In fact, imagine 5,000 marketers willing to risk their own money to promote your product.
It's hard to think of a better scaling strategy than a well-designed affiliate program.
Here are four undeniable reasons why:
REASON #1: Reach the four corners of the inter-webs.
Your company might handle advertising on Facebook and Google, maybe a few others....
But what about the other thousands of ad platforms out there? TikTok, LinkedIn, Quora, Twitter, Pinterest, PropellerAds, push advertising... the list goes on...
What about influencer marketing? How many influencers can your marketing team work with at the same time? How many influencers can you pay in advance in hopes of getting any results?
An army of motivated affiliates can double, quadruple, or even quintuple your workforce – all without having to pay for it.
REASON #2: The most creative brains at your service, free of charge.
No campaign manager will ever work as hard for you as someone who is only getting paid for results. PERIOD.
Affiliates are hustlers. They don't clock out at 5 p.m. They grind out that extra hour, won't go to sleep until they get "just one more ad" live, and test that extra angle your team was too busy to try out.
REASON #3: TESTING IS EXPENSIVE.
Testing a new ad, campaign, or advertising platform - all require allocating a testing budget.
Ideally, you want to invest at least 5x your CPA to find out if your hypothesis was correct.
If it's a split test? Double that budget.
Multivariate test? Double again (at least once).
Investing in failed ads is OK; you're not losing money, you're investing in intelligence and buying data.
However, you need to be able to afford that cash flow until you meet your ROAS goal.
Now imagine...
5,000 marketers, each with a $500 test budget - all willing to invest that money and spend their time analyzing the results for you, without getting paid a penny - unless they make you money*.
*This is a good time to note that you don't have to feel bad for them! they are professionals who know what they are doing. They know they will reap the benefits when it works out.
REASON #4: LESS RISK, MORE CERTAINTY.
Traditionally within media buying and advertising, one spends their initial budget testing ads and optimizing their offer.
Once your R.O.A.S target is hit, every day is a gamble: Will your Facebook ads generate the same R.O.A.S. tomorrow? The next day? Next month?
Moreover, the longer the funnel or time to purchase, the riskier the gamble.
Paying in advance for advertising, media, creatives, copywriting etc., is the norm, but with an affiliate army at your disposal you have two brilliant advantages:
1. Pay only for work that generates results.
2. Pay only after the results are in; you only pay after you get the money.
"What if I'm paying for leads / sign-ups and not for sales?"
This is a valid question. You still have the benefit of predefining what qualifies as a lead or a signup, so you only pay for those you feel comfortable paying for.
There is also the benefit of knowing exactly how much you're paying for each lead rather than learning how much your cost per lead was yesterday on your Facebook campaign.
"SOUNDS AMAZING!
SIGN ME UP!!" 🖋️
Well not so fast...
There are tons of benefits to running an affiliate program, but let's not pretend it's a magic button that lines up marketers and influencers offering up their time, media, and money for the promise of a big pay day.
YOUR SIDE OF THE BARGAIN:
Here are a few things that will make or break your affiliate program (and how we can help with each one):
THING #1: The right affiliates.
There are so many types of affiliates: publishers, website owners, bloggers, influencers, marketers, community managers, PPC campaigners… the list is endless.
Some of these affiliates specialize in your niche. Some affiliates specialize in being the best possible performance marketers.
All of them need to have high standards and integrity, and they should all be excited to work with you.
THING #2: The right offer.
We need to make sure you're presenting your affiliates with an irresistible offer that works for them.
Affiliates are like investors (except they get no equity); they have tons of opportunities, and they need to hedge their bets.
There are many ways to structure your offer to make it an easy choice for affiliates to accept, and to reduce their risk.
THING #3: Great affiliate experience
In recent years, CX (customer experience) has been king, and affiliates are no different from any other customer.
A good affiliate has a lot of options at their fingertips: hundreds of thousands of affiliate programs, networks, offers, and products to promote.
Your affiliate program should offer a great experience. It should be attractive, easy to get into, and fun to be involved in.
When your top affiliate wakes up in the morning, affiliate experience (AX) will be the one thing that determines whether they will start their day working on getting you sales, or prioritize something else.
Your affiliates should enjoy working with you, and feel respected and appreciated for their time, effort, and risk.
AX starts with recruitment and continues through the onboarding process.
How steep is the learning curve? How easy is it to use your program's UX?How responsive your customer support or affiliate management teams?
THING #4: Your Tech Stack
At the heart of your affiliate program is your tracking software. You need a platform that easily gives you the data you need and gives you peace of mind in terms of uptime, accuracy, and fraud detection.
Since we've mentioned AX, your platform should offer affiliates and partners a smooth experience that makes their life easy such as:
- Quick onboarding and short learning curve
- Quick and easy access to relevant data and their stats
- Clarity
- Easy access to marketing materials
...and of course, trust and transparency are crucial.
Affiliates are working hard for us and taking a risk; the least we can do is provide the best tools to make their jobs easier.
"What else…?"
On top of your tracking platform, you will likely want other tracking solutions, integrations, and CRO tools.
THING #5: Law & Order.
Affiliates can be unruly. If you follow THING #1 and get the right affiliates, you can reduce this problem by up to 90%. You still need very clear rules and guidelines, and you need to make sure they are being followed to the T.
As they say, ‘prevention is better than cure’, and if you approach your approach as the "affiliate police" is to "catch" affiliates when they are "misbehaving", you're always going to be playing cat and mouse.
If you adopt a "serve and protect" attitude, you'll notice affiliates will come to you with ideas and dilemmas, and ask for your permission. This will help you avoid a lot of the issues that people run into. That being said, fraud detection, and continuous monitoring by a professional are crucial.
THING #6: Maintenance.
Affiliates need to be motivated, managed, and – most importantly – led.
We make sure our affiliates are communicative, motivated, and committed to goals and results. Additionally, we ensure that they are always up to date on the best techniques, traffic sources, and methods for promoting your offer.
Affiliates are your brand ambassadors. By keeping them excited and igniting their imaginations, they will be motivated to work hard and make an impact.
"OK, NOW THAT SOUNDS LIKE A LOT OF WORK…"
Yeah, it can be.
However, it also sounds like a lot of fun - at least it does for us! So why not let us do it for you?
LET US GET YOU THE HUNGRIEST AFFILIATES OUT THERE!
We'd love to design, build, and manage your affiliate program for or with you. Alternatively, we can offer our expertise through consulting packages to help you identify issues and/or opportunities in your program.
Here's a quick overview of our process (of which you might only need certain parts):
OUR PROCESS.
STEP #1: Recon.
We want to know your product inside out. We want to know who your customer is, and why. We want to know your business model, your margins, your challenges...You get the picture. We want to know everything so we can come up with a strategy, a timeline, and goals for your program.
STEP #2: Funnel Optimization & Testing.
Here's the thing: if you let affiliates run traffic to a suboptimal marketing funnel or website, they will not stick around for long.
Remember - affiliates are only earning a fraction of your revenue/profit. They are counting on outperforming your marketing in order to make a profit.
The least you can do is to make sure your offer is optimized and ready for high volumes of traffic.
During this step we'll be working directly with your marketing and/or sales team. Alternatively, we can offer copywriting, conversion rate optimization, and other services to make sure your funnel is performing the best it can.
During this step, we'll also potentially run paid ad campaigns for you, to make sure the offer is solid, provide tested marketing materials for your affiliates to get them started, and help ignite your affiliates' creativity.
STEP #3: Tech.
Once we have the strategy in place, we want to build the best tech stack for your program. This will consist of tracking software, a partner/affiliate portal, and any additional software we determine may be needed to execute the strategy.
Depending on your current tech stack and workflows, we'll need to spend some time implementing and integrating everything so that traffic, leads, and sales are accurately reported.
In some cases, we might offer complex solutions and API-based integrations that most platforms do not offer straight out of the box.
We'll work directly with your development team at this stage (or offer development services if needed), as well as any other relevant persons in your organization - campaigners, marketers, sales team, data analysts, and so on.
This part can be excruciating, so we aim to remove as much of the headache as possible for you.
Once we're done, your business will enjoy a higher level of clarity when it comes to your marketing numbers, KPIs, and overall performance.
STEP #4: Recruiting & Onboarding.
Now that your affiliate program is ready to welcome new affiliates, we'll start identifying, reaching out to, and recruiting relevant affiliates for your program.
We'll design the best possible onboarding process to maximize the potential of each affiliate and get them activated as quickly as possible.
STEP #5: Management, Education & Motivation.
This ongoing step is where we make sure affiliates stay motivated, keep trying, continue making moves, and pursue calculated risks.
We want to keep them happy and engaged. We want your program to be the center of their world.
We also invest in education to keep your affiliates up to date with new techniques, ideas, angles, and even ready-made marketing materials to spark their creativity and kickstart their campaigns.
While new affiliates will be trained, top affiliates will be contacted on a weekly or monthly basis in order to set goals.
We can also utilize other methods of incentivizing and motivating like contests, leaderboards, time-limited promotions, and webinars.
OUR EXPERIENCE:
Hungry Consultants is a micro-agency operated by Maytal & Adam Tal. We started out in 2009 as successful affiliate marketers, followed by a decade of consulting, marketing, and entrepreneurship.
We've worked with some of the top companies, brands, and ad agencies in Israel. We’ve helped startups grow and get acquired, founded the biggest affiliate network in Israel, and launched a training program company with over 21,000 students.
Our expertise goes well beyond marketing. Through our hands-on approach as entrepreneurs we've gained expertise in development, UI/UX, CX, marketing, copywriting, PPC, email marketing, management, legal, business models, outsourcing and so much more...
It would be a pleasure for us to let you benefit from all this experience. Otherwise it's been for nothing... right? :)
LET'S GET YOUR AFFILIATE PROGRAM STARTED TODAY:
Contact us now and let's talk about your affiliate program.