Molly Rider

One of the top complaints I hear from company heads in the middle of a launch is, “My affiliates aren’t doing enough to promote my product.”

 

I get the impulse to place the blame on others. It’s hard to say, “I didn’t do enough to motivate my affiliates.”

 

However, if your affiliates aren’t doing enough to promote your product, it’s because you didn’t stop to think about ‘What’s In It For Me?” from the Affiliates' Perspective.

Here are some key things to keep in mind when you ask Affiliates to promote you and some ways to get Affiliates excited to promote you!

 

1.  Examine Your Commission Rate & Plan Accordingly

 

I don’t care if you’re offering 75% commission on a product, if your commission rate is less than $100, then you’ve got to accomplish 2 things.

 

First, you will want to reel in a big name affiliate who can mass sell your product, making the commission number sizable. $10 for a single sale isn’t exciting. But, $1,000 for 100 sales is getting somewhere!

 

Second, you’ve got to get creative about WHY people will want to promote your product. For example, infuse your product with an important mission. Perhaps your product helps empower women, or it gives a certain amount of proceeds to a particular charity. Then, you find Affiliates who are passionate about the mission to help you promote the product.

 

Third, if your product is a monthly membership and you have the capital, consider offering a1-time commission rate that’s higher than the monthly membership cost. For example, Bluehost pays you $65 for anyone who signs up at Bluehost. So, while the customer may be paying bluehost $10 a month, you earned $65 up front.

 

 

2.  Create Incentives!

 

This is particularly important and powerful around a launch.  If your cart will be open for a certain number of weeks, or if you’re offering a special promotion, consider creating extra incentives for your affiliates.

 

Here are some examples:

• Cash awards for top sales & opt-ins

• Access to a high-end product of yours if they hit a certain sales goal or complete a certain action sequence (something that you can track)

• Time with you: Lunch, a Call, an Invite to an event of yours…

• PR for them - Maybe you’ll post about the winning Affiliate’s website or business on your most visited Social Media platform or in a Blog.

This can highly motivate an affiliate to take action during your launch period.

 

 

3.  Interviews & Co-leading Webinars

 

A great way to get high-end Affiliates to promote you and your product is to interview them or invite them to co-host a webinar with you. When you interview them or co-host a webinar, you are promoting them as an expert to your list and they are doing the same to their list. It’s mutually beneficial.

 

Likewise, in an interview you can ask questions that bring the conversation around to why a product or program like yours is a supportive tool to the audience listening.

Lastly, you can work with your Affiliate to use their affiliate URL during the interview or webinar, so that they have even more incentive to talk up you and your program.

 

 

4.  Sample Copy & Guest Blogs

 

Make sure that you are providing your Affiliates with sample copy that they can use in social media posts, solo emails, or even in the PS of emails.

 

Additionally, I recommend reaching out to prominent Affiliates or bloggers and offering to send them a guest blog post. You can either write the guest post as you or offer to write the intro of the blog from their perspective and then include your own tips that lead a reader to want to sign up for your free opt-in or paid product/service.

Remember that your Affiliates are busy people and while they’re excited about what you do they don’t always have time to create a blog post from scratch about you and your product or service. So, when you offer to send them a guest post, you help make the process easier for them and it shows a high level of respect for their time.