Hi, and welcome to the Affiliate Insider Podcast with me, Leanne Johnston. 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 scoop 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.
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SPEAKER_01Welcome back to the Affiliate Insider Affiliate Marketing Podcast with me, your host, Leanne Johnston. Now, if you've never met me, you probably won't know that I'm a big believer in the power of new beginnings and fresh starts. I often talk about this as a way to reset targets and KPIs in affiliate programs. And this year I wanted to kick off the opening of season six of the affiliate marketing podcast talking about just that. I want you to take a moment and take some time out with me to reflect on the year that has been and to listen in close as I share some of the quite personal things that I've learned during 2021 in the hopes that maybe they might just help you to consider how your affiliate programs and digital marketing strategies should help your business growth in the year ahead. There's no doubt that 2021 was a year of challenges. It felt literally relentless. And yet there were moments of joy and gratitude thrown in there too. The pandemic gave us a lot of new perspectives about what we wanted to achieve and also how we wanted to grow our partnerships and business relationships, and also where and how we wanted to work and spend our time. For me, I wanted to just take a moment and reflect on the year that has been and what I've learned before we kickstart the stellar lineup that we have planned for you in season six, as well as discuss exactly how you can amplify your performance in the year ahead. This week, I'm sharing my new year reflections with you, and I hope that it gives you a fresh perspective to go and start a few new beginnings of your own with your business, with your partners, and your working relationships too. Point number one for me was that the pandemic gave me a very new perspective on what working really should mean. Work and home seemed to meld into one at times during lockdown, and that impacted every aspect of my life. And that had implications on my team and our plans and what we had originally set out to achieve. I learned not to value the number of hours worked, but the outcomes achieved by the hours spent on the projects that we delivered. When you forget about the numbers and you focus on the results, there's a kind of magic that tends to happen. It's not about the number of campaigns or the number of affiliates that you have in your portfolio, or even the number of conversations and outreach that you have each week. It's about the conversation and the conversion that you get from engaging with one another online and how those conversations deliver into KPIs that count. As an entrepreneur, I realized I didn't have to do it all. And I didn't have to do it all the time. Despite some of the hardest and meanest times of the past year, when working together as a team, you can take greater strides to get closer to your goals. And during COVID, I really had to rely heavily on my team as my focus was required elsewhere whilst homeschooling my son. I know some of you are going to be able to identify with this, but it really did force my perception to change about what my work-life balance was. And it also changed my perspective on what I value work to mean. Work is the good deeds that we deliver in action and not the hours that we spend behind a desk toiling away trying to look busy. It's important to put your actions into perspective when you're looking to achieve new goals, to get clarity on what is needed and to discover what can be delegated and what ultimately can be ditched based on the value it delivers overall. And when you think about this and you apply it to your affiliate programs, I think that you'll start to see how you can simplify the actions you take each week or month and start to deliver more performance with the partners that you're working with over time too. The second points I wanted to share is that everyone is going through something even when they aren't talking about it. Nothing is ever quite perfect, even if it appears that way from the outside. And this was a year that made me question everything. This year was a year that made me learn about workplace resilience. It was also the hardest year I've had to have in business as an entrepreneur. The point is you don't really know what your clients' partners or affiliates may be going through. And if you don't make a point to actively talk about these things that are going wrong or not happening or aren't on point or going to plan, you're going to miss out on opportunities to fix them and to make things a little bit better. This past year, I learned to stop and ask the right questions of our clients, of our staff, and of our partners. And when I asked those questions, I could better understand how to get the right results. Sometimes taking a human approach to management, both in terms of your team and your partners or suppliers, can go a long way to getting better results versus trading relationships that maybe aren't working effectively to seek out new partnerships that need to begin from the start again. Understanding compassionately and with empathy can deliver increased performance all round, but you have to be willing to listen and collaborate and effect positive change through taking actions together. The third point that I learned was that growth is not an upward trajectory. Sometimes you have to let things take root and allow yourself to grow out before you think about growing up. And this is probably something that's quite personal to me. We started last year with having to pivot exactly how we deliver our services from offline to online. And we had to think about how we could achieve the best outcomes by utilizing our resources and expertise to give our clients the best support and the right results. This meant we were adapting and learning on the fly. And that impacted our revenue objectives as we had to deviate from our proposed plan to build something new and test it out at the same time. And it was incredibly hard. We went from being a consultative agency to being a fast-growing media and training company, whilst still focusing on what we do best, which is affiliate marketing. The same can be said for your affiliate program. If you're launching out and you need to let your program take seed, this generally takes between six and nine months to deliver, where growth and relationships need to bed in and you need to take stock of various traffic sources and test how they work for your business and your brands. Affiliate marketing is not a short-term solution. It's a long-term game plan. And it's not like paid in media where you turn a switch on and sales start to trickle in. The point is you need to look at growth and not in a linear line, but in how you expand your performance and what projects you can deliver and achieve over the course of time that you're assessing. It's vitally important that you are at the right stage in your business to open an affiliate program. Too soon and you could fail. Too late and you could miss the opportunity. So getting expert help is incredibly important at this juncture. The fourth thing that I learned in reflecting on the last year was following this point, I learned that we could do less and enjoy the value of our community more. We realized people came to Affiliate Insider for the content that we produce and the value that serves them as a community. This led us to launch our two-day Affiliate Insider Amplify Summit, which is taking place in just a few short weeks in January. We've had such an overwhelming response to this event that our second Elevate Summit is already being planned for the 14th and 15th of June. We have a network of experts in our community that we can leverage with insights that can help our community members to grow faster. By helping to elevate those around us, we improve the industry as a whole. And this is what we originally set out to achieve as a business. I discovered that I could do less, but could get better ROI. And I think that this is something that affiliate managers can learn from too. You don't have to be at every event. You don't have to run a promotion every month, and you don't need to be working with every single affiliate in the universe. But you do need to have a purpose behind the campaigns and the strategies that you are participating in. And when you find that balance, some really beautiful things can happen. The fifth point that I wanted to share with you as I reflect on the year that was is that I followed the data. Currently, 84% of brands now leverage the power of affiliate marketing. The point is that I exist to evangelize the 19% that are still learning. I learned that affiliate marketing is something I'm not likely to fall out of love with anytime soon. Yes, it's changing fast. And yes, we are learning exactly how to model it in every client we meet and serve. But it's something that I feel so passionate about, and I'm now dedicating my livelihood to serve. There are some number of resources and stats around why affiliate marketing is showing no signs of slowing, and a massive opportunity for brands to leverage this better in their organizations. It's this knowledge that has helped me to determine exactly where and how affiliate insider will be stepping up to meet demand and serve our community better, to do that too in the year ahead, through our media, through this very podcast that you're listening to right now, through our live learning events, and via our agency services. The sixth point that I learned, which is probably one of the most important, is that consistency is key to successful affiliate marketing. There really are no shortcuts to success. And affiliate marketing takes an enormous amount of effort and time to get just right. In this past year, we've discovered who we are as an agency and the kind of people and brands that we work with best. Through delivering a consistent strategic approach to growth, we were able to impact many brands and help them grow significantly over the past 12 months. But it meant our clients had to trust that we had the best interests at heart and that they had to also let go and let us do what we do best. And the reason why this point is so important for anybody listening is that sometimes we try to overmanage our affiliate partners instead of trusting to let them deliver the results and the activity that we know they should be delivering for our business. So think about giving your affiliates a little bit of scope and think about letting them run a little bit freer in order to deliver the quantity and quality of customers and players that you need and want for your business. The seventh thing that I learned is that it's the little things that truly make me happy. I learned how to be happy with the little wins. For too long, I'd been so focused in growing big programs, driving big businesses, and I'd forgotten about what truly makes me happy. And that's really the why behind what started Affiliate Insider. Why did I leave my vice president role at a big blue chip company three years ago to start my own business? Was a question that I've asked myself a few times over the past year. I wanted to help people achieve their revenue goals. I wanted to teach and show others exactly what they can do to grow their affiliate programs. And I wanted to deliver results from value-driven partnerships and to share the knowledge that I've learned over the past two decades, building successful affiliate programs around the globe. I wanted to build a business that I enjoy waking up to and being in every single day. And I wanted to be working with people that are as passionate about the subject as I am. It really is that simple. You'll have heard me say that entrepreneurship isn't for the fainter part. And you travel an only road and you get easily off track chasing goals that aren't necessarily making you happy. This year, we stopped all of that. We refocused doing just what we do best. We adjusted to enjoy the journey and appreciated the small individual wins. A chart-topping podcast, a 10,000-strong community of targeted publishers and marketers, and around three agency award wins later. And a massive thank you to all of you who tune in, turn up, and refer us to your communities. We appreciate and are incredibly thankful for the value and support that our extended community has brought to us over this past year. The eighth point that I wanted to share with you is what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. We all have challenges and we have all had to weather the storms in our lives. The saying, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, rings true for me as I reflect on the year that was. The same can be said about your marketing and your affiliate strategies. This was a year of digging deep, a year when everything changed, and we all had to roll with punches. We had to figure out what our customers needed and wanted, and we had to deliver programs, tools, and products to meet these new demands and trends as they were happening around the world in quite an uncertain time. The moral of the story and the year that was is that I learned what doesn't kill me only made me stronger. From losing clients overnight as markets shut down due to the impact of the pandemic, to building a whole new infrastructure for our content side. Resilience is a key part of running an affiliate business, and affiliate managers can do well to remember that. I want to encourage you guys to dig deeper into your relationships with your partners as you face the year ahead. Find the niches of value that they bring to your business. Be brave, be bold. When things go wrong, learn from them, just like everybody else is doing. Things may never be perfect, but so long as you keep learning, you will only build a stronger base to grow from. The ninth point that I wanted to share with you guys today is that I realize the value of social selling and being authentic. If you have been following me over the past few months, you'll know that I only profess to hang out on LinkedIn. You won't find me posting pics of myself or my work or my travels on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. I mean, if you're lucky enough to be a member of mine on these platforms, that's great. But you're in for a heck of a boring ride because I think the last time I tweeted or posted on any of these channels was at least a week ago now. If you've met me in person, you'll know that I'm all about people engagement. I absolutely love talking to people and sharing information. And without physical events, over these past few years, I've really suffered for the lack of in-person networking. But why did I do this? Why did I focus just on one channel? I made a conscious decision at the start of the year to invest all of my time, all of my knowledge, and all of the information into one social platform to build my following. I wanted one place where I could be contacted and be connected to my potential customers, partners, clients, friends. And I'm happy to say that it worked. This was also in line with my philosophy of learning to do less, but enjoying what I do more. Being accessible is a big part of building relationships in this industry. And it's something that I feel really counts when running a business. If you want to engage with me, head on over to LinkedIn. In focusing in my content and energy in just one place, I've not only learned a lot about myself, but I've also been able to build a lot of our business referrals 100% organically too. Being present consistently in one place also brings people to you, and that expends a lot less energy than outbound corporate or outbound marketing, which also sometimes has a poorer response rate. Think about this when you're building your affiliate program promotions and how your team can be reflected as ambassadors for your brand. Think about how you can utilize your social channels to build engagements with your audience, with your partners, with your publishers, and think about how you can do that consistently and authentically with them too. And now for my last point, as I wrap up the year that was and reflect on the things that we've learned. My last point is to say that when the chips are down, you really do want to have the right people sitting at your table. Truthfully, I'm so grateful for the people who have stepped up for me this year and the people that have helped us to navigate through the hard times to deliver incredible growth under the most strenuous of circumstances. Without these people who support everything I do, none of this would actually be possible. I'm grateful for learning how to make the right people decisions. Something that I've spoken about in the lessons that I shared from the year before. And you can listen to that podcast episode if it's all back on our website. Investing in your people is the best decision that you can make for your business, for your affiliate program, and for your continued growth. To my incredible agency and marketing team who quite literally knocked it out of the park each and every month, under immense pressure and with the leadership of Liana Klein to support, to our content team and design team over at Digital Footprints, who reconstructed our infrastructure into the site you see today, and who have supported the growth since the very beginning when Affiliate Insider started. And to our amazing podcast crew led by Jason Allen Scott from a podcast company who took a seedling idea into a chart-topping podcast reaching 15 countries no less. I'm glad to have had you all beside me at this table. And finally, to you, our listeners, our partners, our clients, and our extended community of friends and colleagues, I want to thank you for sharing in the journey of Affiliate Insider, for advising when I sought counsel, and for supporting us to stand tall and excited to face the year ahead. You know who you are. Thanks for tuning into this episode and allowing me to reflect on the year that was. I hope you will find some of these points useful and that we will eventually get to meet in person as the year ahead begins. I've got so much planned to share with you, starting at our affiliate insider Amplify Summit in January, which is now a virtual event and going to be hosted with a number of industry experts who are ready to share their knowledge and expertise and help your affiliate and performance marketing campaigns grow. Tickets are free so you can register now, and we look forward to seeing you there and hope that you don't miss it. For now, let me thank you again for listening to this episode. And if you liked what we've shared thus far, subscribe and give us a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify, and you'll never miss a week of insight and affiliate marketing discussions again. My very best wishes to all of you who are tuning in each week, who are following our content and who are being an active member in our community. We value and appreciate you, and we wish you a very happy new year ahead. There's plenty of good things to come.
SPEAKER_02And that's a wrap for this week's Affiliate Insider, Affiliate Marketing Podcast. If you're loving what we're putting down in this series, head on over to Apple iTunes and give us a fight on the rating and subscribe to our podcast channel so you never miss another insightful episode. Tune in next week for more digital marketing insightful traffic driving trades and traffic digital marketing traffic and your affiliate program driving consistent sales.