Hi and welcome to the Affiliate Insider Podcast with me, Leanne Johnson. This is a podcast for digital and affiliate marketers. Listen up as I explore the latest digital and affiliate marketing trends and give you the insider's view on what's occurring in affiliate marketing. Join us as we explore affiliate strategies, host expert interviews with leading affiliates and 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_00If you're looking to launch an affiliate program but aren't 100% sure where or how to start, put your best foot forward and book a free agency call with us today. Affiliate Insider offers a range of agency services from strategy and consulting to technical integration, affiliate recruitment, and in-depth program audits. Our team will help you plot the right course, save you time to launch and scale a successful affiliate program and strategy. As one of the UK's top 50 rated agencies, as ranked by the Drum's Digital Agency Census, we've helped hundreds of brands launch and grow multi-million dollar programs across a range of industries. Why not book a free scoping call and let us help you expand your reach with successful affiliate marketing? Visit affiliateinsider.com and click on agency to find out more.
SPEAKER_08Seasons greetings and welcome back to Affiliate Insiders Affiliate Marketing Podcast with me, your host, Leanne Johnston. As you may have noticed, it's Christmas and we're wrapping up season five while we take a little break to see you in the new year and get things ready for our awesome Affiliate Insider Summit, which is taking place on the 17th to 18th of January. And if you haven't booked your seat yet, I highly recommend that you get in there quick and book one now to help you learn exactly how to amplify your performance marketing in this brand new virtual retreat. But back to this week's In Case You Missed An Episode, I'm going to be covering the highlights of top industry and affiliate marketing experts who talk through the learnings and tactics that they've shared with you over season six of our podcast and give you the heads up on affiliate marketing around the globe. We started this season with an affiliate view on what it's like to be an affiliate and where and how affiliates get their knowledge and insights with Martin Sluck, head of affiliates at More Niche. And we discussed a lot of things this episode, but I wanted to start off with a key point of understanding that not all affiliates start with expert knowledge. And affiliate lingers is one of the most thriving and bustling affiliate marketing communities I've seen. And I talked with Martin about his community in depth and how affiliate managers should be working with their partners more effectively to push brand reach and engagement in here. So I wanted to talk a little bit about your side project, which is next to the kind of health and wellness supplement industry. You've set up a really interesting Facebook group, which we wanted to talk about today, or you've taken over the management of this Facebook group, and it's called affiliate ninjas. And I was pleasantly surprised to see that there were about 33,000 people joined to this. And this is a phenomenon that I've been looking at in terms of the theme of our podcast this season, which is affiliate marketing around the globe. And so I wanted to just start our conversation around how did this Facebook group grow? When was it started? And what are you seeing in terms of trends of people kind of joining the group to learn more about affiliate marketing?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I took over AM Ninjas in around about January, February time from Warren Wheeler, who initially formed it and did an incredible job at growing that. I think it's about four or five years old. And it literally grew. I've been a member there for about three years, and it's literally grown from very small numbers to huge, and it's just exploded. And I think a lot of the reason behind that is because there's you know there's no real sales there. It's not been produced to actually sell anything. It's not selling a course, it's not selling anything, it's just purely there to actually help share knowledge and encourage people to join and share knowledge as well. And I think that's obviously what's helped it massively grow in a short space of time. A lot of the members, all the moderators, they they don't get paid. It's all because they love affiliate marketing and sharing that knowledge and learning as well. And yeah, so it's just really growing from there. And I think that as probably six, seven years ago, affiliate marketing more of a shady business from the outside. And I think more like over the past five or so years, it's becoming more of a more mainstream, more people are getting into it. So therefore, there's more people wanting to learn. And obviously, the Facebook continues to grow, so more and more people using groups and whatnot.
SPEAKER_08And I think the other thing to think about for affiliate managers that might be listening's podcast today is the fact that everybody is a publisher. If you can use the social media channel, chances are you can learn how to harness the power of affiliate marketing within your community or to your your following, your social following. It doesn't surprise me that I see huge Facebook groups like this popping up where people are wanting to learn how to actually become affiliates. And I wanted to bring you on today to talk about it because we generally speak from the like sort of affiliate managers' perspective in terms of how to manage affiliates effectively. But I really wanted to bring somebody on the podcast who can talk from the other side of the coin. And this is why it was so interesting to connect with you. So, in this group that has established itself over the last kind of five, six years, what kinds of people are joining this group? Can you talk a little bit about some of your members and like that what channels are they looking to enter into as an affiliate and start learning how to affiliate with brands?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, sure. So it's quite an interesting group because it is so widespread on nationalities. And we've got 50% of the group is from the United States. Next is India, Bangladesh, the UK. So it's it's a big, it's people from around the world. And yeah, they generally join in, and I think kind of the stuff that they're doing is the a lot of them are the SEO type affiliates. So obviously creating content, um, creating niche sites through Amazon, things like that. And then obviously, we are getting more and more different types of affiliates, paid affiliates. We have a few social influencers, but that's that's uh a completely different ball game altogether. So, yeah, that's yeah, most of them tend to be SEO content-based affiliates.
SPEAKER_08And do they start with zero knowledge, or are you getting people that actually know how to build a website and then just want to finesse their skill set and learn from others in terms of what's working, what isn't? Or have you got a range of people that are joining this group?
SPEAKER_02I'd say it's probably 80% are new affiliates and 20% are established affiliates. So, yeah, there is a forker amount of newer affiliates that are joining. And I think that's quite I can see that in the more niche side as well. So the same with people that join more niche is we get obviously a lot more newer affiliates that are joining with less knowledge, and whether that's because the the entry level is low, we anyone can join really and and hopefully start learning and making sales.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, and do they tend to veer towards any particular vertical when new affiliates are starting out? Because I think this is important for affiliate managers to understand is that when they're dealing with partners that are joining their program, they're not always going to be dealing with somebody who is already an expert at being an affiliate. They might have to handhold some of these guys. And and this is really the sort of conversation that I wanted to have with you. What are the sort of key things that new affiliates need handholding with? And how how are you guys helping that journey along in terms of education, which you you touched on a little bit before?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think a lot of affiliates, a lot of them don't tend to have a necessary idea of what they want to promote. They will start, and I find a lot of affiliates get stuck at the whole picking a niche and actually knowing where they want to get started. It's obviously always push people to promote what you're interested in because you're going to find it a lot easier for your first website. It's almost like picking a product or an offer to promote is secondary once you actually have started your website and you know what you're actually promoting. My experience as an affiliate in joining a lot of other affiliate networks is that you don't tend to get that much help, you don't tend to get that much support. It's very much sign up here, here's your link, get all about it. Yeah, kind of thing. And I think that's something that a lot of affiliate networks are or programmers are actually missing out on because you know these affiliates, they're they're your sales force, they're your army of promoters. So you need to give them as much knowledge and as and help as possible, whether that is helping them build a website, giving them the training to actually be able to build a website, be able to do keyword research within more niche. We as affiliate managers, we actually do site audits, content audits, all of that stuff to try and grow their sales because ultimately the more you give an affiliate to generate sales, the more the yeah, biggest belief, really, because you think we're still operating to that old 8020 rule that has existed for the past goodness knows how long, which I totally dispel.
SPEAKER_08I don't believe in that methodology of managing an affiliate program any longer because of the fact that such diverse partners coming into our programs. We can't just rely on the SEO PPC guys anymore. Everybody is a publisher. So, how do you dispel your time? And I think that whole onboarding process is something that you just hit the nail on the head. It's not up to the affiliate to go live, it's up to the affiliate manager to actually help that affiliate go live. And that whole education piece is often something that's completely forgotten in programs. And if you're an affiliate manager listening to this podcast right now, do you have an onboarding lifecycle for your affiliates? If not, go and build it now, because you've just heard it from somebody who's got 20 odd years experience being an affiliate and also an affiliate manager. And he's saying the same thing that I've been saying. Next up, we caught up with Reversions Raj Nija, who's the CMO and a leading expert on affiliate marketing and has had an interesting career in this industry. Now I love talking to people who have a diverse background to discover how they entered this industry. So listen up for his backstory as it pertains to retail and e-commerce businesses, and then take a closer listen to the three performance types that you could work with in your affiliate program, as Pira Vida did in their ambassador program, which grew into a multi-million dollar referral business in the global marketplace.
SPEAKER_04Uh, took it through uh a buyout and IPO. Wow. Ran various, various things, but mostly product. After that, went to a company called YXT in New York for four years, took that company through an IPO, uh, and then ended up in e-commerce, worked with a company called Yachtbow, okay, which um, you know, we scaled up and it's about to go public as well. Uh and they do they, you know, I fell in love with e-commerce when I joined Yachtbo. And um, you know, I'm familiar with Shopify, I'm familiar with everything going on with direct to consumer and the movement towards direct to consumer and how performance marketing was changing. And um, you know, Refersion ended up being kind of uh serendipity for me. You know, I met the folks at Assembly that owned Refersion, end up meeting the founders of Refersion, and they're just like good people. And um, you know, I wanted to everything, every time I do something, I try something different. So affiliate marketing was one where, you know, I heard uh both sides of the fence, which is like it's great. Oh, it needs this, it needs that, which to me is always when people say that there's always opportunity. So Refersion was a way to not only create a new category for us, but then also educate the market on, you know, how e-commerce has modernized affiliate marketing. Yes. And how e-commerce brands of today that are on Shopify, BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, all our partners, how they're doing affiliate marketing and what derivatives they've created that are descendants of affiliate marketing. And uh basically uh a way for us, a way for me to at least create a new category and a brand around the modern version of affiliate marketing.
SPEAKER_08Now, one of the interesting case studies that I read on your website just before you popped onto this uh podcast today was about a brand called Pure Vida and I've spoken about them before and the fact that they've taken their affiliate program strategy and pivoted that to embrace their customers and as ambassadors. And I want to talk a little bit about the psychology behind dealing with ambassadors versus dealing with traditional publishers or affiliates. Um, talk us through like what PuraVida did and what their vision was and how that actually translated into incremental sales for their business because it really is an interesting case study. So I'd like to hear it from the horses mat, the people that helped them to do that. So talk about listeners through that kind of transition that Pure Vita did from pure performance to embracing ambassadors as part of their affiliate channel.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I'm a huge fan of Griffin. Griffin Thaul, who's the founder, co-founder of Ravida. I've been working with him since I was at Yaatpo too, and then when this first started. What I love about Griffin and their team is that once they pick a technology partner, they stick with them. They help them grow, they help them learn, they help them get better. They did that with Yappo, they did that with the Refersion. They've been a customer of Refersion for almost five, six years. Same thing with Yachtbo. So, what I love about them is that they think of technology partnerships as relationships.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And, you know, they have grown up and they've also helped the technologies grow up at the same time. So that's an outlook that not a lot of people share. And I I I wish that more people shared that in a market like this where everything is changing constantly. Think about how much we went through COVID. Yeah. Uh if you have a partner that can learn with you, grow with you, and make changes to help support your business, that first of all is a great trait of any type of founder.
SPEAKER_08That customization is often required in programs that want to scale and really embrace the channel because from even from a management perspective, from a program management perspective, yeah. I kind of want to tell people your affiliate tracking solution is for keeps. Like it's not just for Christmas. Okay. So you need to kind of get in there, get under the nuts and bolts of it because it really is the vehicle that drives your program and your relationships forward.
SPEAKER_04And I think what they did different is that they they committed to it, right? They committed to it. They they wanted to try out a bunch of different things and they had a technology partner that was willing to try it with them. You know, so you have somebody actively coding and helping out with features as the market is getting going through from nascent to more mature. You know, what I what I love about them is that, you know, they they really pioneered the concept of brand ambassador marketing and doing it at scale. And just for your audience, I want to really lay out what the three types of programs really mean because I think that we need a lot more transparency in this market about what is ambassador, what is influencer, what is affiliate.
SPEAKER_08And how to deal with each. Let's let's dig into that.
SPEAKER_04How I look at brand ambassadors are, you know, this is how you leverage grassroots evangelism and how you build a community of loyalists. And with brand ambassador programs, you can really keep your brand ambassadors motivated with things like store credit, cash, or merchandise rewards. It's not always commissions with these folks because they are so loyal to you that they'll be happy with some sort of credit, they'll be happy with some kind of swag, or just, you know, like 5% commission or 2% or 3% commission. It's one of the most scalable ways to grow because Pura Vita has 140,000 grand ambassadors on Reversion. Yeah. And we make it just damn simple for them to be able to manage them, get them into the system, manage them, and then track them. Imagine if you were to do that with a Google Sheet or Excel. It's just not possible. So they took basically their social following and the community that they built, and they decided to monetize it, but they did it in the right way. They really said, okay, we have a community of loyalists, but this is how we're going to monetize our reward them too. Now, other brands, they're like, okay, maybe that's not the right thing for us because community is not something that we're doing. We want to work with influencers, but let's really define influencers when you partner with like the megastars or uh professional creators, and they're maybe more relevant nano influencers or micro influencers. But the key thing they help you do is that they help you facilitate long-term and sustainable relationships. So what we're seeing less of in influencer marketing now is paper post. What we're seeing, the good brands how they're differentiating themselves from others, is that they're working with professional creators. And that's what they want to be called. They want to be called professional creators because this is their business, this is their livelihood. And they usually have a staff. They have somebody doing their edits, somebody doing photo shoots, somebody doing the campaigns. And these are legitimate businesses now. And they're they're working with brands on multiple campaigns, product launches. They usually do like six-month deals, 12-month deals. And the beauty of that is that you get to learn a brand, you get to espouse their values, you get to grow with them, you get to give them your feedback. And, you know, you're basically tied in to their performance as well. So that's how we see influencer marketing is basically the professional creators uh that are maybe huge reach or could be like 50,000 or 100,000 followers. Affiliate marketing, you know, pretty traditional. How we look at that is, you know, the PR, editorial promotions, uh, industry-specific blogs, like if it's health and wellness, it's a celebrity trainer. If it's food and beverage, it's a celebrity chef, or somebody that's just great at SEO and they have a great blog, right? But the point there is that, you know, you're rewarding the affiliates and the publishers with uh commissions and it's a different type of relationship, but those customers are largely in market because they're reading something very relevant. Ambassadors help you uh, you know, tap your existing market, tap your loyal market. It's a it's a great way to drive retention but monetize retention. Influencers, the professional creators help you really go after and go reach new audiences.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, finding the niches.
SPEAKER_04Affiliate marketers, the publishers of the world help you get people who are in market right now. Yes. Because they're reading something very relevant because they're what is, how is, why is, and it usually starts with the Google search. So that's how we look at all three of these. And what Pura Vita did was they came in and redefined ambassador marketing, where it used to be you'd go to a college, sign up a bunch of kids, they help promote you to anybody can be a brand ambassador now. You go to the Pura Vita website, you sign up, you're immediately an ambassador. Here's your kit. You can start promoting us, you can start getting paid, and you can get paid in bracelets, you can get paid in cash or store credit, right? And that was the beauty of it. And everybody's like, well, I don't have to be at a campus anymore to do get any of these benefits. Anybody can be a brand ambassador.
SPEAKER_08I also had the pleasure of talking to CJ's Linda O'Connell, who shared heaps of knowledge around affiliate marketing in the UK and Europe from her vantage point, having worked for one of the most established affiliate networks in the world. Take a quick listen here to how she's viewed affiliate marketing in this sector from her beginning in 2005 and how COVID also impacted the growth across multiple markets and how they are working with international brands to help them expand into other countries in Europe. Because this is quite an established and mature industry as far as affiliate marketing goes. I mean, I've been in it for 20 years now, and I think other regions around the world, which is what we're exploring in this podcast, are at different stages. But I wanted to get you on because you've kind of been there since the very beginning and you've seen the market mature, and you can share some of the insights and things that you've learned working with different clients around the world at CJ. But what markets are you seeing right now growing pretty fast where affiliate marketing is really making the leap forward around the world outside of where we are here in the UK?
SPEAKER_01You know, look, we obviously have tons of data across our network and we look at those trends, but it's amazing to see on the back of COVID just how the pandemic has accelerated that huge shift in online shopping in the past 18 months. So it's really helped to drive the affiliate channel, which I think we've all experienced across all markets, right? Even in kind of mature markets, which we've certainly seen across our network. We actually recently hosted our annual event, CJU, and our president Major spoke about as well how the pandemic has reset that growth of global e-commerce. And we spoke about the stats from eMarketer, right? They broke out that percentage change in e-commerce sales growth by region in 2020, and worldwide it grew by 28%.
SPEAKER_08Amazing.
SPEAKER_01But one of the largest growths was in Latin America, which is, you know, by over 37%. And we're seeing those similar trends, but also even parts of Europe like Eastern Europe, for CJ as a network, you know, we've seen that kind of sector um in parts of Europe, countries like Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland really significantly grow. We partner exclusively with diff networks, who are basically our CJ in Eastern Europe and have a very much dominant presence. So it's really amazing to see, you know, the affiliates, the publisher models, like your cashback vouchers, but also now it's expanding into some of those publisher models, your influencers, a content, you know, becoming quite prominent in advertising strategies, right? In the brand strategies. But also, I guess those kind of markets that are emerging are your Latin America, Asia Pacific. We're seeing progressively develop, certainly in regards to affiliate marketing and regions also that at CJ we've been investing in for quite a number of years. We created a dedicated publisher development team. They're focusing on helping a lot more of those publishers grow and educate them as well within those markets. I think mobile commerce is, you know, really heavily driven there as well. So ensuring that publishers have mobile optimized content if a brand is thinking about working with publishers there. You know, China that offers a huge opportunity, but it's quite dominant by those platforms like WeChat and getting in there as well. And it's also not just a matter of copying what's done in Europe and in the US. So you can't just do the same, right? In these markets, there's so much more of a complex culture differences and languages and local nuances. Like Southeast Asia is also another growth area that we've seen where there's affiliate marketing is certainly growing a lot more. And we're seeing a lot more growth of transactions. Productions and sales being driven a lot more from those regions and something that at CJ we're certainly supporting and enabling our brands and clients that are on the network to expand into those markets as well.
SPEAKER_08Let's talk about some myth busting stuff that you've learned over the years, because I love asking people that have been around the industry for a long time. What's one of the biggest myths that you've heard that you'd like to squash about affiliate marketing?
SPEAKER_01You could probably do a whole podcast on this topic, because there are so many myths and so many. I guess there's probably two, really, right? Because they're probably both the same. So the one is you cannot just set your affiliate program and let it run itself.
SPEAKER_08Set and forget does not work, people.
SPEAKER_01Oh man. And that's it's almost like your affiliate marketing is like an afterthought, especially for smaller businesses who potentially don't have the resource to properly manage it. So that's where you look for affiliate insider. We see a lot of agencies are absolutely primed to help them do that. We obviously have, you know, a market support and service as well within our network where we're helping those smaller markets, but you need to be able to invest in it and have a plan, help with those publisher relationships and really monitor it and have it as part of your overall marketing mix. So that's one of the myths, right? That some brands think, oh, I'll just set my affiliate program and all the publishers are going to come flocking. And no, I guess just one other myth is just about the affiliate marketing channel, you know, how it's not relevant, what's not taken seriously in a marketing mix, which I think we have come uh so far, certainly in the UK and I don't know within Europe, that it's just such a valuable channel. You know, it has to be part of your overall marketing mix. We've proved it's incremental, it's so cost effective, it's performance-based.
SPEAKER_08And yet there's so many CMOs out there that don't actually understand the value of this channel. And yet, most brands, if you look across like the industry, and I'm sure you've got way more data on this. And in gaming, sometimes 60% of their revenue comes through this model. And yet it is resourced with people that are inexperienced, ill-prepared, and don't actually know how to work the strategy behind the program. And that is why I started Affiliated Cider, because I was tired of seeing people that couldn't be trained, you know, that didn't have access to resources or training or expertise, and programs are failing because they were mismanaged, not for any other reason. Yeah. Not because of the price points, not because of the cost of technology, not because of anything, but because they're absolutely mismanaged.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, a hundred percent. And it's, I mean, this is why you and I and and so many other of our colleagues and peers in the industry are here because it's such a valuable channel. Like it's intended to meet consumer needs, just in a way that brands can't meet on their own, like that whole power of third-party endorsement almost. And it's certainly a key channel. And we are, to be honest, and I think you know, across everyone who's involved in the industry, we're all flying the affiliate flag, and we've seen certainly improvements definitely. And in a lot of the brands we're working with, they've invested and hired staff to focus on their affiliate activity, which is very rewarding and fantastic to see. So it just needs to keep going.
SPEAKER_08Next up, we explored some of the big emerging markets around the world and discovered key insights that brands should be aware of when trying to expand into new markets such as Latin America, Russia, and Central Eastern Europe, where the affiliate channel is not quite as advanced as it is in the UK and USA. And in terms of kind of understanding the local culture, because a lot of people will be listening to this podcast and they might be trying to get into the Russian market and they're not having much success because they're just missing the mark in terms of understanding how to take their brand into the local marketplace. But like I heard a rumor, and maybe you can myth bust this, that it's tradition for Russian affiliates to actually decline you, you know, once or twice before they actually say yes to working with you. So is that true? Is it a cultural thing? Can you kind of myth bust that for us and tell us if that's actually something, you know, as an affiliate manager, do you need to have thick skin to go into that uh that marketplace?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, you know, it's like uh there is a custom in uh invest in European countries to smile when you're uh approaching some people for some deal or so on. Well, it's not really the case in uh Russia or for Soviet countries.
SPEAKER_08There is no culture of smiling when you're first meeting people, and that can be a little bit off-pitting, especially if you're somebody like me who's always smiling, then you know it's kind of like, oh, does this person actually want to talk to me or not? So it's you know, it's just about understanding local culture and local customs.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, and uh if there is no smile, you need just to keep to the point and like show person that you uh maybe the value to his or her product, and yeah, you need to be well very strict to the point and strict to the deal and really short in uh phrases.
SPEAKER_08So you need to have like really perfected your elevator pitch. Why do you need to work with me? Why do you need to work with me right now? And why do I want to work with you and just get to the point, right?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. So cut all unimportant things, I would say so. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08And this is this is gold, really, because you know, when you're not used to dealing with a certain kind of person, you know, you your sales pitch can be incredibly important as making the connection with that affiliate. So I think it's really good that we talk about things like this on the podcast that um, you know, affiliate managers maybe don't have a lot of experience. They don't have a negative first encounter with affiliates that are maybe from Russia or Ukraine or some of the other parts of um Eastern Europe. So we spoke a little bit about like the common commonalities, understanding the culture, uh, getting to the point. So why you, why me, why now? Which is something that I often talk about a lot with affiliate managers who are doing outreach, um, which is probably one of the most difficult parts of being an affiliate manager, right? Is to go and get connections. But what about using things like Russian networks to actually build relationships with partners? So if you're going into the region cold, are there any like networks or platforms that you can start to sort of ease your way in and start building that brand awareness in the community there?
SPEAKER_06Uh yeah, of course, uh the there are a lot of uh affiliate networks and platforms and so on for that. But first you need to understand that they are cut quite a significant amount of your profits. Okay, and uh yeah, of course, you uh spare some time with their help, but if you are already established on the market, you save these profits for yourself, yeah. Yeah, and so you are more competitive, like compared to the products and operators that are using only affiliate networks. So you need to combine the approaches, and of course, uh on the start, you have to uh use the affiliate networks, but you uh need to strive to replace them to some extent at least with the direct relationships, yeah. Relationships, yeah, with affiliates.
SPEAKER_08More like a strategic approach, really.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, because uh sorry for interrupting. The really important thing is that a lot of really big affiliates they have the agreements already with the affiliate network. So when you go to affiliate network and you have a deal with the affiliate network, so so you will approach this affiliate only through affiliate networks. So the possibility to have a direct contact is uh for at least for some time is really closed for you. So you really need to search whether you can have a direct contact uh in order to save this profits for yourself.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, so that's quite interesting because here it's a free-for-all in the UK. You know, if you c if you happen to get a contact person and you can make a direct agreement, there's no like tie-in. Affiliates don't really work only through networks here. So that's that's actually quite a really important point for for people listening to this podcast to understand. There's kind of like business customs, there's also like customs in terms of you know who they partner with and how they partner with you and what they can and can't do. So I think that's really, really important. So let's talk a little bit about Lichanization for a minute because that has been a big theme in this series as we discover how cultural differences around the world impact affiliate relationships and program management. So you talk about all of these kind of markets that are either closely related or actually quite different. So what do brands and even you know affiliates who maybe want to talk at those regions? What what are the key things that they need to know about that kind of like area in Europe that really they need to understand and get under the bonnet of before they try and launch a campaign or you know, even a brand in those spaces? What are some of the key things that you can share with us in in the podcast today?
SPEAKER_03Well, the first most obvious thing is the translations that you need to speak the language of your customers. I mean, in most regions, I mean most of the people at least have some basic understanding of English. But when it comes to like, for example, in Czechia, it's a very competitive market, and if you don't have the web translated into Czech, nobody will have an interest to shop at your store because there is a plenty of the competition in uh Czechia. On for example, in Slovenia or Croatia, that's an interesting case because there are also even some stores shipping there and doing business even without having a localized version. Maybe because the market is so small that people just are used to shopping also from foreign stores. But on the other hand, it's not only about the translation as such, but also about understanding the local habits. For example, when you communicate online in Hungary, for example, you are not formal, you're not saying let's miss or misses or mr. whatever, you're just talking to people using their first name. There's like a little difference is when someone visits your page than if you are using, for example, formal ways to communicate, then Hungarians will see that you are not a local store, maybe. Or for example, in Romania, you should have a help desk, like people answering phones because uh many people are just browsing the net and then ordering through phone, like 10%.
SPEAKER_08Consumer behavior in terms of interacting with online, very different in each of these regions. And you know, brands that want to get in there, they need to make sure that they've actually got you know real live customer support, that the pure online model isn't actually going to be enough to convert their customer. What about brand trust? What about you know how people view English websites, for example? You you mentioned that some people are already shopping in foreign stores, but you know, is it necessary? Is it possible to use a network such as yourselves to actually launch your brand before you convert your site into the localized language?
SPEAKER_03There are some exceptions. We can cooperate even with English sites, but it's the conversion rate will be far below the average if it's not localized. So we can just give it a try. If you have a really great product that is nowhere else, then we can give it a try. But if it's a product that can be found like 10 different stores in the same market, then it's probably not going to work. So yeah, it's always about the product or service that you are offering, and based on that, we can start brainstorming whether it makes sense or not.
SPEAKER_08Talking about different types of affiliates, like what's the mobile infrastructure like across the different countries in Latin America? Are there big social network influences, for example, that partners should really go and look at? Because we know the affiliate markets is becoming extremely fragmented. It's not just about SEO affiliates or PPC affiliates anymore. It's now content curators that are, you know, doing uh videos, they're they're giving tips, they're using their social channels, their Instagram, their TikTok. Is that coming to the fore in Latin America as well? Are those the types of publishers and and content curators that brands should be looking at?
SPEAKER_07Absolutely, yes.
SPEAKER_08And what are the big kind of social channels in Latin America that you would kind of start with? Is it the same as here in in EU, like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter even? Or are there other channels that people are using that maybe we don't know about yet?
SPEAKER_07Instagram. Instagram is the main one, YouTube, both of them. Instagram and YouTube, I would say. And they love the video building, they love it.
SPEAKER_08Okay, so that's really good advice is to actually, you know, kind of back the trend. Obviously, bring in your contenus, your Excel medias, your big better connected type um affiliates who have that SEO footprint, but start looking at the smaller ambassador type publishers and start building those relationships. That's really a good niche for brands who want to enter that market to build that affinity because they can bring those entrepreneurs into their business at an early grassroots stage and help them to actually grow their businesses as well, which is quite interesting because you know everybody wants to chase the traffic, but actually you need to chase the relationships, which is ultimately what affiliate marketing always boils down to. It's finding those, you know, niche relationships that you can leverage to then grow your other digital channels.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, exactly. I I can tell you for it, for instance, in in Brazil, there are two main players when it comes to affiliation, you know, one is A group and the other one is super affiliated. And why? Because they are local and they were affiliates before.
SPEAKER_08Yes, I remember with Arium way back, like 10-15 years ago almost. So absolutely agree with that.
SPEAKER_07So, what are they doing? They are doing partnership with all the influencers, they get some exclusivity, they are very smart, so they have a huge network and they act as a master of things. And also, one of them, hey Boom, they has their own payment methods. And how they build this was by teaching the players how to open an account, how to even get the device, you know. It was very, very close relationship with them until they grow. Now they grow a lot and it's different, you know. But this is how they start, these are the beginnings, you know. That maybe might happen in Peru as well, or Chile, or even Mexico. In Mexico, I will say in Leon Starry World, it's a population of 128 million of people, and still it's mainly offline TV, radio, SMS. What is happening with affiliation? Some of them, even they don't have an affiliate tool. Wow, okay. And when they have, they don't know how to use it. There's no leader for that, you know.
SPEAKER_08So in our way, we'll we'll tell them how to use it. It sounds like such an interesting region. And I'm glad that we've had you on this podcast to actually talk a little bit more in depth about it. Because on this side of the pond, we're hearing, oh, it's it's the new kind of golden nugget, go and invest in Latin America. But do so with caution because there's a lot of stuff that you need to know to actually get it right. And you know, I think often people are gone ho and they want to spend their money and you know they might have huge budgets, but this is a region that budget isn't going to help you with. It really is about being clever about your marketing and about really reaching into the community and building those grassroots relationships with all the various publishers that you can kind of work with. And and I use the term publisher in a very broad aspect because I think affiliate is a bit of an archaic term now. You know, kind of when you think affiliate, you think BBC, SEO, and actually publishers are everybody now. Anybody with a social media channel and a community of people that are following them is potentially an affiliate for you to work with. One of the other things I just wanted to touch on in Latin America, if you could give us some more of your time, is just the kind of infrastructure, you know. Like, are certain countries more predisposed to desktop, to mobile, or is everybody mobile friendly? Like, what's what's the kind of channel that brands need to be thinking about when they're going to the different regions?
SPEAKER_07Well, I tell you, internet penetration in Latin America, in this main region that we are talking, like Brazil, Chile, Peru, Mexico, internet is quite high between 75 to 85, different if we talk about Ecuador, Venezuela, or other regions. But when it comes to mobile, it's 95%.
SPEAKER_08So Wow, such a lot of information we shed in this season. And that's just for starters. So if you want to learn more about affiliate marketing around the world, take a look at the podcast episodes from season six. Go back and listen to some of the top pieces of advice in each country episode, and tune in next week for more insights as we cover off the remaining episodes that made up this fabulous season in the week to come. From all of us here at Affiliate Insider, we wish you the very merriest of Christmases and seasons greetings to one and all.
SPEAKER_05And that's a wrap for this week's Affiliate Insider, Affiliate Marketing Podcast. If you're loving what we're putting down in the series, head on over to Apple iTunes and give us a five-star rating and subscribe to our podcast channel so you never miss another insightful episode. Tune in next week for more digital marketing insights and traffic driving tips, tricks, and strategies to keep your digital marketing request and your affiliate program driving consistent sales.