Boost Your Webinar Attendance through Affiliate Marketing

Chuck Anderson [00:00:00]:
One good partnership goes famine to feast. So keep moving forward and make it all about the relationships with your affiliates, and they will feed you for life. 

Jeffro [00:00:16]:
Welcome back to Digital Dominance. Today, we’re going to talk about a strategy that often flies under the radar. We talk a lot about ads, SEO, and branding, but what if you could have someone else doing the marketing for you? Actually, a group of people. And I’m not talking about just an agency. I’m talking about affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing gives you leverage, and it can be a great way to fill seats at your events or to market your services. My guest today has over 20 years of experience recruiting, training, and managing affiliates, and these affiliate partners then promote your product or service around the clock.

Jeffro [00:00:48]:
If you sell through webinars, workshops, or other events, then you call Chuck Anderson to help you create an army of affiliates. So, Chuck, thanks for being here today, and welcome to the show.

Chuck Anderson [00:00:57]:
Thanks, Jeffro, it’s a honor to be here. And, yeah, I’ve been looking forward to it, man.

Jeffro [00:01:02]:
Yeah. Me too. Chuck, I’m pretty sure there are some people listening who have never heard of affiliate marketing before. Can you give us a quick explanation?

Chuck Anderson [00:01:10]:
Yeah. Really simple. I’ll try to be as simple as possible. The affiliate marketing is this. Let’s say, you have a product for sale, and I send you a customer of that product, and you pay me a commission for a part a percentage of the money you earn on that sale as a commission, that’s affiliate marketing. It’s other people promoting your product and paying a commission. And there’s two sides of it. You can either earn commissions as an affiliate by promoting other people’s products, sending them referrals, or if you have a product of your own, you can set up an affiliate program.

Chuck Anderson [00:01:44]:
Other people promote your product. You pay them a percentage of the sales and, as a commission, and that at its very basic level is how it works.

Jeffro [00:01:53]:
Yeah. It’s like a commission based salesperson that doesn’t actually is not employed by you. You don’t pay benefits or a base salary. They just go out promote your stuff and are happy taking the commission.

Chuck Anderson [00:02:02]:
Yeah. Exactly. And the best part is is that you don’t pay until after the sale is made. And depending on how deep we get into this, unlike other ways of promoting yourself, of marketing yourself, of advertising, it’s really the only one where you pay after the sale is made.

Jeffro [00:02:19]:
Yeah. And that’s huge for budget, especially for smaller companies. Right? Now affiliate marketing is most often associated with selling products or courses, I think. It’s been around a long time, but we and we know it can be used to sell tickets to events as well. So can you talk a little bit about how it can be used when promoting a service?

Chuck Anderson [00:02:36]:
Yeah. So the first thing with with promoting a service, it all starts with how you sell that service. Now, I’m gonna use the case of a coach or a consultant where, let’s say, they’re selling a a high ticket coaching program. Let’s say it’s several $1,000 for their program, and the way they sell it is by booking appointments and consultation calls, discovery calls, whatever it is that they call them. And so they rely on those booked appointments. They rely on a steady stream of those in order to sell their services. Well, then the challenge is how do you get affiliates to, to send to to help you to book those appointments? A, they could send you referrals, which is great, but how do you do it in mass? And we have found that what a lot of coaches and consultants are doing that are working really well with sell selling services is host a free webinar and then ask affiliates to help to spread the word out about the webinar. And so then that’s gonna help you to fill the webinar, and at the end of the webinar, you’re the people who were in attendance, you’re gonna invite them to book a call.

Chuck Anderson [00:03:49]:
Those put calls on your calendar. You do the calls. You sell your services. I mean, that in a nutshell is you know, that’s that’s sort of the linear path. But, you know, it’s it’s the easiest way for anyone selling a service, especially if they’re doing it through a booked appointment to have an affiliate program is to do it through webinars, which is why we’re so pro event because affiliates love to promote events. It’s it’s an easy ask, and it’s something that works really, really well.

Jeffro [00:04:18]:
Yeah. And then so you just have to keep track of who invited which person, and then the ones that actually buy from you, that’s how you know to pay out the commissions to them.

Chuck Anderson [00:04:25]:
Yeah. And that’s where the affiliate program comes in. So you would need some sort of a tracking system inside whatever CRM or mailing software that you are using. Some of them have affiliate tracking capabilities built right in, so you might even have that capability without even knowing it. And if you don’t, then you can easily find a software that can attach to whatever you’re already using. The main thing is when you’re recruiting affiliates to promote, whether it be a webinar or anything else, is that you wanna have that tracking capability where you can give them a link and give them that link and that anybody who comes through that link, they register for the webinar or download your lead magnet or visit your website. It’s going to track them as coming from that affiliate. So you need to have that ability to create these tracking links.

Chuck Anderson [00:05:16]:
They’ll have some sort of a unique identifier in them so that you know where the leads came from.

Jeffro [00:05:21]:
Right. Because, otherwise, you’ll have very unhappy affiliates if they’re saying, I sent you all these people, and you didn’t pay me anything.

Chuck Anderson [00:05:26]:
Oh, yeah. For sure. Not only do you need to have the capability of giving them a link, you gotta make sure that link works. And if there’s anything that they can screw up on their end, it’s a good idea to give them a little bit of training and guidance saying, hey. Use this link exactly like this. Don’t change a thing on that link because we wanna make sure that it’s tracking you. Because, yeah, they get a little grumpy when they promote. And it’s like, what do you mean 0? I sent you 500 clicks.

Chuck Anderson [00:05:55]:
Couldn’t be 0. And so, yeah, it it’s really important to make sure not only that the technology works before you send someone a link, but also make sure that your affiliate knows how to use it properly so that they don’t mess it up.

Jeffro [00:06:08]:
So you mentioned for services, selling through an educational event or something like a webinar is a good idea. Is there ever a time where it would make sense to promote the service directly?

Chuck Anderson [00:06:18]:
Yeah. So there are times to do that. Well, I would say that a few cases that work really well, if you have, like, a downloadable book or a lead magnet or something like that, you could have your affiliates promote that, and then that’s gonna help you to build your list. However, your affiliates wanna know that they’re gonna make some money. So if you’re gonna have them promote a lead magnet, you should have a really good sales process or a really good funnel behind it so that it converts. You can ask an affiliate to promote you and not make any money that first time. You might be able to get them to do it a second time, but you’re not gonna get them to do it a third time. So whatever it is needs to convert.

Chuck Anderson [00:06:55]:
So we like webinars better than lead magnets because they tend to convert much, much better. But there are other cases as well. For example, we work with software companies or online courses. So with a software, you could give away a free trial. And so that’s a nice easy thing to ask affiliates to promote as a free trial of a software. If you have a course, maybe they get download a free lesson or maybe they register for your free course, and then they the sale is that they upgrade to your premium course. You could do that as well. Yeah.

Chuck Anderson [00:07:27]:
So, you know, and other than a web now our favorite is webinars, and we’re very, very biased towards that just because we’ve been able to make that work so well for us and sell from them. But, yeah, you can you can ask affiliate to promote anything. The one thing I would say is whatever that thing is, make it a free thing or a very low cost thing. And so let’s say you’re selling a a product and it’s a $100. Well, if I land on your web page the first time, maybe I’m interested in your product, but maybe I don’t buy it right away. It’s a $100. I need to think about whether or not I’m going to buy that or not. But if I go to your site and I’m registering for a free webinar, that’s not a hard decision.

Chuck Anderson [00:08:09]:
So you’re gonna get the lead, or it’s a download this free ebook. No problem. You’re gonna get the lead there as well. Or a low cost thing, like a $5, you know, free plus shipping type book offers do well as well. But whenever you send affiliate traffic that where they have to pay for it, your conversion rate’s gonna be lower. You’re gonna make sales, but you’re not gonna get the leads. You’re not gonna get the list growth. So whatever it is, we recommend that it is, something that’s free.

Chuck Anderson [00:08:36]:
And the nice thing and, again, I sound like a broken record because I keep going back to webinar, webinar, webinar, but the nice thing about webinars is it’s something free that is easy to create. You really don’t have to develop anything to be able to test it out, get affiliates to promote it. Whereas if I have some other thing, like a lead magnet or an ebook or whatever, I gotta create that thing. I gotta put it up there. I don’t actually know how well that’s gonna convert. But, yeah, I mean, ideally, you wanna ask your affiliates to promote the free thing, and then you do the selling versus them sending you customers directly.

Jeffro [00:09:11]:
Right. Because it’s not affiliate marketing and sales. It’s affiliate marketing. Right? You should be handling most of the sales, especially when it comes to a service. So, obviously, if you’re doing promoting a product, sometimes that I mean, the web page does the sale for you. Right? If you get them there and then they get their commission right away. But if you’re doing this whole service approach, you have to have a more sophisticated tracking system because there’s all these steps in between. Right? Whether that’s a webinar or scheduling a call or the free trial.

Jeffro [00:09:38]:
So you need to be able to manage that because you’ll have to either manually review those periodically to make sure people get paid or have your system be sophisticated enough to handle that for you when stuff happens down the line.

Chuck Anderson [00:09:49]:
Yeah. It depends on your tracking system. Many of the platforms now, if you if your entire marketing is all contained with 1 super easy, because I could send someone to your webinar. Maybe they don’t sign up this time, but they sign up next time and then pay somewhere down the road. That platform’s gonna know where that lead came from originally. And so that’s gonna follow that’s gonna follow that lead throughout the entire sales cycle. It’s when you start getting into mixing and matching multiple platforms. And so let’s say, I I’m emailing over here.

Chuck Anderson [00:10:32]:
I have my affiliate tracking over here. I have my funnels and my order forms in another platform. When you start having multi platform and trying to maybe zap them together or something like that, yeah, that’s when you can start to run into some tracking issues. But more and more, if you can get into, like, an all in one, go high level is is one that, you know, it’s an example of one where you’ve you’ve got your affiliate program, you’ve got your email database, you’ve got your funnels, your membership programs, your order forms, your payment processing, all in one form. There’s other good platforms that we use as well. But the more you can have it done all in one platform, the easier it is. And you don’t have to remember to go, oh, I made this sale. Do I owe any affiliate commission on it? It’s already gonna just automatically show up on the reports, and then you’ll know when to pay it.

Jeffro [00:11:17]:
Right. What’s your opinion on aging out of affiliate referrals? Because I have seen sometimes people say, hey. Your referral’s good for 60 days. Right? And then if on day 70, they come and buy, you don’t get a commission anymore. Or if someone else referred them after day 60, then they get the commission. Right? So what’s your what are your thoughts on that?

Chuck Anderson [00:11:36]:
Well, quick advice is be as generous as possible for as long as possible. Right? And so when you see this and let’s say you set it to, okay, that referral is only good for 30 days or 60 days. It’s very short term thinking. I mean, it’s fine if it’s a impulse type product where the sales cycle is very, very short, or maybe it’s something that’s more of an instant sale. And I get why people do it because they don’t wanna be on the hook for paying out commissions. But here’s the thing about that. When I set up affiliate programs, I have no limit on it whatsoever. It’s it’s a lifetime referral.

Chuck Anderson [00:12:11]:
So if you refer someone to me and my program, we are partnered on that lead for life. And so it doesn’t matter what they buy from us or when they buy from it, we are partnered with that person and that we wanna treat our this is where, you know, in our programs, we talk about with our affiliates being focused on either the relationship or the transaction. So if I set a short referral or often known as a cookie duration, I don’t know how long it’s gonna be referred to as that because we’re moving into the cookieless world this year. But, it’s that short duration where that’s very much about the transaction. It’s like, hey. Please send me these referrals. If it converts right away, I’m happy to pay you a commission. But if it doesn’t convert right away, I’m gonna keep all the money for myself.

Chuck Anderson [00:12:59]:
And that’s all well and good. It’s fine. You can do that. But what about asking that person to promote you again? What about going back to that person and saying, hey. We did okay the first time. Would you like to promote me again? Well, they’re like, well, I sent you all my leads, and they expired, and, you know, there’s not as much motivation to do it. Right.

Jeffro [00:13:18]:
It hurts the goodwill.

Chuck Anderson [00:13:19]:
Yeah. So if I say we’re partnered for life, I’m gonna pay you 20% on everything that they ever buy from me for life, and now I want you to promote my webinar, let’s say, every month or a couple of times a year, you’re probably gonna be more willing to do that. So it’s instead of focusing on the transactional side, I don’t wanna be on the hook for paying out these commissions or if they convert sometime down the road versus I wanna build a relationship with a network of affiliates and partners who will promote me again and again and again because we’re partners in this. We’re in this together. And so I highly recommend being as generous as possible with the commissions and keep that referral alive for I mean, a year is good. We do lifetime. A year is also very generous. Right?

Jeffro [00:14:08]:
Yeah. Okay. And so can we talk about what’s involved with mounting an affiliate campaign from scratch? Now how long does it take to recruit a solid group of affiliates, and what goes into that?

Chuck Anderson [00:14:18]:
Yeah. So, I mean, aside from having all the tech and everything that you need to be able to execute on affiliate program, you also wanna have all your marketing materials written for them because you gotta remember with affiliates, they’re not your employees. So we write emails, social media posts, graphics, all of that. We we provide as much as we possibly can to our affiliates, and then we wanna give ourselves time to promote. And I think this is where a lot of people go wrong. It’s for example, let’s say I’m gonna do a webinar, and, I’m gonna have that webinar next week. Well, that’s all well and good if I already have affiliates, and I can just simply ask them. But if it’s your first time, you’re gonna wanna give yourself, I would say, minimally 4 weeks to go out there and network.

Chuck Anderson [00:15:02]:
Go out there and connect, even go back to your database and your current and previous customers and anyone you have contacts with and get them on board. Get the get a commitment from them. And there’s a mantra that we use here in our agency. It’s recruit, train, manage, celebrate, and repeat. It’s what the 5 keys are. And it’s you need to have time to do this. So recruit. So you need to have multiple ways of recruiting affiliates, getting them on board, getting their commitment.

Chuck Anderson [00:15:33]:
Hey. We’re having this webinar on such and such date. Here’s the dates where we recommend mailing out. Are you in? Can you see yourself doing that? And so we’re looking to get that commitment. So that’s on the recruiting side. Then we train them. Right? We train them and say, okay. Well, here’s all the marketing materials.

Chuck Anderson [00:15:49]:
Here’s how the link works, and here’s the dates that we’re gonna email out. And so everybody’s on the same page. Then we manage them. So it’s like, okay. Now we’re in the campaign, guys, and we go into cheerleader mode. Like, we’re just making sure that everyone’s got their swipe. They’ve got their links. They’re following through on the mail outs and the social media posts, helping them out wherever we can, really working together with them as a team, and then celebrating every step of the way, especially afterwards.

Chuck Anderson [00:16:17]:
Even if they only sent us one lead, we’re gonna celebrate with them. We’re we are so super grateful for our affiliates. And the more that we’re we’re expressing that gratitude, the more they’re going to wanna do the last part, and that is repeat. And so that’s why we’re always thinking about recruit, train, manage, celebrate, and repeat. And that is really the keys. If you do all of those things, most people make the mistake of starting and stopping with recruiting. Hey, Jeffro. Will you be my affiliate? Yes.

Chuck Anderson [00:16:46]:
I will. I’ll be your affiliate. Great. And then they go, well, hey. Why didn’t you promote me? I you said you would. And it’s like, we didn’t do the other things. Right? And so that’s why we have to do all 5 of those things.

Jeffro [00:16:58]:
Right. You gotta equip them and, you know, coach them through it a little bit.

Chuck Anderson [00:17:01]:
Yeah. We gotta hold their hand through it. Yeah.

Jeffro [00:17:04]:
Yeah. My next question is, as you’re doing this recruiting, is it better to just do networking and 1 on 1 type things, or should you be looking at affiliate marketplaces like ClickBank or whatever other ones are out there?

Chuck Anderson [00:17:16]:
It depends on your product and, you know, where’s the best fit. So, you know, if if I have a product that is a good fit for ClickBank marketplace, I mean, there’s a whole lot of guidelines and things you need to do to get it in there, but you certainly could. And, if it’s a good fit and you wanna tap into those affiliates, great. Now I will say this, just because they have a very large community of affiliates, a lot of people think, oh, if I go and get listed in Click Bank, I’m gonna have all these hundreds of affiliates promoting me, and it’s not the case. You have to still recruit them. You have to get some other way of recruiting affiliates. Get your numbers up so that the real affiliates, the power affiliates start to see, you know, increased gravity scores. They can see other average earnings per click are going up, and then you’re gonna start to recruit some of the power affiliates.

Chuck Anderson [00:18:09]:
But initially with ClickBank, you’re gonna have to really make sure you recruit outside of ClickBank, get those numbers up. So a lot of people think ClickBank’s gonna make it easy. It’s It’s it’s not. I actually prefer to just run my own affiliate program. And my favorite ways of recruiting, I recommended everybody has 2 go to methods. In my workshop, I teach, you know, 5 or more different methods. My here’s my favorite too. My favorite too is inviting people to a podcast interview.

Chuck Anderson [00:18:39]:
And so my podcast has been my best recruiting tool for affiliates. And so I can identify someone who has an influence over my target audience. I can invite them. I have 2 choices. I could spam them on LinkedIn or email and say, hey. Would you like to be my affiliate? Make all this money, blah blah blah blah blah. And And if they don’t know me, they’re gonna ignore it. It’s gonna sound pretty spammy.

Chuck Anderson [00:19:01]:
Right? Versus, hey. I don’t know you, but you look like an expert in in in your field. I would love to interview you on my podcast. And very seldom do people ever say no to that. So so now we can get into relationship. It’s easier to ask them. So that’s I do that with people who I’m trying to, again, build a relationship with. They’re influencers over my target audience.

Chuck Anderson [00:19:23]:
It’s where a lot of our best new partnerships come from. And then I just do an absolute boatload of networking. Like, every single day, there is a virtual networking event happening somewhere. And so if I have blank space in my calendar where I an appointment should be and I don’t have a client there, I’ll go and I’ll look for what networking event is happening today. I’ll go and attend that, and I can find some great partners there as well. I would say, thirdly, there are joint venture directories where people are looking for affiliate opportunities, and they’re looking for cross promotion opportunities. Get yourself connected with some of those as well.

Jeffro [00:20:00]:
Awesome. What are some mistakes that people make when they’re trying to do affiliate marketing?

Chuck Anderson [00:20:05]:
Yeah. So this is one where getting impatient, and this is where, you know, I mentioned it already, being too transactional versus focusing on the relationship. And it’s when we start to treat our affiliates like employees, and they’re not. They don’t work for us, and so they’re doing us a huge favor. So there’s only one thing that works, and that is just really a lot of gratitude, right, and and really developing that relationship. So that’s the first mistake, I’d say, really treating it as a transaction. The second thing is not being generous enough with their commissions. Right? And so great example, I have a former client, k, former client who sold a $25,000 mastermind program.

Chuck Anderson [00:20:50]:
And what would you say would be a fair commission? If if if you sent me a referral to my $25,000 mastermind program, what what do you think would be a fair commission

Jeffro [00:21:02]:
for that? What would you be happy with? At least 5%. I mean, even 10% in some cases depending on the margins there.

Chuck Anderson [00:21:06]:
So 5% would probably be on the low side. That’d be, what, 12.50. They were paying $500. Right? And it’s, like, $500 and then wanting to motivate their affiliates to really promote this thing. Now, of course, there’s fulfillment costs and there’s all the other parts. I mean, are they pocketing 25 k? Probably not. Let’s say, you know, on the high end, their fulfillment cost is 30% of that 25 k. Right? And so now you’ve got this other 2 thirds that is potentially a profit.

Chuck Anderson [00:21:39]:
You know, you could be generous there. Like, you mentioned 5%, that would be 12.50. 10% would be 25 100. We have other clients with a 25 k program where they pay anywhere between $255,000 in commissions. Maybe not all at once if there’s a payment plan, but all in all, you’re gonna earn you have quite a potential for earnings as an affiliate. And so so that’s the mistake I wanted to point out is not being generous enough because it’s, a, if we’re wanting to move beyond the transaction and into relationship where I have not just an affiliate that’s gonna promote me one time, but I’m gonna have an affiliate that’s gonna promote me multiple times throughout the year, then I don’t have to spend as much time recruiting. I’m gonna spend more time nurturing the relationships, celebrating, incentivizing, maybe giving some, you know, maybe sending some gifts or whatever, like, really showing, you know, the gratitude. I was just in Vegas last week for traffic and conversion summit, and one of my best affiliates lives there.

Chuck Anderson [00:22:40]:
And we went out for a barbecue dinner. Cost, you know, $100 to go out for dinner. But, you know, that $100 that I spent on that barbecue dinner will probably outweigh a lot of the other commissions and stuff that I will, you know, pay him throughout this year because that was special. It’s showing the gratitude. So we gotta be generous, and we gotta really nurture the relationships. Because when we do that, we don’t have to work so hard to recruit affiliates, because we already have ones that it now it’s not like, hey. Will you promote me? It turns to, hey. Do you have anything I can promote for you? Right? Because I love promoting for you.

Chuck Anderson [00:23:20]:
Right? And that’s when it gets easy.

Jeffro [00:23:23]:
Right. Because it all goes back to the fact that they’re not your employee. Right? They have to be motivated by something. So the commission and then always the the support that goes along with it like you’re talking about. So, we’re out of time for today, but thank you for enlightening us on affiliate marketing. It it can be a great option that many owners should consider, especially if you can sell through a webinar, you know, like we talked about all these different options. So if any of you guys listening want to learn more, go connect with Chuck on LinkedIn or visit his website, eventaffiliates.com. Chuck also runs an affiliate marketing challenge, and the VIP price is typically $97.

Jeffro [00:23:58]:
But Chuck has generously given you all a $96 discount, which means you get a ticket for just $1 just for listening to the Digital Dominance podcast. So make sure to use coupon code Jeffro 96 to get the discount. I love that you’re walking the walk, Chuck, and leading with generosity there. So do you have any final thoughts for us?

Chuck Anderson [00:24:17]:
I do. And that is never never ever give up. And, look. You know, we’re we’re out there posting on social media. We’re out there running ads. We’re out there trying to promote our businesses in all the different ways. But, look, you might be just one good partnership away, and I have seen this change people’s trajectory in their business. One good partnership goes famine to feast.

Chuck Anderson [00:24:41]:
So keep moving forward and make it all about the relationships with your affiliates, and they will feed you for life.

Jeffro [00:24:47]:
I love it. Thank you for being here again, Chuck, and thanks to all of you for listening. Now get back to dominating, and I’ll see you in the next episode.