Yash Shah (00:01)
Hello and welcome back to Building Momentum, the show where we peel back the curtain on the exciting and often chaotic world of building a successful technology business. I'm Yash, your host for this show where every episode we bring you the stories and strategies of people who've been in the trenches, conquering churns, scaling their teams and building products that people and businesses love. In this episode, we'll be chatting with Lee Ann from Affiverse Affiverse helps businesses do affiliate marketing better. We're excited to hear their stories and the lessons they've learned along the
We'll be dissecting the wins, the losses, and everything in between. So buckle up, grab your headphones, and get ready to dive in the world of digital products. Hey Lee Ann and how are you doing today?
Lee-Ann (00:52)
Hi, Yash, I'm very, well. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast today.
Yash Shah (00:57)
Thank you for taking out the time. so let's start with the fundamental thing. What is it that Affiverse does? Why does it exist? Can you tell me the big bad problem that Affiverse is trying to solve?
Lee-Ann (01:13)
So I've been in affiliate marketing for more than two decades, which is quite a long time. So pretty much way back in the day when the internet started before there was Google, before there was Facebook, before all of those things. And I've been very blessed to have a really great, exciting, rewarding career. I've learned a lot of things. I've worked across multiple different industries with lots of different companies from startups to major conglomerates. And I've amassed a lot of knowledge. And about five years ago,
Yash Shah (01:24)
Hell?
Lee-Ann (01:42)
I had a lovely job at a fintech company and you know, kind of get to that point in your career where you go, is this it? Like, is this what I'm doing for the rest of my life and I'm going to just, you know, sail off into retirement or can I do something to solve a problem that's out there? And you you mentioned that and the big problem that I saw from working with multiple people in the performance marketing industry is that there's a distinct lack of education in terms of how affiliate marketing works.
Yash Shah (01:58)
Hmm?
Lee-Ann (02:10)
because it's always been kind of like hidden in the background, you know, back doors, like nobody really understood it. It's very, very complex. Nobody really talks about it. It's all hush hush. You know, we've kind of had to like build the plane and fly it as we go along and create our own best practices and do all of these things. So I kind of wanted to help the world do affiliate marketing better. And that's kind of what we do. And we do it in multiple different ways. We are a first and foremost in agency. So we actually help
Yash Shah (02:10)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Heh.
Yep.
Uh-huh.
Lee-Ann (02:39)
affiliate programs launch, scale and grow, whether they're starting out or whether they're existing and a little bit broken and they need fixing. So we come in and we do all of the strategy piece and the execution and the affiliate recruitment and everything else. And then during COVID, funny story, we all stopped going to events and had to think about how do we get lead generation into our own businesses. And I started a podcast. So I started the affiliate marketing podcast because I thought, well, I'm stuck at home. I've got a mic, I've got a
Yash Shah (02:42)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Heh.
Lee-Ann (03:09)
know, screen, I can do something with it. And I just started calling people in my like Rolodex going and I know that makes me sound old, but I just started calling people saying, I want to like interview all of you and find out how did you learn affiliate marketing? What did you do? And it just mushroomed from then. So very kind of quickly, like within the last three years, we've become a media platform and a voice for the community where people come and learn from vetted industry experts, people that I know and trust, you know, real practitioners, not the
Yash Shah (03:10)
Yeah.
you
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Lee-Ann (03:38)
I'm going to make you a million dollars overnight and be a Lamborghini owner, not those guys. And just like, you know, share the knowledge so that we can all continue to learn because there is no school of affiliate marketing. kind of, find a practitioner and hopefully they're a good one. You put your trust in them and you kind of hit go, you know, and then what you've got is what you've got. So yeah, so there's three parts to the business. There's the agency where we do it like for you.
Yash Shah (03:43)
Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Lee-Ann (04:04)
There's the Done With You, which is the media, the podcast, the website, the newsletter, where you can learn a little bit every week and it's all free. We give it away for free. And we also have a magazine as well that comes out every quarter. And then we run events. So you can come to a live learning event and actually learn from practitioners on stage. And then we also have a training program for affiliate managers, because I think affiliate managers are the hardest and most...
Yash Shah (04:04)
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Lee-Ann (04:30)
experienced digital marketers that you'll find because they need to know every single channel. Affiliate is no longer a channel, it is now a performance metric. So it's a payment model, it's a payment method. If you look at a healthy affiliate program, you'll find, and we'll talk a little bit about this for SaaS owners, you'll find a healthy affiliate program needs to have a real big mix of traffic sources and partner types. And so as an affiliate manager practitioner, digital marketer,
Yash Shah (04:34)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Lee-Ann (04:59)
you need to be a jack of all trades and understand a little bit about everything. So, you know, it's quite easy to become a social media manager, because there's only like four or five platforms you need to learn and all the concepts are the same, really, it's good content. As an affiliate manager, you need to know how to be an SEO, how to be a media buyer, how to, you know, work with influencers, how to build a website, how you know, keyword marketing and content marketing works, how email works, how SMS works. So, you know, it really is an interesting industry that it's
Yash Shah (05:01)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Lee-Ann (05:29)
It's very, you know, you need to be skilled, you need to be skillful. And that's why I really wanted to come on this podcast to talk about what goes on behind launching an affiliate program and why it is, you know, why you need to really think about it before you do. And so that's a little bit about us, but hopefully that gives your audience a little bit of a, a brainstorm of our Affiverse and what we do.
Yash Shah (05:42)
Super.
No, it does. It does. And so this is extremely helpful and meaningful. This helps put into context what everything that you're going to see next. And so before we jump to what are typical building blocks of a moderate to good to a successful affiliate program, I wanted to start by talking about what definitely doesn't work. So as an example, I used to run a SaaS company myself called
client joy it was a CRM grew to 14,000 customers across 90 plus countries. Early last year, we got acquired by a US based firm and then we started this podcast because there was just a tons of mistakes that I made myself as well. And so we tried four channels largely and three of them worked really well. One didn't and that was affiliates. So we did a horrible, horrible job of implementing an affiliate marketing program.
like extremely failed at it. And so I'm very curious to know as to what are some of the mistakes, including mine, what are some of the mistakes that you see a lot of founders commit when they start with an affiliate market.
Lee-Ann (07:01)
Okay. So I think to set the scene for that, I'm going to just talk about how big the SaaS market is, okay, and how fast it's been growing, because that will give you a little bit of insight as to why I say this one is the first thing. So according to Redline in 2015, so, you know, 10 years ago, the SaaS market was about 50 billion. By the end of this year, they're predicting it to be 300 billion. So 50 billion, 300.
Yash Shah (07:07)
Yes. Yeah.
huh.
wow.
Lee-Ann (07:26)
300 billion. Okay, that's a big growth space. Okay, if you were looking at a slide right now, you'd see the graph goes just like that. lot of competition. So how are you standing out? So the first problem that I normally see SaaS founders is, we're to build an affiliate program and all these affiliates are going to come and promote us. The saying, you know, if you build it, they will come does not apply in affiliate marketing. All right, so
Yash Shah (07:27)
Okay, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Yeah. Yeah.
Lee-Ann (07:52)
You launch a program, you get the technical side done, which normally a SaaS founder is very comfortable with. You know, they know how to integrate, they know how to do technical setups. And then they sit back and they go, where are all of these affiliates? And there's no marketing strategy behind launching the affiliate program. So there's no PR strategy, there's no event marketing strategy, there's no recruitment strategy. And so they end up having a technically functioning program, but not much happening behind it. And that's because
Yash Shah (08:04)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lee-Ann (08:20)
They might have not been ready to launch an affiliate program, and they might not have the budget to put behind the affiliate program to actually make it successful. And it's not just the technical solution that you need in order to make a program successful. So maybe we can talk about what are the things that people get wrong in terms of managing their affiliate program once they've got it live. So first thing is they don't make it obvious for where affiliates can find you and sign up to the program. the first, you know, I would say
Yash Shah (08:34)
Yeah.
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Lee-Ann (08:49)
60 % of the time, a client that comes to me that's launched an affiliate program, they do not have a link in the footer of their website saying, join our affiliate program. Basics, basic marketing. Make it easy for affiliates to find you, okay? Their affiliate website links straight to, or the link at the bottom of their page links straight to a form full. Well, an affiliate is generally shopping around. They want to know what is your affiliate program about? What commission can I earn?
Yash Shah (09:01)
Got it. Yeah.
Lee-Ann (09:19)
So they kind of link that, they link the link to the registration form. Well, I haven't decided if I wanted to join your program yet. You haven't told me how I'm going to earn money. You haven't told me what your product is about and how different it is from another. the second thing would be, so the first thing is that they make it easy to find you. The second thing is they don't have a good onboarding experience. Like affiliates have got choice. Remember 50 billion, 300 billion, okay.
Yash Shah (09:20)
That's the first mistake that we did. It was directly a form.
Yeah.
Lee-Ann (09:48)
They got a choice of programs and products that they can promote. How are you convincing them to choose yours? So when you think of your go-to-market strategy for your customers as a SaaS product owner, you need to think of your go-to-market strategy for your affiliates too. Yeah, because all that effort that you're putting on making the customer choose your product, you need to put that same effort in making sure that the affiliate is going to choose your program. Okay. So thinking of your affiliates as an extension of your marketing team versus a supplier.
Yash Shah (09:52)
Hmm. Got it.
feel it as well. Fair.
Yeah.
Lee-Ann (10:18)
So if you think about onboarding, onboarding an affiliate into your program, what experience do you want them to have with your business to build trust? Because affiliates will only promote you if they trust that you're gonna pay them and they trust that you're gonna actually convert. And if your onboarding experience for them is poor, what's your onboarding experience like for your customers? And all an affiliate really wants to know is, can I promote you? What is your USP's?
Yash Shah (10:27)
you
Yeah.
Hmm. Yeah.
Lee-Ann (10:45)
How do I make you stand out so customers convert so that I can earn more money? So if your onboarding
experience for your customers is poor and your affiliate experience is non-existent, that's not a good place to start to build trust. Okay. So I know it sounds simple, but sometimes in marketing, the simplest things are the things that actually matter. And we overcomplicate and we get, you know, really creative and all of those things. But in affiliate marketing, you really do need to get the basics right.
Yash Shah (10:56)
Yeah
wow.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, this is so true because these are the like out of all the things that you said these two mistakes we also ourselves committed, right? So if you were to ask me who in your company is looking after making sure that affiliates are having a good experience working with your company or working with your brand, there was no one. We just we thought that we'll integrate it and we will directly affiliates will come and then this was the exact mistake that we were making. We were thinking of them as a supply side of the equation and not necessarily
you have to treat your affiliates as if, yeah, the way that you're treating customers as well, onboard them, educate them, build trust with them, and then slowly.
Lee-Ann (11:51)
mean,
the trust piece is very important in affiliate marketing, okay, because you're asking a stranger to hold your brand, and brand is one part of the equation. But you're also asking a stranger to put money down on the table and promote your product, and you're only going to pay them when a customer converts. Okay, so, so you've got to make sure that you are giving that person who's signing up into your affiliate program
Yash Shah (12:02)
down.
Yeah, ah, yeah.
Lee-Ann (12:20)
the confidence that you're a professional company, that you know how to actually do digital marketing, you need to give them the customer support to know that they're going to have support when problems go wrong. So what is that experience? When did your affiliate manager actually meet that affiliate, tell them, you know, welcome, I'm your contact person. So if you think, I always like to liken it to like, you know, when you've got a problem with your bank account, like if you've been hit by fraud or something's happened, you're traveling, you've lost your card.
Yash Shah (12:23)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Lee-Ann (12:48)
whatever it is, it's a major
Yash Shah (12:48)
Mm-hmm.
Lee-Ann (12:49)
disruption to your life. You don't want to have a support ticket queue. You want to know that somebody will talk to you when you dial that number. Because time is money in affiliate marketing. So if tracking breaks, if I've forgotten my password and I can't log in to get a link, I need to update a banner, I need to do something. I don't want to be like just another number in the ocean that nobody's ever going to talk to.
Yash Shah (12:51)
for sure.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Lee-Ann (13:13)
You know, I want to have an account manager who knows my pains, my problems, my potential, understands that I'm building my business. The worst thing that a client can do is think of affiliates as suppliers, which is what you said earlier. Your affiliates are SME business owners just like you.
Yash Shah (13:13)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lee-Ann (13:32)
So how would you like to be treated? They are building a business, hiring people, driving traffic, know, handling CRMs, doing financial payments, managing their taxes. They're an SME founder just like you. So how would you like to be treated? Make that the experience for your affiliates too. And you will be already like 60 % ahead of the game without even doing anything tactical.
Yash Shah (13:50)
this.
This conversation, while I'm smiling Lee Ann, this conversation is actually making me feel sad because I have no way of knowing how much money did I leave on the table. And once you say this, right, once you like when you say these things, it sounds like common sense. And I'm just thinking, why did I not do this? did And so one of the things that I, for the audience,
Lee-Ann (14:02)
Why?
Probably a lot.
Yeah.
Yash Shah (14:22)
who
are currently running their SaaS company or thinking about starting a SaaS company. One of the things that I would strongly recommend is if you're watching this conversation, this is definitely not the end of it. So treat this conversation as a starting point. We'll be linking an e-book that Lee Ann and a Affiverse have written, which is essentially a 15-step guide on starting your affiliate program, which includes some of the things that she's saying over here as well.
Lee-Ann (14:48)
in.
Yash Shah (14:51)
And that's something that you should consider checking out for sure.
Lee-Ann (14:56)
want to talk about that because a lot of startups always think that they can't talk to experienced people or consultants or agencies because it's going to cost them a lot of money, you know, and they can do it themselves because SaaS solutions do make it very easy for people to do the technical integration and the tracking process. Like you can get an affiliate program set up for $99, but that $99 is going to cost you for 12 months before you ever see the results of the return because you don't have
Yash Shah (14:58)
Hmm?
Yeah.
Lee-Ann (15:24)
You don't have a strategy behind that program. And that's another reason why we kind of launched Affiverse was to help the world do affiliate marketing better. There is now a resource in a place where you can come and learn about things. Yes, it's going to take you time to learn it. Or you can come and pay somebody for a consultancy session, get a fast track strat plan on what to do and come back in three months time and then ask them again.
Yash Shah (15:39)
huh.
Lee-Ann (15:49)
And I want to be clear about that. Anybody can launch a successful affiliate program and you hit the nail on the head. I make it sound easy because I've got 25 years experience. And that's what you're paying for. The 25 years experience to fast track from all the lessons I've learned, all the failures I've had, because you got to love a good expert. I never call myself an expert because I'm still learning. Like 25 years in the game, every day I'm still learning.
Yash Shah (15:59)
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Lee-Ann (16:17)
You got to be afraid to fail if you want to start an affiliate program, because you might, you know, if you and I have this great analogy where I sometimes when I do workshops with clients, I give break them up into two teams, I give them the same amount of Lego bricks, I give them the same set of instructions. And what comes out is two totally different, like things that they've built. Because we interpret instructions, we interpret, you know,
Yash Shah (16:34)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Lee-Ann (16:45)
things differently as groups of people or individuals of people. But that doesn't mean it's wrong. You all used your Lego bricks, you all followed the instructions, you came up with two different things, you know. That is how an affiliate program works. There is no right or wrong. There's just what's good for you. And I think we get caught up in that, you know, we get caught up in what is the checklist because SaaS owners are very technical, very structured. And what you need to remember is that affiliates are not.
Yash Shah (16:54)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, no, and...
Yep.
Lee-Ann (17:14)
You know, they're creative SME owners and each one of them is different and they're all going to want different things. And there's no one size fits all tactical strategy for launching an affiliate program. It's a lot of intuition, a lot of people management and being able to sell because you need to be able to sell your affiliate program. And, you know, the technical part is really like just the rails that it's built on and it could be anything, you know, it's all the other peripheral things that are important.
Yash Shah (17:36)
Yeah. Yeah.
No, and that's so true. And I'm also guilty of doing this of, as a SaaS company, a lot of these tools and platforms make it sound like the tool is the only thing that you need to make the program successful. So you'll see CRMs do it, saying, if you have this tool, your outbound will grow, or your sales will grow. you're similar for affiliate marketing, similar for some ad campaign manager, similar for social media, and so on and so forth.
So it's important for people to understand that there's a difference between strategies, tactics, and tools. Strategies come through people who have experience. They build the tactics. And then once you know that these are the tactics that we need, that is what informs the engineering or the tech team or you as a SaaS founder as to what tools to use. So that's an important distinction to make, for sure. So coming to the next bit, is
In your experience, what have you seen work really well for an affiliate program or by designing an affiliate program where you tried something and you were pleasantly surprised that, hey, this was not the response that we were expecting. What are a couple of things that have happened with you?
Lee-Ann (19:00)
Okay, so first things first, that onboarding experience, very, important. Okay, second thing is trying not to try too many things. So remember 50 billion, 300 billion. Affiliates manage on average about 50 different products at the same time. Okay, so they're working with 50 different operators or programs or tech stacks or whatever it is that they're promoting. You asking an affiliate to update their banners every week because your messaging has changed is not their priority.
Yash Shah (19:10)
Yeah.
wow.
Lee-Ann (19:28)
Okay, and affiliate needs one quarterly promotion to give a big push. Rest of the time, it needs to be always on and working. Keep it simple, stupid. So trying to overload the affiliate and give them more administration, unless of course it's topical, like, so say you launch your SaaS product and you've got like a 14 day free trial. And then, you know, three months later, you come in and you're actually going to give an extra month free or something like something changes significantly for the client, then obviously the affiliates going to want to jump in on that.
Yash Shah (19:28)
for sure.
Mm-hmm.
Hmm. Hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Lee-Ann (19:57)
and market that new promotion because it will help convert. But asking
the affiliate to change their banners and their content every month, that's just going to become an annoyance very quickly when you've got 50 clients that you're working with or even more. Some affiliates work with hundreds of clients. So I think get very tactical about why you are using an affiliate program. What you want those affiliates to do for you. Is it a brand play? I want you to spray and pray my brand everywhere and I'm only going to pay you when you convert.
Yash Shah (20:09)
Hmm. Hmm. For sure.
Uh-huh.
Lee-Ann (20:26)
Or is it a tactical play, want more sales for this part of my product or this, you know, upsell on my product or whatever it is that you're selling. So get very strategic about what it is that you want affiliates to do for you, because they can do both. They can help you with the brand play and they can also help you with sales. I think that's probably the biggest thing that I see, you know, from the first like touch point when I come to your website to find out, do you have an affiliate program through to the onboarding process.
Yash Shah (20:29)
you
Yeah.
Hmm.
Lee-Ann (20:56)
and then the kind of like account management process that happens afterwards, the life cycle. The other thing that's really kind of undervalued in an affiliate program that I think people should look at is make your affiliates into advocates for your program. Everybody talks about referral friend, customer advocacy. Make your affiliates an advocate for your own affiliate program because affiliates talk. They meet at events, they talk about different things, they're in forums and communities.
Yash Shah (21:11)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Lee-Ann (21:25)
If you can
sweeten the deal for your affiliates to make more money with very little effort, like why are you not doing that? To me, it's a no brainer. So we've put very like, you know, attractive advocacy programs into affiliate programs and seen exponentially how they scale. Simply because the affiliates not only love the brand, they love the product, they get paid regularly on time, the program services them well.
Yash Shah (21:29)
huh.
Lee-Ann (21:52)
and now they can earn extra revenue by referring some of their affiliate friends. So make it easy for affiliates to earn extra revenue. Run quarterly promotions that incentivize them to do more. Because think about it, I'm managing 50 different SaaS affiliate programs. Who do I prioritize this month? Who's giving me the best deal? And it's not just the commission, it's also about the relationship building. Because a lot of the top affiliates that we work with
Yash Shah (21:56)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Hmm. Yeah.
Lee-Ann (22:21)
They've got to appoint in their businesses, but they don't really care whether you're paying them 10 pounds or 50 pounds because they just ramp up or ramp down depending on what they think they can convert for the month. But what they do care about is having a senior person who can help them when something goes wrong, an extra set of hands, as a SEO that can tell them when something isn't working on their website, like expertise perhaps, or exclusive first look offers on new products that are being upgraded.
Yash Shah (22:33)
Hmm.
Lee-Ann (22:51)
think tactically about how you're going to actually be supporting those affiliates, because it doesn't always have to be around budget. And I actually avoid price wars. Like I don't, I don't want to have to, I don't want to build an affiliate program that I have to pay the most all the time in order to win. So what's your strap plan? You know, what do want these affiliates to do for you and which affiliates are the right ones for you? Because an always on and everyone's welcome program doesn't necessarily mean success for you.
Yash Shah (23:05)
Hmm, got it.
Lee-Ann (23:19)
You've got to get tactical about what types of affiliates and generally speaking, most SaaS founders will launch an affiliate program because they feel it's the right time because they've done paid media, they've done SEO and maybe one other channel and they go, well, we might as well chuck affiliate in there too. Do you really need an affiliate program right now? And what do you want those affiliates to do? Because if you don't know what you want those affiliates to do, how do you expect the affiliates to know what they need to do?
Yash Shah (23:21)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lee-Ann (23:48)
And then
are they actually adding value to your business or are they just adding extra cost on your bottom line?
Yash Shah (23:55)
In your answers, you're sort of describing me three years ago. This is exactly, let's chuck this also. So my question while designing our affiliate program was how much effort is it going to take to integrate first from, we were using first promoter. Yeah, that was the question. And so then we were like, okay, we have SEO, we have paid media, we have this.
Lee-Ann (23:56)
There.
Okay.
Nothing, no effort to integrate first promoter. That's not the issue. Yeah.
Yash Shah (24:24)
Let's also just add affiliate marketing into it as well.
Lee-Ann (24:28)
So let's talk about that because I think
if that's where you were three years ago, there's probably a lot of other like SaaS founders that are there right now. Okay. So, so let's talk about how do you decide when an affiliate program is right for you? So I'll tell you, I'll tell you when you decide when affiliate program is right for you. When you have exhausted your paid media budget and your SEO is plateauing. So you're not getting any extra like direct signups. Okay. That's when you start to think, do I need an affiliate program?
Yash Shah (24:32)
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Mm-hmm.
Lee-Ann (24:58)
What, I mean, I'm assuming that's when you started to think it, right? We've kind of exhausted this, we've got this running over here, how can we get more? Okay, let's throw in affiliates. Okay. And I think that's a good approach to have. Okay. Me personally, because of who I am and because of what I know, I would have started the affiliate program first and waited on the paid media because why do I want to spend money upfront? Okay. So I would have gone heavy into the affiliates first, because I can get affiliates to do paid media for me if I give them certain parameters to work in.
Yash Shah (24:59)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Hmm. Hmm.
Hmm.
Lee-Ann (25:25)
I would do the SEO 100 % natural organic. I we always want to have organic direct signups. And then I would think about paid media as a last resort, but that's me. Okay. Like not everybody has the skillset that I have. Once you've decided that that's the right time, what you need to do is understand, do you have the budget? Because, and I love, I love talking about this because everybody thinks affiliates pay on performance, right? Like everybody's going to pay on performance.
Yash Shah (25:30)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lee-Ann (25:52)
Technically speaking, that is correct, but for high volume publishers and media sites that are actually media publications like Tech Donuts, Forbes.com, you need a fixed fee budget with a performance component. they're not only gonna do this on pay on performance, they're not that kind of affiliate. So you've got to have a marketing strap plan of how do you launch this performance program? How do you get the top publishers in and pay to play with those guys because that's how you're gonna have to bring them in.
Yash Shah (26:02)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Lee-Ann (26:21)
And then slowly as they start to see like conversion and they start to see the product is really popular, you can transfer the commission model over to more performance based, you know, retinue. So I think the launching of it is there's a time and a place. There's an understanding of what do I need that that affiliate program to do? Do I need them to push my brand so that customers become more aware of me and I become a household name? Or do I need them to push sales because my current
Yash Shah (26:22)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Lee-Ann (26:50)
direct channels are not working as well and I'm not getting the growth out of that. I've like exhausted all of those things. I need those affiliates to go and plug those micro niches where my paid is not reaching those customers. So you might think that you were talking about a CRM. So maybe you've launched a CRM platform and it's for SMEs and it's for SMEs in e-commerce. But then you realize, hang on, my CRM platform can actually work for SMEs in finance.
Yash Shah (27:11)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah
Lee-Ann (27:20)
And they can work
for SMEs like mini travel agents or major accountants. Your brand budget is not reaching all of those niches because your brand budget is talking at a very high level. Look at my product. Affiliates can come in and go, Hey, I have a database of all of the accountants in the UK. I can email all of those accountants about your product and tell them how to use it. So you're going to be doing a CPA deal with that, with that type of affiliate, you know, so they're to email the whole thing out. Everybody's going to see the brand and eventually those that want.
Yash Shah (27:24)
Agencies.
Yeah.
Huh?
Lee-Ann (27:49)
need and want the service at the time that they need and want it are going to click and the affiliates going to get paid the commission. So you have to really have a clear strategy of what you want affiliates to do before you launch. And then you build the program plan around the desired outcomes that you want. Because then you don't need to think about do I need to go and recruit 10,000 affiliates? No, you only need to recruit the affiliates that have the accountancy firms.
Yash Shah (28:02)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Lee-Ann (28:18)
or content about
accounting, because those are the ones that you wanna plug the gap with from your paid media. So bring affiliate into your marketing strategy, don't leave it as a siloed piece, because then it's not working hard enough for you. And I hope that story made sense and wasn't too tight.
Yash Shah (28:30)
Hmm.
No,
it doesn't. And it actually pushes me to ask one more question. while we come towards the end of the conversation, one of the things that I wanted to understand was, so I'll take an example. So let's take a SaaS company that is doing $100,000 in monthly run rate. SEO is driving consistent traffic, but the growth in traffic is plateauing. So the amount of
people visiting and signups is sort of the same week on week. And paid media, let's say, has not happened up until now. At that point of time, how do I, so what are the structures and how do I make sure that I'm not under financing the affiliate program that I want to build? So what are the structures? What are typical budgets that you would look at? If you can share some light on that, that'll be great.
Lee-Ann (29:25)
Okay, so to launch an affiliate program, you need to be putting aside, and this is just a starting point, because affiliate programs also have life cycles. And the way that an affiliate, I read a really interesting article, I believe that some people believe an affiliate program launches in an S shape. So you launch, you then grow, and then kind of like stabilizes and grows really slow, and then it starts to go down again. And it's like, it's not a bulk curve. It's not like that. And it's not a direct graph.
But actually how an affiliate program grows is like the Fibonacci sequence. So it starts as a little circle and the circle gets a little bit wider and a little bit wider as you start to layer things into your affiliate program. An affiliate program will really only pay dividends for you in year two to five. So you're investing now in an affiliate program to build scale, get some branding, find partners that can reach those niches, build trust.
Yash Shah (29:59)
Yeah, yeah.
Lee-Ann (30:21)
test a few things on a performance basis, start to relationships and partnerships with other companies, even who can become your affiliates, know, do partnership deals with them. And only your, starts to like really pick up in like from about, if you're really good, nine months, if you are kind of okay, about nine to 12 to 18 months, that's when you're gonna start seeing ROI on the affiliate program because.
You've got to think about setup costs. So yeah, you can get a first promoter or something off the shelf really quick just to do basic tracking. But you've got to have that account manager to do that great onboarding as well. So you're paying for a resource and you've got to have a budget to go and get branding with some of the bigger people. And you might need to go to events and travel and all of that kind of stuff to go meet these people and shake their hands and build relationships with them. So on about 10 grand a month, minimum, you can launch a program, hire an account manager and start making inroads into the affiliate channel.
Yash Shah (30:54)
Hmm?
Yeah. Yeah.
Lee-Ann (31:19)
Okay, and there's tools and things that we can use to scale it. Without that, and then you're going to need a strategy. So you're to have to find somebody, hire a consultant, get a strap plan who gives you a blueprint and says, is what I would do in the first three months or six months, and then come back and get another little bit of consultancy or just hire an agency and get it outsourced. Because fumbling around in the dark for 18 months, trying to do something that is clearly a specialist skill.
Yash Shah (31:19)
Okay.
Who knows this? Yeah.
Yeah.
Lee-Ann (31:46)
Like what that's bad business practice. Like you wouldn't, you wouldn't
Yash Shah (31:46)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lee-Ann (31:49)
hire me to come and build your tech stack, right? Where I could, yeah, probably find a chat GPT to help me code, but that's not what you're paying me for. Do you know what I mean? So good salesperson, good people person, somebody who understands digital marketing and paid and all of the other, or has worked in one of the other channels, who's got really good acumen knows that, you know, go getter. That's kind of what you're looking for in your account manager or affiliate manager that you hire. So.
Yash Shah (31:52)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Lee-Ann (32:16)
Think about that. Think about, you know, have I got enough budget? Am I at the point now where I could kind of donate 10 grand of my marketing budget minimum a month to get started and really see what happens? And am I happy to take the long-term view that this is going to take two years before it starts paying dividends? Because it isn't a paid media channel. You don't turn it on and get put a hundred, you know, one dollar in and get one dollar 50 back immediately. We're dealing with people. They've got their own timelines. They've got their own business problems to deal with.
Yash Shah (32:35)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Lee-Ann (32:45)
and you're asking them to do it upfront without paying them. So think about that conversation. It's not an easy sell. So yeah, so I think there's a lot to unpack here and a lot to think about before you just jump right into an affiliate program and think that it's gonna save your business, because that's not what affiliate is for. It's definitely a long-term plan.
Yash Shah (32:48)
Yeah.
No, absolutely. And so my budget was $199 a month. And that clearly sort of lays out as to why it didn't work for us. But again, it was a painful realization that I had at the time of our acquisition. That, hey, only if this channel were also activated, then we would have seen significantly better results as well. And so if you are currently, you know,
trying to implement an affiliate program or have implemented some tools for running an affiliate program and are looking to scale that up. Do follow Lee Ann on LinkedIn or reach out to them. If this is the first time hearing about affiliate program, what were you doing? Where were you? if this was your first time hearing about affiliate program, I would strongly recommend visiting their website, which I also
Lee-Ann (33:37)
Hmm.
What rock have you been hiding under?
Yash Shah (34:03)
You'll be able to find guides, webinars, podcasts, and tons of content, which will generally give you insights and you'll be able to learn about affiliate program yourself as well. This brings us to the end of our conversation, Lee Ann. And for all the people who've been watching us on YouTube or LinkedIn or on Reel, TikTok, you are, consider following, hit the subscribe button, like it owes you money. It's free for you.
It makes us feel warm and fuzzy. Thank you for joining in on Building Momentum. Thank you, Lee Ann, once again.
Lee-Ann (34:40)
Thank you, Yash, for having me. I've really
enjoyed this conversation. It's been a pleasure to unpack affiliate marketing with you.
Yash Shah (34:44)
Yeah.
Yeah, I wouldn't say likewise. It was painful for me. But it's going to help a lot of people. But thank you. Thank you, Lee Ann, for taking out the time. It was a pleasure speaking with you as well. Until next time.
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