Liz Nable 0:00
In today's episode of the podcast, we're delving into the wonderful and often mysterious world of affiliate marketing with a return guest to the podcast, print journalist, editor, and affiliate marketing expert Ali Izzo. Now, first things first, if this is a whole new world to you, you are not alone because affiliate marketing is not my wheelhouse either. But stay tuned because by episodes in, you're going to be halfway to expert status, and you can complete your am degree and start making a tonne of cash with our special 60 minute affiliate marketing masterclass with Ali on the 17th of November. So stay tuned until the end for those details. Before we move on, want me to explain what the heck affiliate marketing is? Okay, here we go. Affiliate marketing is a performance marketing channel, where brands pay for customer acquisition by partnering with influencers or affiliates who promote their products. Building part of your business on personal brand based on an affiliate marketing programme is also statistically more likely to get your product or service featured in the media in areas like product reviews or recommendations. How because journalists are incentivized to include affiliate links in their stories, as it brings in extra revenue stream for the business and helps them meet their KPIs. Affiliate marketing isn't just about making money. It's also about forging valuable relationships, creating authentic content and delivering value to your audience. As a media professional with 20 years of experience working in women's lifestyle titles, and a special interest in fashion, beauty and health, there is no one better place to take us behind the scenes of the affiliate marketing industry like Ali. Ali has worked at Elle cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar Jones, stellar and body and soul and also dipped her toes into the world of producing and hosting podcasts with healthy ish. She is now the head of Digital Strategy at our media, sitting across iconic titles like the Australian women's weekly, Marie Claire, Gourmet Traveller Home Beautiful and Who magazine. We're going to delve into Ali's strategies, experiences and the proven methods to make affiliate marketing work for your business, and learn all about how small businesses and personal brands can create an additional revenue stream and make money while they sleep. Hello, I'm Liz navel, and you're listening to enable my business, the podcast. When I first started in small business almost 10 years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. You see, my background was in the media. I had spent 15 years as a television news journalist and reporter working at several major networks in Australia. And then as a freelancer in the US and around the world. I spent years dividing my time between working long shifts on a news desk and travelling the world chasing stories. It was unpredictable and exciting. Until it wasn't anymore. I decided I wanted a life where I was in charge of what happened next. And where I was working to build my own empire, not someone else's. I also never wanted to work a midnight new shift again. Now, I don't have to. There was a lot I had to learn about running my own business. But one thing I already had in the bag was how to get media coverage and free PR. I knew what the media wanted. I knew the secret formula for what made us and I knew how to leverage those organisations to build my business, get more exposure, and ultimately make more sales. During my decade of building my business, I have managed to get featured in almost every major news outlet in the country. I've been interviewed on television countless times had personal profiles written up in women's magazines, done point of view pieces, large newspapers, and be listed in top 100 List women in business and in my industry. And I've never spent a single cent on PR. I took that knowledge for granted until it dawned on me one day that I could teach what I knew to other businesses, let them in on the secret and they too could build their businesses, leveraging the media and gaining free PR. They could use my insights in the industry and my behind the scenes experience and take their business from Best Kept Secret to well known brand simply by following my formula. Welcome to enable my business the podcast. Good morning Alia. Welcome back to the podcast for the second time.
Speaker 2 4:40
Good morning. I feel very I feel very special to be asked back again. Yeah,
Liz Nable 4:44
well, it's an absolute pleasure to have you because you are about to educate me, as well as everyone who listens to this podcast about all things affiliate marketing, which sounds kind of salesy and not really anything to do with PR but as I am learning Very quickly, it's such a huge area of opportunity for this community particularly and anyone kind of looking to find other clever ways to get coverage and get PR. Is that
Speaker 2 5:13
right? Yeah, absolutely. You got it in one. I think that is definitely a lever to pull and more and more. I think it is changing the way in which mastheads, and journalists even approach stories about products. So I think understanding that back, that backstory there in terms of how sort of the way in which content is created, how it's considered what actually gets prioritised in terms of landing that product feature or being included within an edit of things is really important. But there's also another side in which it can be used personally from it's sort of a more of an influencer, influencer to follow a kind of ways as well. So as a brand owner, I think, even if you're not at the scale to kind of jump into high performance marketing, which that is what affiliate marketing is called a performance marketing because you need to sort of spend money to make money in that way. Even if you're not at that stage in terms of sophistication or or long or scale of your business. I think even understanding how it works, and understanding the inroads to that is still really important and really can be really beneficial.
Liz Nable 6:21
Okay, so first things first, what is affiliate marketing? Okay, yeah, beginning.
Speaker 2 6:32
So affiliate marketing is basically it's a performance marketing channel, which means it's, it's if you're a marketing manager, for a brand, this is one of the things that you can spend your money on to get more customers, essentially, you are paying for customer acquisition. That's the underlying lining sort of purpose of this is that brands or retailers, by and large, this is mostly how it works. brands and retailers want more customers in the door. And this is a way in which they can find those customers. And the basically, they give away a percentage of the final basket price, or the recommended retail of whatever the product is, it might be 2%, or it might be 20%. But they will give that to a third party affiliate network, who will go out there and get them human beings, people who are interested in in whatever it is and, and put their products in front of them. So it's a way in which you can get more, you know, traffic to your website, it means you can get more customers to your signup, you know, your EDM base, you can get more people landing on product pages on your website, who are actually wanting to be there to shop, they have intent. So that's why the performance marketing, because you pay for that in a way you pay for it, because you're giving away a commission on that final basket case. But you know, it's worth it because you're still getting more money in the door and more customers in the door. That's the underlying kind of purpose of affiliate marketing. Okay,
Liz Nable 7:58
so I'm a very visual person. So can you give me an example of affiliate marketing in the real world?
Speaker 2 8:04
Totally. So the way in which it plays out, and this is still relatively new in Australia, when I say new, I mean, most big publishers have been doing it at scale for a couple of years now. But it's not as sophisticated or hasn't been around or established as it is in say, America or even the UK and Europe. But how it usually happens is an affiliate network. They're the they're the party in the middle, right? They're the one making this this happen. They might go to the iconic and say, hey, the iconic Would you like some more customers? We can get you more eyeballs more people to your website who want to shop to buy your products? The mechanic will say yes, I definitely do. Then the affiliate network will go to a publisher, someone with a large audience, someone with an audience who's interested in shopping someone with an audience interested in, say, fashion and beauty. And they'll say, Hey, would you like to earn some money from your audience? Would you like to commercialise and monetize your content in a way that still serves your audience's purpose and a publisher? Say it is Vogue, for example, or Marie Claire? And they'll say, Yes, I would like some money for my audience. Good, funnily enough, and what the affiliate network in the middle does, it strikes a deal. It's a commission rate. So they'll say, okay, Mary Claire, for every structure that you sell, or for every item that we sell, you sell from the iconic, you get 5% of that basket, value of recommended retail. Mary Claire thinks, Well, we're gonna write shopping stories. Anyway, our audience love striped shirts. It's actually really, I shouldn't say this, but it's really on trend for this season.
Liz Nable 9:48
He's wearing a striped shirt, just in case anyone is wondering,
Speaker 2 9:53
this is a visual, not a visual medium, but I'm wearing a striped shirt, hence the example. And so there's a look that actually serves our audience. Really Well, anyway, this is great, you know, if we, if we do a good story, if we engage the audience, if we recommend them 10 of the best striped shirts this season, and we sell 50 striped shirts, we for the iconic, we're gonna make, I don't know, 5% of that total might be $500. And the iconic gets a whole bunch of customers and a whole bunch of sales that they wouldn't have otherwise, Marie Claire makes money off content that serves the audience that they were kind of going to write anyway, the affiliate network in the middle takes a clip of the ticket on both ways. And the audience essentially gets a nice curated, considered edit of something that they were interested in buying. They're like, Yes, I do want a striped shirt this season, I've been looking everywhere for them, oh, here's 10 That MaryClaire say are better than what else is out there on the internet. They've done the legwork for me. So it serves the audience. It serves the publisher, and it serves the retailer, everyone gets a clip of the ticket along the way. That's why it's performance marketing. But essentially, it's driving audience to retailers or brand sites. So
Liz Nable 11:03
who's the affiliate marketing network in the middle you're talking about is this an agency that sits in the middle, they
Speaker 2 11:09
call it the affiliate network. So there's a lot of them are global. And they're quite big. So there's a whole bunch of sort of well known, if you Google affiliate networks, you'll you'll see a whole bunch, but big ones are Rakuten, or impact. SkimLinks is another provider that sort of sits in the middle sits more on the publisher end. But there are there are a whole bunch of global agencies and what they do what their primary job is, is to work on these commission deals for starters, but then they also take care of the data like the back end, the techie stuff, the the tag tracking the URLs, the when you click on a striped shirt, for example, on our editorial website, you might see the link, if you look at the URL in the top, it's not just like the iconic forward slash, you know, Kamala and Mark shirt. It'll have like a whole bunch of long numbers and UTM tracking and tracking codes. And those that coding essentially tells the iconic that the you the audience came from the Marie Claire article. And so that's the way in which this whole works is all about tracked tags about URLs that prove to the retailer where that that personal that person came from on the internet, essentially. So the affiliate network does that tech work in the background that makes sure that for starters, the retailer or the brand has a website that is good enough, you can't just you know, you can't just sign up with a crappy website with no images with bad product descriptions, you need to have a relatively comprehensive, fully fledged working ecommerce site in order to get on board with an affiliate network. So that's sort of the requirement from the retailer or brand side, most websites, even if you're on a basic Shopify platform, this is as I said, this has been going on for years, they'll they'll have that ability, they'll take that data feed from your website, or they'll crawl it and they'll say yep, this is good any, any publisher can kind of take this product information and use it. And then the other thing they fill it does is has these relationships with the publishers the right kind of publishers for that retailers audience and they will go to big publishers like News Corp or to nine or to our media or to you know, Daily Mail or Pop Sugar or whoever it might be. And this is not limited as I said not limited Australia this has been going on internationally for a really long time and strike those deals and say okay, the iconic is usually a 5% commission but we really want to work with you for next month they've got a special on shoes, they're gonna give you 10% commission on any shoes for the month of November or whatever it might be the affiliate network kind of looks after the tracking and then obviously does the reporting so that everyone can see how much money an audience was generated from these activities.
Liz Nable 14:03
Wow, this is just mind blowing. So so the Ikonics not paying essentially like an upfront fee or anything and Marie Claire is not paying an upfront fee. The affiliate marketing sits in the middle and they make a they make their money off the performance of the deal basically is that great? Well,
Speaker 2 14:20
it's all on commission it's a commission structure might be some depending on the affiliate network, there may be some up front fees in terms of signing on because there's a little bit of work in terms of like managing that account making sure the websites you know set up there's that often in affiliate networks will have like dashboards, where retailers can see how much traffic came in how much you know certain publishers or certain websites actually earning for them all of that kind of stuff does take work. So there may be sort of like a monthly joining feels kind of like a gym, I guess. Yeah, performance base. So it's all based off commission. So if you don't sell anything, which is why sometimes it's good for smaller brands, because if there's no you can also cap it as well. So if there's no sales, you don't pay anything. And also, if you set a set a cap and say, We're willing to give this particular brand or publisher, a 5%, Commission, and then once we hit our cap of $10,000, that's it, we're turning off the tap. That's all we can afford in our marketing budget this month for affiliate. And they'll say cool, and then you'll wait until you you know, hit that cap. And then that's what the affiliate network does is you'll have a manager internally, he'll be managing that so that you can put in safeguards as the brand or retailer to kind of limit your spend, because it is a marketing channel, you sort of like it's like a Facebook ad or a Google Google ad. It's same sort of thing here.
Liz Nable 15:42
Right. Okay. So I know what everyone is thinking. All the all the smaller players who listen to this show is like, well, that's really all well and good for the iconic, but in small businesses get, like involved in affiliate marketing, is it appropriate only for products and set up sorry, product businesses? And what how can they prep it give us some insight into how they can kind of be a part of this?
Speaker 2 16:07
Absolutely like, I think it is, it's easier for big retailers for sure to get involved in the affiliate networks. And I only say that because many of the bigger affiliate networks will require a minimum sort of annual transaction amount on your website. So depending on who your network is, they might say you need to be turning over in total, not profit, but just total turnover on your site might need to be a million dollars, that is going to, you know, mean that a lot of smaller players can't play here or can't join in. So there's that factor. If you are smaller, there are smaller affiliate networks. And I I share this information, I do masterclasses bits and pieces on this to understand who who those people are that you can go to who don't require those big annual turnover amounts, and they will onboard you have and you might have to do a bit of more hands on campaign management for yourself in terms of tracking your spend and understanding how much you're spending or what you know what publishers you might be working for. So it might be a bit more DIY, but you can still get onto an affiliate network. If you're a smaller EECOM platform. Now you do need a website, you'd need to have an E commerce platform or website of some description, if you don't have a website can't really help you. Because that's how this stuff is tracked, you need a URL in order to someone to send to your product page to add it to the cart, and then to checkout. And to actually pay for it. You need to have that going in order for these URLs to be tracked in order for everyone to know what's going on. So you do need a site. The other thing you can do however, if you maybe don't have a website, or you have a smaller turnover on your own website, is to figure out where you're stopped. If you are stopped in a big retailer like Maya, like David Jones, like the iconic, like a girl beauty, like Sephora, those sorts of things, you can piggyback off their existing pre existing relationships with affiliate networks. So it's about knowing your stockists, because you'll need to ask your stalkers and you know, if you stopped by brand, they will have a digital marketing manager or even you know, the brand manager, you can say, are you doing affiliate marketing? Who who is your network? And what commission Do you pay? Then you can use that information. Instead of sending someone to your own website, you can say, well, yes, you can buy it from my website, but you can also buy it from Maya, and Maya pays 10% commission. So a publisher or a journalist, if they're connected to Maya, which most of them are, they're going to be like, Ah, well, I wasn't going to include your striped shirt in my edit. But now I will, because if someone does buy it, we're going to actually earn money off that, as opposed to another brand. Now in terms of publishers, and the decision making process, in that they're all varied. Some publishers and when I say publishers, I mean, news websites, or women's, you know, magazine, websites, lifestyle brands, etc. The way in which they decide what gets featured or what doesn't, is very much up to that individual editorial team and what direction they're taking with affiliate marketing. I know some publishers, some editorial brands, who will only feature products that have an affiliate relationship, they will not feature something that is from a small standalone brand, because they're not going to make any money off that. The reason that sounds intense and quite hard. reason for that being is that digital advertising is increasingly hard to make money out of as a publisher. There's a whole bunch of factors that are going into that. But basically, the revenue that used to come in through traditional digital advertising has kind of is in a bit of a depression or a bit of a lull at the moment. And it has been for quite some time. So publishers generally strategically Look into affiliate marketing to bring in an extra revenue stream, it means that, you know, they may not need to sell a whole as many ads because instead, they're earning money from the Commission's they're making from the product recommendations because they trust it because people understand what that brand is. Because they think those journalists have a expertise and a level of experience in that particular topic or niche area, whether it's fashion, or beauty, or homewares, or cooking, or whatever it might be, they'll say, I'm going to buy a blender from Australian women's weekly, because you know what? Australian women's weekly, they know what they're talking about when it comes to blenders. And they've tested them all. So if they say this is the best one on the market for this particular price, I'm going to believe them. So they're leveraging their brand authority in order to recommend things that their audience are already interested in, and therefore bringing in revenue to the business that they wouldn't otherwise get. That's the reasoning with that, as I said, this varies across the board. But a lot of journalists that you might be speaking to, will have a KPI that they need to include affiliate links in all of their stories. If you're not able to give them a link, which is an affiliate link or are connected to an affiliate network, you are less likely to get coverage. I'm not saying you won't get coverage. And lots of journalists and sites will still you know if they think it's really valuable, and it's a great product, and it's you know, the hero of the story and whatever that it may not apply, you may still get that editorial coverage, but you're much more likely to get the editorial coverage. If you can say we are also on an affiliate network, your audience can buy this through Meyer, and Meyer is going to give you vote 10% of the basket. Value. Yeah. Wow.
Liz Nable 21:41
So is there no, just to throw like to be the devil's advocate here? Isn't journalism supposed to be like independent and objective? And are those days gone?
Speaker 2 21:52
Well, good question. Yes, no, yes. And no, I think you look on the websites of pretty much any major publisher in Australia. And if you look closely, it should be up the top underneath the headline or where the author bios, you will see a small couple of lines a sentence or two in italics, usually saying our editorial staff choose things based off their own choice and you know what they believe to be the best products. However, if you do purchase something from our site, we may earn a small commission flagging up front that there is some commercial Interplay here. And there's definitely commercial influence. However, most editorial teams and editors and content directors will still say you need to still recommend the things that you want to recommend, you're not going to throw in things that are completely wrong for your audience, or they're leaving or you don't stand by the fact of the matter is most there's so many big retailers in the affiliate marketing space, if you can kind of do your market edit of something, and still include all of the things that you actually want to include. But you can do it through an affiliate link. If you know, affiliate links as an editor or journalist and the editors, journalists more and more are being tasked with these KPIs to make sure that their stories are affiliate ties that they are commercialise that they are using the right links and sending the audience to the retailers that they have these relationships with. Personally, at our media, we still very much have the choice of like if something is fantastic, and it's really the story is, I don't know, this lip balm, for example. And it is available nowhere except for a very niche website. And it has no affiliate networks. But this is the best lip balm that someone's ever tried, we'll still write that story because our audience needs to know about that it doesn't get it won't get the coverage. However, in the vast majority of most of the, you know, daily sort of decisions that an editor or a journalist has to make this they're going to lean towards those that are affiliated or have that relationship and because as I said, there are so many retailers who have these affiliate relationships, it doesn't really hinder your editorial choices. There is still a choice with lots of colour choice. But there is there is a commercial influence there. Absolutely. Yeah.
Liz Nable 24:17
So just to clarify, I'm always thinking through the lens like you know, through the lens of who's listening and business owners like myself, we're talking really affiliate marketing correct me if I'm wrong here think about things like gift guides and product lists and those sorts of things. So other media that the small business owner might get like a you know founder story or something like that. That's obviously completely separate. We talking here about anything that involves featuring your product that you want to sell, is that correct? Look,
Speaker 2 24:47
yes and no. Mostly yes, it's about product focused edits or round ups or gift guides or, or even single product reviews like a Dyson The era for example, that's a classic story where people want to know about it, is it worth the money? How does it work? Is it good? Why is it better than other things? Why does it cost so much money? And also, where do I buy it. So that would be an affiliate stroke. But brands can still use affiliate marketing for founder stories, because any link, it may not be linking to a product, but can still link to their company page, their brand page, their rail. And so if someone it may not be indirect click to a product page and then check out and the intent to buy may not be quite so front of mind for the audience or for the user. But they might still be curious, and they might still check out the website, and then they might buy something, and then it is an affiliate story. So it can sort of work in a more holistic founder, you know, bio profile kind of way as well, if there is an affiliate relationship, which still would make it more appealing for journalists to cover because like, Well, chances are, they're going to buy something as smaller, but it's still there, I guess, the opportunity to commercialise that content in some way. But by and large, yes, it's mostly product focused articles and coverage that this stuff would play into.
Liz Nable 26:09
And so if someone so if you're a small to medium business owner, apart from having a website, that's, you know, operational and looks good. Is there anything else that would hinder them from getting, you know, going to an affiliate marketing agency and looking to tap into this extra revenue stream situation and get themselves more likely to be featured in the media?
Speaker 2 26:33
No, I mean, the only thing I think the biggest barrier, and the first question that an affiliate network would ask a retailer or brand owner is how much do you turn over a year? What is your website? And how much do you transact a year? What's your annual transaction? Yes. And again, there are different tiers of affiliate networks, some full, you know, fully fledged like VIP service, maybe you're turning over $10 million a year, and they'll you'll have a dedicated account manager to do your affiliate marketing sort of strategy for you. And that would be you know, top of town sort of stuff. Then there's the smaller ones I spoke about before, where you might sort of be a bit more hands on with your account management. But they won't require such large annual turnovers. Because the affiliate network, the thing with affiliate marketing is it's a it's a scale game, right, everyone's working off a commission. So the the more you transact, the more clicks you drive, the more audience you drive, the more money everyone makes. So it's not worth it for an affiliate network to look after someone who only drives 100 transactions a month, their percentage is a percentage of what the publisher gets. So it's very small numbers, often, the commission rate sometimes can only be 1%. If you're making half of 1%, on 100 transactions, it's not really worth your time as the affiliate network. So that's sort of the backstory in terms of that. So that might be a barrier for brands getting on board with this stuff. As I said, there are ways around it, it's about finding those smaller affiliate networks who don't care so much about your transaction fees, it might be a bit more self managed. Or it's about finding your stalkers, and finding out which of your stalkers already have these relationships with the affiliate networks, and then using that in your own pitching to be like, there's also this affiliate relationship that's free standing with some of our stalkers. So there's that the other thing that we can sort of affiliate networking in a different way is to look at it through the lens of influencer marketing and Instagram, I'm sure lots of people have seen how influencers might be out and about wearing a grey striped shirt, same example again, and they'll people will say, where did you get your shirt? Where did you get your shirt, and they'll be like, Oh, well, I'm sending all of my followers to the iconic to buy this shirt, I shouldn't get a clip of that ticket, like I should be making a little bit of money from selling them all of these people who are going to buy this item that I'm wearing, or, you know, this mixer in my kitchen or this you know, whatever it might be. So there are platforms. The biggest one, I think in Australia is called LTK, which stands for like to know, it used to be called rewardstyle. Back in the day, and it's an Instagram based platform, it actually is an app and if you Google it, you'll you'll see it but if you are a brand founder or an individual who has a large personal social media following and your brand is very much about yourself, and what you offer and who you are and your identity, etc. There are ways to potentially get on board with LTK. And you can set up like an LTK account. And then whenever you put a link in your Instagram, I think it's bio or stories or whatever else that is affiliate ties. So again, that tracking the URL tracking, it all works the same way. So as an individual, you can earn commission on the products that you're sending your followers to purchase. So you are the publisher in that relationship. So k is the affiliate network and LTK works with retailers. And you know, different retailers will have different commission rates. But you might have seen a lot of influences lately doing like the iconic is a big one, doing the iconic shopping edits. And they'll do these are my 10 favourite things from the iconic and it is helpful because maybe you're in the market for some updates to your spring or summer wardrobe and you want to know what your favourite influencer is buying or what they recommend. So it's a service to their followers, but also the influencer is getting paid a commission if anyone does transact and actually like buying the things that they're recommending. So it can work in a in a personal one to one or influencer Instagram way as well as traditional publisher masthead way. So
Liz Nable 30:43
if you're a personal brand, or an influencer, like you said, um, you don't necessarily have to have a Shopify account or anything like that, you're just using that LTK network, you're taking a photo of yourself before you go to the races or, you know, go to a girls lunch or whatever, and you are just monetizing. What you would already be doing, which is recommending your style or what you're wearing, by providing, you know, those links where people can say, I love those pants, where did you get them from? And they don't even need to ask you that they can just click on the link and go and buy them and you get an affiliate commission. Exactly.
Speaker 2 31:14
So LTK, in this instance, takes the place of your eCommerce store. It's the platform, it's the affiliate network, but it's kind of also the the URL or the website, because we're your personal Instagram page is kind of is kind of the website, that's where it's sending people. But yes, you don't need to have a website, per se, if you're going to set this up as a as an influencer.
Liz Nable 31:37
As a smaller player in the game. Like I know, a lot of small business owners will be like, how much effort is this for me to try and tap into? Like, is it worth it? Like, what are the Javanese sort of examples of, you know, the success stories? Or you know, how you can it, I don't want it to become just another job to do in the business. I want to make sure it's easy to set up and I can just have a passive income in inverted commas if that's if that's actually possible. You don't you don't I mean, like, so that they're not spending a huge amount of time and not really reaping the rewards if they are a small player. Yeah,
Speaker 2 32:11
absolutely. Look, I think it's it can be passive once you're set up, because it's the job of the affiliate network to do the footwork and to kind of go after the publishers and to make sure they know about what brands they're offering. And what those commission rates are, there's email, there's marketing, that's kind of their job. So as long as you're, as you're on boarded onto an affiliate network, you can kind of sit back and let them do it. As long as you're happy to set your budget, essentially, how much you're willing to give away in commission, maybe it's unlimited. Maybe you figure that if it's a 2% commission, that's really fine that you can you can withstand that as long as you're getting the sales in the door, pay for anything unless it actually transacts, which is the good thing. Or the other thing I can say is that affiliate networks also instead of driving sales, they can drive it's either a CPC, so cost per click or cost per acquisition, they're the two sort of Buzz terms to know when if you're, if you want to talk to an affiliate network about this stuff, cost per acquisition is usually a sale, it's usually you choose what that acquisition looks like, as the brand owner or the retailer. Most retailers are like, I want people to buy stuff, like that's where I make money. Sometimes you can say I actually want people to sign up to my newsletter. That's the acquisition for me, I want more people on my newsletters, because maybe my newsletter is the channel through which I sell my services, as you know, as a business coach or as a, you know, whatever it might be. So you can do it in that way, by setting up different set of parameters for what you say, is an acquisition. The other thing you do is CPC, CPC is usually a lot lower commission rate, because all you want is driving audience and clicks to your website, you might have such an amazing website that you know that once people land on your product pages 50% of people buy the shoes on your product page. So you're like I'm gonna pay less because I know that once I get people to my site, if they've clicked on, you know, the the pair of shoes in America article, I bet that most of them will buy them, then it's worth you spending less on a CPC and then letting your website do the work as well. So there's two sort of modes to go about it. But essentially, once you're up on an affiliate network, or you know where your stalkers are in terms of the affiliate network world, you can kind of let them do it let the affiliate network do the do the work. There is probably some things in which it's performance based so you get in what you put in or you get output put in rather. So the more you know, and this is a lot of what I cover in my PR masterclass is how can a PR or the brand owner in this case, leverage this knowledge about affiliate networking they'd lend themselves more coverage. And that is a very proactive thing. That's not a set and forget thing that's about actively pitching and sort of bringing this top of mind to those editors and journalists who do create product based content, or are shopping editors or a charged with these affiliate KPIs. And that is a very active thing. Yeah,
Liz Nable 35:22
look, I think the exciting thing here is because the audience is small to medium business owners, and it is, like you said, like, it only really being done by the bigger, bigger players at the moment, for the last couple of years. The early adopters, in the small to medium business sort of space, can really get on board. And, you know, like, take advantage of this before everybody's doing it, like, you know, before everyone was, you know, paying for Facebook ads and paying for those sorts of things. You just got a lot better return on investment, would you what would you say the advantages are for to be an early adopter versus a smaller player in the game?
Speaker 2 36:00
Yeah, definitely. I think that that's a really good point. And because it is still relatively, I think, relatively new still in Australia, in terms of publishers at scale, I think that if you can, you will definitely separate yourself from the pack of PR pitches or or founder pitches or product pitches, if you can lead with an affiliate angle, or incorporate that into your yourself, essentially, to a journalist, because it's something that's probably top of mind for them. And a lot of brands are not aware of this, a lot of even PRs are not really aware of this or not using this to their advantage in terms of being like, Hey, I know that 50% of the stories that you write have to be affiliated in some way, let me help you with that. Because guess what my brand is, and also there's a great story around it. Also, this is just a great striped shirt, or this is a great pair of shoes, or whatever it is, I think that you'll be doing the journalist or editor a bit of a favour by just like, it doesn't have to be the whole story, it can literally just be where you would put the recommended retail and your stock as you could also just put available via the you know, impact. Affiliate Network commission rate is 10%, or whatever it is. And that's where you you as the brand owner need to have that information at hand, I guess.
Liz Nable 37:20
Yeah, yeah. Now, we're really excited because you are running your affiliate marketing masterclass for us on Friday, the 17th of November at 1230. What can our if you can sign up guys, I'll put the link in the in the story notes. And I'll obviously put it on our socials and in my ATMs and that sort of thing to you, but from from you ally, what can sort of people expect to learn and what kind of knowledge can they expect to kind of get from you inside that masterclass?
Speaker 2 37:49
Yeah, I mean, hopefully a lot. I really aim to make it as practical as possible, because I think that it can be scary as a small business owner to hear about this stuff and be like performance marketing, Affiliate Network, what you know, and I hope that I'll break it down in terms of like, who's earning the money? How does this work? But also like, what are the practical steps to actually get started, in terms of harnessing this thing that's happening out there. I mean, even just having an awareness of it, I think is incredibly helpful, you will also then be able to spot other brand mentions or stories that have affiliate links and product recommendations in them. So you'll definitely better understand the context in which or the ocean in which you're swimming, you know, but also more practically, about ways of like actually getting started, who do I go to? What do I need to do? What's involved? How much money does it cost? How much money can you make? All of those kinds of things, what are the risks involved, etc. So, hopefully, it's very practical and pragmatic in terms of getting up to speed with this thing, which is increasingly a part of any kind of journalists or digital contents. Producers remit,
Liz Nable 39:06
which is love that and the beauty of it is these masterclasses are always pretty intimate. So they've got access, if you're not quite sure if affiliate marketing is for you, or if you think you could really leverage it and make a really nice additional income stream for your business. You'll obviously have access to Ali on tap and she can help you like one on one in that masterclass. Get answers about how that would work for you what that might look like where you might pitch that and those sorts of things. So on Friday, the 17th of November at 1230. Guys, the link will be in the story notes on my socials Liz underscore Nabal on Instagram, and I'll throw it for you EDMS out there as well. So let everyone know about it. We're really excited to have you ally can't wait to learn more. And I'm thinking even in my mind about my business, how I can do it for myself. So
Speaker 2 39:52
we definitely I think there's definitely opportunities for you to I think, um, yeah, it's an exciting thing. Eat to feel like there's another lever essentially to kind of help your business, acquire new customers, but also sustain itself a bit a bit more in a low touch way as well.
Liz Nable 40:09
Amazing. Thanks, Ali. We'll see you on the 17th of November. Thank you for listening to this episode of enable my business. If you've loved it, please share it on Instagram and Facebook for your friends. I'm all about listening and learning from you my audience. So please pop a review on iTunes and let me know how you're enjoying the show. I'd love to hear from you. So if you have any questions, email me at Liz at Liz naval.com And if you want to know more about what I do, head over to Liz nabal.com I truly hope this podcast is a game changer for you. Whether you're a small business owner, a franchisee you have a side hustle or you're just starting out. This is where you truly begin to build your own empire and the life of your dreams.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
