Welcome to this video. We’re going to be talking about perpetual affiliate building mindset. That is really what you need to acquire if you’re going to recruit affiliates and keep affiliates for the life of your business. We’re going to be talking about the tactics to keep an affiliate on board. We’re going to talk about the ways to arm your affiliates with the proper tools.
We’re going to be doing a lot of that stuff in future videos but right now I want to talk to you about the proper mindset that you should have if you want to get affiliates on board that are going to last the test of time with you, so to speak. I’m going to talk to you a little bit about how to do that.
What’s important for you to keep in mind is that you want to create a lifetime business partner. Too many people make the mistake of saying, “I got a launch coming up so I’ve got to get as many JV’s on board as I can for my launch.” In reality, what you want to do is create affiliates and joint venture partners for your business, not for your launch. If you’re focusing just on putting people onto your JV list for this particular launch, you’re going to burn a lot of bridges. What’ll end up happening is you’ll find yourself having to go through an entire recruitment process all over again when you’re doing your next launch.
Instead, the right mindset to have is to look to create lifetime business partners not just JVs for a particular launch. You think of it this way, would you rather have a customer that buys from you once or a customer that buys from you repeatedly? Naturally, you’re going to want to have a customer that buys from you over and over and over again. When you recruit customers, you are to recruit customers for your company not customers for just your product.
Along the same lines, would you rather have an affiliate for one launch or an affiliate for the life of your business? Again, this is the same principle. You want to recruit affiliates that want to partner with you, with your business not just with this one particular product. If you set out to do this, you’re going to set out with the proper mindset; with the type of mindset that’s going to look to keep an affiliate happy, that’s going to look to keep them on board, that’s going to look to build the right type of relationship with them so that they’ll promote everything that you do.
A lot of people seem to think like, “Oh my God, I’ve got to have a hundreds of thousands of affiliates.” No, you just need a core of affiliates. I tell people to recruit their affiliates like the way the military recruits its soldiers. Technically, you want an army of salespeople to sell your products over and over again. All of your products, not just one product in one product launch and that’s important to keep in mind.
Let’s talk a little bit about this. Like I said earlier, this is something you’re going to hear me repeat over and over again. You’ve got to understand there are two sides to a product launch. Every product launch, there’s two sides to it. You need to keep in mind that both sides are of paramount importance. They’re both very, very important. Naturally, you’ve got the customer side which is the side that all the customers see. Then you’ve got the JV side which is the side that just your partners see, your affiliates, your sales people.
For the customer side, you know the traditional things that we need. Obviously, if you’re launching something you need to have the product. You need to have a website for the product. You need to create a sales funnel meaning your sales page, your copy, your upsell, your downsell, your membership area, your delivery system. You’re going to need to have a follow-up sequence and your auto responder. You’re going to need customer service. These are the things that we know from being customers and just from having launched things in the past. You need to have these things for the customer side of your product launch.
What about the JV side? The JV side is almost a launch in itself. Because while all these things on the left are taking place for your customers, you will also need on the JV side a completely separate website. You need a JV blog or a JV page that explains everything to them, that tells them about the product. You need the tools. You need the email swipes that you’re providing to those partners and those affiliates in order for them to make sales, banners, and all kinds of stuff which by the way, we’re going to be talking in great detail about, in a future video.
But you need the recruitment to be going on constantly so you need to be elbow-deep in recruiting and you need to be active in social media, trying to get people on board to promote. Then you’ve got to have incentives, prizes, contests. You’ve got to be in public relations. You’ve really got to be involved in the whole recruitment and retention of your joint venture partners. This is going on simultaneously with the whole customer side of things.
I am going to stress over and over again throughout all of my training that you actually have a product that is complete, a website that is fully functional, a sales funnel that’s been tested. Everything on the customer side should be ready to go and then you should have 30 days to dedicate to the JV side to recruiting, to creating that blog, that JV page, to putting together the tools. You should dedicate a significant amount of time to this.
The people that fail at launching a product are typically the ones that they spend some time creating a product and then as soon as it’s done, they announce the launch and within three days they put it up. Then they wonder, “Why didn’t I get any JVs on board? Why didn’t anybody promote my product?” It’s because you didn’t pay close attention to the whole JV side of things. That’s why it’s important for you to keep in mind that there are two sides to a launch and they’re both of paramount importance, they’re both of them are very, very important. You can’t neglect that JV side. Make sure that you give it the attention that it’s due.
I mentioned the military mentality that you should have. Here’s what I mean by military mentality, there is a process for recruiting and getting people into the actual army. That is they advertise. I’m sure you’ve seen those banner ads and those billboards: The Army of One, Be All That You Can Be. Everybody’s heard that phrase, Be All That You Can Be, the TV commercials. They literally advertise to draw the attention of potential soldiers. You need to advertise.
If you’re going to recruit affiliate, you need to advertise. You’ve got to always be looking to attract business partners. Not just during the time leading up to a launch but always. You should always be looking to attract business partners, joint venture partners, affiliates. I have an affiliate page, a JV page on my blog. They’re right in front of people letting them know, “Hey, I love to partner with the right people. Join us. We have a catalogue of products that you could promote. Get in touch with us. Let us know how we can help you and your business.” Again, I’m always advertising. I’m always looking to get people on board not just during launch time and that’s really important.
We advertise. What do you do to advertise? You recruit. Don’t just assume that they’re going to promote just because you put up a banner ad somewhere, just because you did a billboard. The army, the military they put up billboards that say Be All That You Can Be but they still have recruitment officers, they still have recruitment offices all over the place, they still send soldiers out to the schools, the high schools, the colleges. They do trade shows. They do events in order to try to sign people up, in order to try to enlist soldiers.
You want to do the same thing. Don’t just assume that you’re going to get affiliates on board and they’re just going to promote just because you made a banner and you got a catchy slogan. Affiliates have a lot of choices nowadays. There are all kinds of market places that an affiliate can go to, to look for products that have a proven track record that they can promote. If you’re going to have them promote for you, you need to give them a reason to. You need to advertise, you need to recruit, you need to talk to them, and you really literally need to get out there and build that army.
Once you’ve got them, once you’ve advertised, you’ve recruited, you need to train them. What does the military do once you’ve been listed? They put you through a boot camp. You’ve got to put people through a boot camp. I don’t necessarily mean like make them do push-up and become a drill sergeant but you got to give them all the training that they could possibly need. Everything. The more, the merrier. We’re going to get into great detail in a future video where we talk about how to train your affiliates but it’s important that you keep in mind that it’s not just about creating some swipe emails and throwing them out there with a banner and saying, “Hey guys, I’m doing a launch on this date.” No.
If you’re going to do six figure launches, if you’re going to run a profitable long-term business that has affiliates that promote for you over and over again, every single time that you launch a product, then you’re going to need to train them, you’re going to need to share with them what you expect and give them all of the tools that they need.
That’s what I mean by weaponize. Because once you’ve gone through bootcamp, what do they do in the military? They give you the weapons you need. They give you everything that you could possibly need to succeed. They train you and everybody’s got their own job. In the military, you get trained to do that job and then you’re given the tools to do that job. That’s what you’re going to do with your army of affiliates that you’ve built. You’re going to weaponize them. You’re going to empower them to succeed with an abundance of tools to do the jobs.
Not just a couple of here and there, you’re going to give them everything that they need, not just something to promote for a launch week but you’re going to give them tools that they can use to promote evergreen, to continue promoting your products, not just your product but all of your products over and over again throughout the year.
Create a partner for life. Make them money. People say, “Omar, how do I create a partner that’s going to promote all the time for me?” The number one thing you need to make sure that you’re doing is you’re making them money. It’s great that we can become friends in this business but I didn’t get into this business to make friends. I got into this business to make money. The fact that we become friends is cool on top of the fact that we’re making money but make no mistake about it. You got into business to make money, not friends.
At the end of the day, if you want to make your partners happy and you want to make a partner for life, make sure that you make the money. It is a business. No matter how cool you are, your stuff has to sell well. It just has to sell well because at the end of the day it’s about making a profit.
Here’s another thing that you need to do if you want to keep them on for life. It’s not just about making the money because nowadays there are a lot of things out there that can make me money. Affiliates really have a choice. I can go to anyone, a great number of market places and choose a product to promote today that will make me money and that has a proven track record of making other affiliates’ money.
If you want to make a partner for life, you’ve got to do more than just make them money. You’ve got to make them heroes. Go out of your way to make your joint venture partners look like heroes to their customers. You’ve got to create products and you’ve got to over deliver in such a way that your affiliates’ customers, the people that you refer to, the people that he sent to you, the people that your affiliates are handing you, are going to be ecstatic with the treatment that they’ve gotten. They’re going to go back to that affiliate and they’re going to say, “Man, thank you so much for introducing me to this guy. I love this product, this is awesome.” You can make them look like a hero. On top of the fact that you’re making them money, you’re now creating a partner for life.
Another thing that people drop the ball on is they just talk to their affiliates or they just reach out to their affiliates when they’re doing a launch. To me personally, that’s very disingenuous. To me, that rubs me the wrong way. I like when a product creator stays in touch with me. I like feeling like this person is actually involving me in their business long-term, that they’re actually building a long-term business relationship.
Don’t just reach out to your affiliates during launch time. Build a long-term business relationship. Talk to them in between launches. Why don’t reach out to your top JVs at a time when you’re not launching. Ask them what they’re working on, what are they launching, how can you help them in their business. Stay in touch with people.
In today’s day and age, for you to say, “I’ve been too busy to get a hold of you.” “Man, I couldn’t get a hold of you.” That’s nuts. You’ve got phone, you’ve got e-mail, you’ve got Skype, you’ve got VOXER, you’ve got Facebook, you’ve got Twitter, you’ve got about a gazillion other social networks. You can get in touch with someone if you want to.
The reality is that too many people don’t bother to reach out to affiliates. Then when you hit me up and you’re like, “Hey man, how are you? Long time no talk. I hope you’re doing great, I hope the family’s great. By the way, I’ve got this launch coming up.” That’s so disingenuous. It’s like, “Dude, why did you even say hi to me and ask me how my family is and hope we’re doing well. Don’t even bother. The only reason you’re reaching out to me is because you’re trying to get me to promote your thing.” To me that’s disingenuous. Instead, try to keep in touch with your affiliates, with your partners. Create a long-term business relationship with them.
Here’s a great way to do it. Help them. Make it all about them. Help them. Reciprocate or find another way to assist them. I understand, even in my own business I have a lot of affiliates, I have a lot of JV partners that promote my products. To be honest with you, I have hundreds and hundreds of affiliates that promote my products when I do a product launch and it would be physically impossible for me to promote every single product for every single affiliate that’s promoted my product in the past. There are just simply isn’t enough days in the year, even if I were to queue up an e-mail for each one of them every single day I wouldn’t have enough days of the year to promote for them.
But there are other ways that you can be present and that is to help them in other ways. You can assist them maybe with their own product creation, maybe you can help them with their social media, maybe you can mail your JV list and invite your JVs to promote your product even if you can’t promote it yourself, maybe you can help them create a portion of their product, maybe you can contribute some of your products to their product as a bonus, maybe there’s some way that you can help them. That sometimes is just as valuable as promoting and sending an e-mail.
If you want to make a partner for life, you should make sure that you’re always making them money, make them heroes, stay in touch with them consistently and just generally help them. This is important.
Random, unexpected acts of coolness are going to make you really stand out. Social edification, give your JV’s props. Give them proper respect on Facebook. Everyone loves a nice compliment and when you do this just for no reason at all, simply because you care. Maybe today I thought of something funny that one of my JVs said to me once in an e-mail, I jump on Facebook and I go to his wall and I say something nice about him, “Hey man, I just thought about you today. Remember that time when you said this and this, it was so funny.”
You’re just talking to them socially and for no reason at all, you’re complimenting them. Maybe you’re going and liking some of their posts, maybe you’re leaving some comments on some of their pictures that they have, maybe they just had a baby and you’re congratulating them. Give them social praise. If you have a partner that did a really good job promoting a product for you, go on social media and say, “Hey guys, I’m so excited. I just actually did a promotion with this affiliate and he’s such a cool guy. We worked together and he did so well promoting for us. If you’re looking for a good solid product to promote and a good solid person to work with, contact him or check out his products.” Do something like that.
Here’s another thing that you can do is just share their posts or maybe without expecting any kind of compensation share one of their blog posts and say, “Oh wow, I just went to this guy’s blog and I saw this post.” Put a link on there. You’re sharing their content with your people for no reason at all and you’re tagging them in the post. That guy is seeing that. He’s going to remember that you edified him socially.
How about this? Holidays, birthdays, reach out to them with well wishes. When somebody’s birthday is coming up, you get that message on Facebook that says, “Hey, this guy’s birthday is coming up tomorrow.” Make sure you go to their wall, post a little birthday thing. Holidays, things like Easter, Christmas, Hanukkah, reach out to them with well wishes.
You can call them by phone if you have their phone number, you could text them, send them an e-mail. How about Skype or VOXER? VOXER is very, very powerful. I’m going to be talking you a little bit about VOXER and how you could use that in your business for your JVs. Not just attracting JVs but keeping JVs on board and building that affiliate relationship. VOXER is a very, very powerful smartphone application that you can download for free and start using right away.
Random gifts, Melinda and I do this and this is awesome. Trust me, this goes a very long way. For no reason at all send a gift card to one of your top affiliates, for no reason at all; just a $25, $20 gift card. Somebody that’s worth it, somebody whose friendship and partnership you truly value and you send them a gift card and you say, “Hey man, we’re thinking about you. We appreciate you. I wanted to give you a little token here. Maybe you can have a drink on us or maybe you can take your kit out and grab some ice cream on us.” Something like that.
If you don’t want to send something physical, maybe getting them a coupon for Amazon or buying them an eBook or something like that. Something that is random, something that is from the heart, something that is an unexpected act of sheer coolness that they’re going to go, “Wow!” That person is going to be thinking about you. They’re going to remember that.
Six months from now, after you’ve edified them a couple of times on social media, after you’ve wished them a happy birthday, after you’ve given them a free $10 coupon for Amazon for no reason, just for them being cool people. Then all of a sudden you say, “Hey man, I’ve got something coming up. We’d love to have you and be involved.” It’s going to be tough for that guy to ignore you because you’ve built a long-term relationship with them. As oppose to just saying, “Hey man, how you doing? Hope the family’s good. I know I haven’t talked to you in forever, let’s catch up soon. By the way, I’ve got this launch coming up.” You know what I’m saying? Totally different mentality.
Show an active presence in the life of the affiliate. If you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind. This holds true with the example that I just gave you. If you’re just popping up in somebody’s life when you need something, you’re that guy that only comes around when they need something. You’re not someone that’s perceived valuable. You’re not someone that’s perceived as needed. You’re someone that becomes perceived as a nuisance, as a disingenuous person instead.
You want to be present. You want to be active in their minds. You want to be in their social media. Do not become overbearing, you don’t want to become a stalker. You just want to have an active presence in their mind meaning you should be sending them communication from time to time. You should be maybe going and clicking the like button on their page or showing them from time to time that you’re keeping track of them, that you’re present. These are the kinds of unexpected acts of coolness that will truly pay huge dividends when you have a product launch coming up.
Here’s something that’s often overlooked. I’ve got to say to me personally, this is huge. Sometimes, it’s even more important that you treat my customers well than you treat me. I’m going to recommend to you that you treat your affiliates’ customers like gold. Always give your affiliates’ customers the benefit of the doubt. Whenever anything comes up, any kind of a situation where it’s like, “Oh God, what should I do here?” I always tend to side with the customer even if it’s going to cost me a couple of bucks, even if I have to bite my tongue, I don’t give the customer a reason to complain about me to the JV.
I want to treat that customer like gold because at the end of the day you might feel like you won a little battle with this customer but you lost the war because that guy goes and he talks to that JV and he tells him about that terrible experience he had with you. Now that JV doesn’t promote for you ever again, thereby losing you tens of thousands of dollars and a future money that you could’ve had coming in. I always give the customer the benefit of the doubt in order to protect my relationship with my JV.
I honor refund requests. I’m going to say this again, I honor refund requests. This is very important. I’m going to say that there are people out there saying, “I have a No Refund policy.” Okay tough guy, you got a No Refund policy good for you. I’ve seen videos that are shocking where literally product creators are making fun of customers, are posting on Facebook, “Oh, look at this refund request I had today, the nerve of this guy.” We all get them.
When I see an affiliate, when I see a product creator, when I see somebody talking negatively about a customer, posting the ridiculous refund request that they got today, when I see somebody doing some sort of a mocking video, in one way or another de-edifying a customer, I say to myself, “Wow! I would never promote for that guy.”
You might feel like you won some sort of a little victory with this customer and you’re like, “You didn’t get your money, you lost that PayPal dispute buddy.” Now, all of a sudden you’re posting on Facebook about what a tough guy you are, how you won this chargeback and you’re making fun of that customer and his stupid refund request. Stupid to you, maybe it is an unfounded refund request, maybe he is late, maybe it’s a 30-day refund policy and he’s requesting a refund at 35 days, maybe you didn’t have a refund policy at all and he wants the $47 back.
How many of those are you really going to get? Think about it. You’ve got a No Refund policy and you’ve got this small amount of people that ignore your refund policy and ask for a refund anyway. You know what I do? I just give them the money. I give it to them. You know why? Because it cost me $47 to give this guy that $47 back and it saved me an affiliate relationship. It saved me an affiliate. I treated that guy’s customer like gold. Maybe I’ll even say to that guy, “Hey look man, I’m going to give you this back because I honor my relationship with this affiliate and I understand that you’re his customer. Here’s the $47. You’ll notice that there was a No Refund policy on this so I’m going to appreciate that you don’t buy anymore stuff. But I am honoring your request.”
Sometimes, I’ll even copy that affiliate and I’ll CC him on the e-mail. I’ll let him know, “Hey look, this is how I’m treating your customers.” You know what ends up happening? That affiliate’s like, “Oh man, thank you so much. I’m sorry. I’ve had issues with that guy in the past but thank you so much for taking care of it for me so I didn’t have to deal with it.” You see what I’m saying? Think about it. Is it worth losing an affiliate like myself or John Thorne or Mike Filsaime over $47? It isn’t so why not just honor the damn refund request instead of losing an affiliate over? Don’t do it. It’s going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars in the future promotions.
Over deliver, give their customers more than they could ever have hoped to have gotten. Give them so much that they’re going to be like, “Oh wow! This is incredible.” They’re going to be talking so good about you. They’re going to be so happy that they bought from you that you’re going to want to get a testimonial.
Sometimes, we forget to ask customers to talk about us. If someone’s happy, ask that happy customer to let the affiliate know how they were treated well. Say to him, “Hey, were you happy with the resolution here? Would you mind just posting about us on Facebook?” “Hey, who was it that referred you to us? Oh really? Excellent, can you go back and tell him how happy you are with the treatment. We’d really appreciate it if you go back and let him know.”
People are really, really quick to share bad experiences but they need to be reminded to share good experiences. If you have somebody that says to you, “Wow man, I’m so happy. Thank you so much for doing this.” Say, “Hey, thank you. Would you be kind enough to share that with others? Would you post about us on Facebook? Would you send a quick e-mail, just a couple of sentences to the person that referred you to us and let them know how happy you were with the way you’re treated?”
That person, 90% of the time is just going to say, “Sure no problem, thank you so much.” They’re going to send an email to that affiliate and that e-mail is going to say, “Hey man, thank you so much. I just want to let you know, I just got treated really, really well by these guys.” I love getting emails like that from people. It sure beats getting an email that says, “You referred me to this customer and I bought from him and I made a mistake. I didn’t like the product. I thought it was something else. Then I asked him for my money back and he told me to screw off. He told me that there was a no refund period and I think this is terrible.”
Now, I got to deal with this guy. You could’ve saved me this trouble. Now, I got to deal with this guy. Next time you ask me to promote for you I’m going to think twice. I maybe like, “Dude the last time I promoted for you I had like people coming back to me saying they were unhappy.” Don’t be that guy. Why lose an affiliate when it could just cost you couple of bucks to actually make somebody happy?
Let me tell you something. Sometimes, you make somebody happy you do right by them. Those are opportunities. Some people look at those as trouble. They try to avoid refund request. I look at those things as opportunities to win a lifetime customer. When you start looking at those situations as opportunities and not as problems, you’re going to start having a whole different chain of events open up in your business.
This is how you’re going to build that affiliate army. This is really how you’re going to create the right perpetual affiliate building mindset. Not just a mindset that’s going to put together an affiliate team for one launch but rather you’re going to build that mindset that’s going to create that perpetual army of affiliates.
You’re the general of that affiliate army. You need to set the standard and you need to lead by example. When you start recruiting, when you start putting together that team of affiliates that’s going to promote for you, you have a duty to arm them with everything that they’re going to need, you have a duty to train them on how to use all the things that you’re arming them with and you have a duty to serve their customers even better than you would want to be treated yourself because somebody has trusted in you. Somebody has lent you their own credibility. They’ve put their own brand, their own name on the line and sent you one of their customers.
You need to set the standard. You need to lead by example now. You need to honor the fact that referred you, that person has actually sent you their customer and now, you need to treat their customer like gold. That really is what it comes down to. That really is the way to keep a long-lasting relationship with those affiliates. You need to keep that in mind.
Don’t think that you have to have this huge, huge amount of affiliates. All you really need is a small core of loyal affiliates. I have a core of five to 10 affiliates that always promote for me but you know what? All the other affiliates fall in line behind them and we create lots and lots of momentum but there’s a core of loyal affiliates that I’ve built lifetime relationships with, that I’ve worked really, really hard to cultivate long-term business relationships with.
You want to build a strong inner circle of lifetime partners and always be recruiting new affiliates into your business. Always recruit them into your business. Don’t just recruit one time a year for a launch. Always be recruiting affiliates into your business and always be treating their people like gold, over deliver and this is going to be the perpetual affiliate building mindset that you need.
The rest of the stuff as far as arming those affiliates, training those affiliates and more specific tactics as far as how to use the affiliate building platform are going to be in the videos to follow. Dive in and I’ll look forward to seeing you in the next video. Take care.