually switching on your mind to think about not selling ads , but really selling to , um, and having those conversations is a big game changer for us in the affiliate space. What are some of the big mistakes that you see people do in like traditional online lead generation?
Speaker 3So the big one is , um, they talk to people about things, jets , how cool it is, how many awards they've won, it's all bluntly. It's kind of marketing spiel is that nobody can , it's like the bragger Thun . We're so good. You should want to work with us . And it's like, no , please. Everybody says this stuff. Yeah. So the easiest way to flip it is to talk about them. We all love talking about ourselves. And so if you can get them to talk what they're doing, so are they producing content? Have you seen something about them? Uh , can you, can you introduce something that they're doing that matters to them? They are more likely to respond to you. And also the more likely to feel, feel because a lot of selling is about feeling. They're more likely to feel at ease. The more likely to feel like this is an enjoyable conversation. They're more likely to go on a call.
Speaker 2And that actually brings me to my next point, because when you are, you know, there's two types of cells , there's the hard sell and there's the sort of soft sell . And I think the soft sell works better on certain on the social platforms, because you don't really know these people, you haven't met them in person. And there isn't that rapport yet that you can , that you can benefit from when you're at a live event. So talk a little bit about what kinds of things the soft sell begins with. So you've said, okay, it flips on to , or talking about them instead of talking about yourself, but how do you kind of reach cold call, reach out to somebody on LinkedIn or Facebook, for example, what's the kind of best method .
Speaker 3So , um, I have some fun because I get a lot of pictures. So I turn their own pictures back on them and get them on the call and sell them. And this is the person who says he's not a natural sales person, but once you understand one really important thing, what is the Mo the pain points that they've got? So let's say, you're talking about, you're trying to get an affiliate to come on board with your program and you know, I'm not in the affiliate space. So if I get the terminology rumbly, I'm use later . Yeah . Um, you've got a sales piece to go. Why should they give you the time of day? So what really matters to them right now? And , uh, money is obviously a brilliant one, but if you just use the money thing on its own, you kind of look scammy. Yeah . So you need to go ,
Speaker 2Uh , desperate because money is , you know, that's , that's often the go-to in our industry is we'll offer you 60% commission or 70% commission. And immediately you start to think what's the catch.
Speaker 3Yeah. Well , you even get your money. So it's like, you know, how ask them how that, that, you know, if they're running a site, how's it going? How's that traffic been doing over the pandemic? Cause that love to tell you how wonderful I've been doing and how well they've been achieving. And then you can go. That sounds awesome. What you're doing there are you making the returns that make it all worthwhile for you? You know, you're just asking the conversations.
Speaker 2Yeah. And it's about getting to know you, you know, as a, as a social thing, we've, we've kind of forgotten to have these types of conversations about getting to know you before you actually get down to the business and you can do those very easily in social media, I think, because there's the back and forth, there's the kind of the two way conversation. So what are the kind of biggest deals that ever got off of doing social selling in terms of, you know, cold call after each and send it
Speaker 3If you do it. Right . Right . And I'm going to put the caveat here because I'm going to quote figures that people will go, Ooh, magic. Yeah . Certain industries, you can do it with and certain types of clients. Yeah. I can't start a business and pitch their IBM for an example. Um, but if you can do those conversations right. And we teach it , um, the biggest deal I've done for a client and they paid me quite a bit of money to do it , uh , because it's just conversation. And that aide took over. It was one and a half million dollars.
Speaker 2Wow. Off of a cold call, outreach ,
Speaker 3Cold outreach on LinkedIn. Okay. The ones I've done for myself, I'm not been as successful doing it for myself as ample my fricking clients.
Speaker 2Well, and that's always the case when you're the practitioner
Speaker 3Biggest sale I've done for myself as in one hit invoice was a hundred K.
Speaker 2Okay. So talk us through that. What , what was the process that got you to that a hundred K.
Speaker 3So we talk about the full cogs that make up social selling. You've got content, you've got engagement, you've got connection or those relationship , and you've got , um, the conversation. Yup . And those four things have to happen. If they don't happen, you're never going to sell anything. And those, you use those four things to build awareness of who you are and what you do, belief that you are the real deal. And you can do what you say you can do. You're not a fly by night and then, you know, expand the relationship. Yeah. And so if you got those three and do those four things, it all works. And so , uh , content is brilliant for making your case and building the awareness and showcasing what you can do. And , uh , showing people that the results you're getting for the people or the results people are achieving, you know, that kind of like subtle piece of stuff's going on in the background, they know who you are, you're breaking down some of the barriers. Then you've got the engagement, which is two things. First, the social proof of you, if people are engaging and interacting with you and on your content, you're building social proof of yourself. Yeah . The second thing is if you're engaging with your prospects, so what they posting. So if you're an affiliate manager, you should be all over your affiliates contents . Absolutely all over it. Engaging, not going, Hey, you should join our program. But actually just saying, this is interesting and asking them questions about it , why you're building two way. Exactly. Yeah. Then the next space is obviously the connection. So we've not talked about connection request in the LinkedIn context there. Now we're going to connect with people and you keep, those can be engagement going until you've built up enough to way to actually have that conversation
Speaker 2Takes a little bit of time. It's not, it's not straight up, you know, spray and pray tactics anymore that are working in social. And, and the other thing to think about is also, you know, which channel are you going to focus it in because affiliates are renowned for not putting their contact details on their website. So how do you find out who owns, you know , these, these publisher portals that you want to , um , be on? Well, everybody's on LinkedIn, everybody's on Facebook. Um , as a starting point,
Speaker 3You can search LinkedIn by , um, by keywords and Facebook through groups. So , you know, these principles that I'm talking about here, I took , um, a marketing agency who mainly deal with big corporates for an example, flipping it around to show you the contrast. And they said, no, no, no, we're not on Facebook. Everybody's on it . And I said, if you want a conversation with a marketing manager, I can get you a conversation with a marketing manager on Facebook too. And they didn't believe me, but they indulged me call yesterday, got three conversations with high-level marketing managers. So both channels worked very different strategies, but the fundamentals of social selling are awareness, belief, relationship, and the full cogs as we call it other , just the mechanics of how you put that together. And it works, but it's hold sending the same message, do the same stuff. It's dead in the water. It is pretty much dead.
Speaker 2I hope that I affiliate managers that are listening to this podcast are actually going to listen and take action on this. Um, one of the things that I did want to talk about those that, you know, there is this , um , change in mindset that needs to happen where you are your brand. So if you're an affiliate manager and you're working for a company, you've got to take on the belief that you are actually representing your brand with. You're not just an employee, but in the social context, whatever you do in the social space follows you wherever you go. So what is , um, some of the cool things that you can recommend to affiliate managers and, and affiliates out there who want to get more involved in social networking whilst are in this virtual kind of lockdown? Um, what are the , some of the things that they can do to improve their kind of brand their , um, uh , footprint in both LinkedIn and Facebook.
Speaker 3So you really have to , um , you really have to focus in on what you're trying to, what's the key message, the one message you want to get across because , um, what, what people have done previously is gone, Oh , the company page or the brand page, or that has to do that. And I'm just , uh , I'm just an underling of that. That's totally the wrong way now. It's actually the company pages and the brand pages need you. And so you are the ambassador, you are the affiliate on sense of company. Yeah. And so you have to really optimize your profile too , to make sure that your key message, that, that hook, that you want the affiliates to see is, is, is clearly displayed on your profile. The date of having your LinkedIn, looking like a CV is over. And it's now about making sure that people understand the offer, you bring to them. Yeah. And people are buying to you and then they buy into the business.
Speaker 2I know you've got a really great little cheat sheet. So I'm hoping that you're going to offer to give this up for free to anybody that wants to download it , um , which will help you to actually upgrade your profile. That if there are any heads of affiliates listening to this podcast, right now, download that cheat sheet and get every single one of your affiliate managers to upgrade their profiles, that they are representing your brand correctly in the social space. I'm going to close off this podcast because you've given us so much good advice to just one key thing that you think people should do right now to improve their social engagement ahead of coming out of lockdowns. Um , you know, breaking through that noise barrier because everybody is now coming online . So what can you do to actually stand out from the crowd?
Speaker 3Uh, one thing, Oh, that's a difficult question. So let me tell you where we are. Right? If you know anything about social media , uh, in 2006, you could dominate Facebook very easily. Yeah . And as it got bigger and expanded and matured, it got harder and harder to dominate, but the people who got in early still dominate. Yeah . LinkedIn is not around Facebook in 2006, you still have a place where you can dominate LinkedIn in a particular industry right now, the first step is to post. Yeah. Don't post regularly. Even if you think, what the hell am I doing? Do it because you'll learn quite quickly what works. And I'll give you an example right now across the whole planet, just 4% of the user base on LinkedIn, a posting
Speaker 2That's crazy. Cause it's free. And you know , it's free advertising
Speaker 39 billion content impressions a week and 4% of your user base are getting all of it.
Speaker 2So get out there and start posting people.
Speaker 3Yeah . That's the easiest way to dominate a social channel.
Speaker 2Just lastly, how often should you be posting on LinkedIn or Facebook? So just once a day ,
Speaker 3Facebook is a bit different, but LinkedIn every day . Okay. That as the big channel gets bigger, you have to post more to stay relevant. Okay.
Speaker 2All right . Great. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us and for coming onto the podcast,
Speaker 3I'll do one step one step further than my teaching. I'll give you the free book. Well, it's not free. We sell it on our website, but you can have it for free for your, your listeners to download
Speaker 2Amazing. All right, look into the blog post for the link and download and get yourself onto LinkedIn. Those stats are phenomenal and you should be making use of these channels to reach out to new affiliates. Thank you so much for joining us, Dean really, really appreciate all of your insight. Thanks Leon . This podcast is sponsored by one account. One account offers a free real time age verification solution for affiliates and helps to ensure audience compliance in highly regulated markets. The process is super simple for players who need to age, verify to access free to play games and the tool integrates seamlessly into your existing affiliate site to find out more and get started with one account in your affiliate business, visit www.one account.net forward slash business.
Speaker 1[inaudible] .