Robert is the Founder and Managing Director of Acceleration Partners, a leading independent performance marketing firm in the U.S., helping companies launch and manage affiliate programs. They help these companies set up their programs, grow, and scale them for a higher quality affiliate marketing approach.
Robert is also Founder and Chairperson of BrandCycle, a technology, and services platform that connect life-cycle retailers with high-quality content and influencer partners in a streamlined manner. Robert is the author of the book, Performance Partnerships, which will be discussed today.
Here are the highlights of my conversation with Robert:
Robert’s coolest sales experience when he was the customer: It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is when a company and a marketing partner (called an affiliate or publisher) enter into a commission-based relationship paid for performance.
Almost every retailer or consumer company doing over a million dollars online in sales has an affiliate program.
It’s a framework or mechanism by which you devise a performance-based way to work with affiliates that can basically represent almost every conceivable form of online marketing activity.
Challenges of Traditional Affiliate Marketing:
- Lack of transparency
- Conflicts of interest
- Shortage of talent in the industry
- A general lack of complacency
4 Elements of Performance Partnerships
This refers to the high-quality aspects of affiliate marketing excluding the other parts responsible for the poor reputation.
- CPA Payout
CPA is Cost Per Action payout is where you pay for when you get what you want, whether be it a lead or sale, equivalent to “cash on delivery.”
- Transparency
You know who your partners are and what they’re doing. It’s not a “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
- Real partnership with publishers
This goes hand in hand with transparency where there is an ongoing relationship.
- Real-time tracking and payment mechanism
Both parties can have access to the trusted intermediary that keeps the system going.
2 Main Types of Technology:
- Traditional Affiliate Network
They handle all the tracking, payment, recruiting, and range from self-service affiliate networks to more full-service (account management).
- SaaS (Software as a Service) Platforms
They license you an affiliate platform. Usually, they are not called an affiliate program but a partner program. This is where a lot of growth is seen.
Why do an affiliate marketing?
With affiliate marketing, you’re basically paying for outcomes and not for inputs. However, it has to be done right. You want to do affiliate marketing once you have at least a million dollar in sales online and if you have 5-20 partners.
How to get started with affiliate marketing:
- Find a person or firm that knows how to do it.
Find an in-house that can run this or engage an agency that might do the technology selection for you.
- You need a platform or network to get started.
The essence of an affiliate program is a platform but what makes it a performance partnership program is how you run it.
Strategies for determining compensation:
- Compensation is part of the discussion with the company in terms of the good cost of sale, what to pay per sale on Google PPC or elsewhere.
- Be consistent.
How to keep your affiliates happy to keep pushing your product:
- You have to keep them educated and give them content and sales material.
- Have a contest where they get a certain contest.
- The key is engagement.
Robert’s Major Takeaway:
It’s a matter of how not if. How do I work with partners? What types of things do I do with them? And not, should I work with partners or should I have the program? Again, would you rather pay for outcomes than pay for input? You can design a performance partnership program completely tailored to your company, your size, and your strategy. You just need someone that’s willing to sit down and have a discussion with you.
Episode Resources:
Check out the book on www.performance-partnerships.com and visit their website at Acceleration Partners. Visit Robert’s weekly blog site.
Connect with Robert Glazer on LinkedIn and be sure to make it personal!
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