AP 0104: How Do You Generate Leads for Your Business Through Affiliate Marketing?

AskPat 104 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to Episode 104 of AskPat. So happy to be here to help you answer your online business questions, five days a week.

Today we have a question from Tashawna. A lot of you have actually been asking, “Where can I get an AskPat t-shirt?” As many of you know, I give away an AskPat t-shirt to anybody who's question is featured here on the show. Well, if you go to SuccessShirt.com, you'll see the AskPat t-shirt, among several other t-shirts of online business entrepreneurs there for you. You can even buy that shirt, if you'd like, or you can submit more questions. If you want to submit questions, head on over to AskPat.com. Again, big shout out to SuccessShirt.com.

Now, let's get to today's question from Tashawna.

Tashawna: Hello, my name is Tashawna Chisholm from TashawnaNicole.com. I am wondering, how do you generate leads for your business through affiliate marketing?

Pat Flynn: Tashawna, thank you so much for the question. I believe this question can be interpreted in two ways. I'm going to answer both interpretations. Again, the question, how do you generate leads for your business through affiliate marketing?

Let's say scenario number one. You have your own products that you created or that you and your team has created, that you want to market. A great way to market those products is through affiliate marketing. Having people sell that product for you, and any time they make a sale through tracking or whatever the case may be, you give them a commission. A part of that overall sales price as a reward for generating these leads for you.

The great thing about doing affiliate marketing to sell your own products is you're able to, one, get in front of an audience that you wouldn't have gotten in front of before, in some cases. In many cases, that's why you want to, potentially, hook up with people who are influencers, as well, who have potential customers in their own target audience. You want to make sure your target audience aligns with theirs. It'd be a great mutual relationship between both of you. They help sell your product. They get a commission as a result.

The cool thing about that, they are generating leads, so you're actually collecting, for example, customer names or email addresses when you do that. Even though you might be shedding a little bit of cash to give to them as a commission, you're also gaining a customer. Somebody who you could be selling to, perhaps down the road, as well. Maybe earning money through affiliated marketing that you do yourself by recommending other people's products.

That's why I feel affiliate marketing is definitely an underutilized form of marketing online. A lot of people do it, but a lot of people in industries don't. I think, if you have your own product, you might want to consider creating an affiliate program of your own. There's a lot of internal software that will allow you to do that. It depends on what the product is, and how much the product is. You also want to make sure that when you're building a sales team or building people who are going to be affiliates for your product that you make it worth it for them too.

There are several different ways to do this. I've seen people do contests. If they're doing a launch, for example, they have a contest where affiliates get together, and they compete to see who can sell the most. They make it fun, and it drives a little bit of incentive for them to promote.

Another great strategy to do, if that's what you're going to do, is give them copy that they can just copy and paste into their emails. Give them banner ads that they can just paste onto their website. Making sure, if possible, to have those tracking IDs involved. That is a little bit more of a technical thing involved with having your affiliates have an ID that they can then use and have cookies so that their followers and fans can go through their link. It's all kept track of.

There's a lot of different programs out there that'll do that. I'm not going to get into that right now. For example, if you're selling digital goods, something like Gumroad or E-Junkie would do the affiliate program for you. ClickBank.com, if you are selling products of your own. You might want to also check out something like Post Affiliate Pro, I think it's called. Something like that. There's a ton of them out there. Affiliate Royale is another one I've used and have experienced before. You can connect them to physical products. You can connect them to digital products. There's a lot of options out there for you. [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through these links.]

Now, Tashawna, maybe the second scenario, maybe this is the one you're talking about is, you're not selling your own products. Maybe you are. You can also generate leads by selling other people's products. You are somebody who knows your audience and knows that they have specific pains, and you know there are solutions out there that, maybe you just haven't created yourself yet, or that you know you can't create yourself. But, you know they're out there, and you can earn a commission by selling those products. Can you actually generate leads by selling other people's products? Absolutely. There's some great ways to do this. I'm going to give you two specific methods here.

The first method is the giveaway or the bonus method. If you're selling something of somebody else's. Let's say it's access to some sort of specific membership site or some sort of digital product or download. Some software, for example. It doesn't even matter. You can create bonuses or giveaways that relate to that particular product that would be useful to your target audience, of course.

You don't ever want to give away bonuses that don't relate to the product. That's a waste, and it's not memorable. It doesn't really help anybody. Make sure that those giveaways relate to the particular product that you're promoting that is the other person's product. What that does is it gets people excited about going through your link. It drives a lot of eyes to you and your specific promotion for it.

The thing is, in order to get that bonus, or in order to get that giveaway, they're going to have to send you an email address. You could set up a way to auto-deliver that digital good or that free giveaway when people purchase that product. You can have it . . . I had it where people can send me an email, and it sends them a vacation autoresponder with a link to that particular bonus.

You can have them sign up through a particular landing page where it would auto-deliver a digital good using, for example, Lead Pages to do that for you. Whether it's an ebook or whatever that bonus might be. That bonus could also be a free webinar that you do that people would have to sign up for. The idea is that you want to collect those email addresses in between people not getting that product and either before they get their hands on that product. Maybe it's a quick-start guide, for example, that you give away and people would sign up for to then get access to that product or go through your affiliate link. Not only are you earning a commission, as well, but you're getting an email address at the same time.

I can't tell you how many people have gone through my affiliate links and I don't know who they are. I don't know their email addresses. This is a great way to collect those either before or after purchase. Making sure that giveaway or bonus is there.

Another great strategy, one that I've used quite successfully in the past is, if I'm going to do a really big promotion for another piece of software or company or a person who has something that I'm really, really excited to share with my audience, I'll hold a webinar. I'll hold a webinar with that product owner. What I'll do is, I'll do demos. I'll make sure there are giveaways during that particular webinar, so there's incentive to come on. In order to get access to this webinar, even though I'm promoting somebody else's product, to get access to this webinar, they're going to have to sign up for the webinar.

You can either do a GoTo Webinar and integrate it with AWeber or whatever your email service provider is, or even easier, you could use Lead Pages. You could use Lead Pages to set up that webinar, an email name collection area so that you can then send emails about the webinar when it's coming up. Even follow up with them afterwards and make sure they get the appropriate affiliate link and bonuses, anything that you mentioned in that webinar.

Strategy number one, having those giveaways that people are going to have to sign up for, at some point to get, in relation to that product you're promoting.

Strategy number two, having a webinar where you either have the product owner come on, or you do a special presentation related to that particular product. I've done successful webinars in the past, for example, that are about keyword research. In those keyword webinars, I'll do a demo on how to do keyword research. It's all about keyword research, and I'll show free ways on how to do keyword research.

I'll also happen to mention the tools that I use to make searching for keywords faster. Those are tools that I also have an affiliate relationship with. I mention those affiliate links. I tell people, “Yes, this is an affiliate link. I do get a commission.”

As a result of them coming on the webinar, I have their email already. I can follow up with them with those particular products and the replay and all that good stuff.

Tashawna, thank you so much for asking that question today. An AskPat t-shirt is going to be headed your way. You'll get an email from myself or an assistant very soon in regards to that.

If you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. It's all you need to do.

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As always, I'm going to end with a quote. Today's quote is from Warren Buffett. I really, really like this quote. This is, “In the world of business, the people who are most successful, are those who are doing what they love.” That's awesome!

All right. Take care. Have a great day. I'll see you on the next episode of AskPat.