Before I tell you what this sort of advertising is… let me ask you a question.

How much does it currently cost to buy a customer?

Seriously, how much are you spending to grow your business? If you don’t know this number then how do you know if your marketing efforts are working or if they are profitable?

You might be thinking, why do I need to know this if I can advertise for free?

Good question. And the reason why is that I want to you truly understand the power of what you’re about to learn.

If it currently costs you £1,000 to buy a customer then just imagine the difference that this will make to your business.

Now that you can quantify the difference that this will make to your business it’s time to show you how to start using FREE advertising that makes instant sales.

Where Can You Find A Starving Crowd?

If you’re looking for a starving crowd, a large group of people that need your help, then you need to get crystal clear on who else serves your customers.

Who else currently sells to your customers or has a relationship that you want to leverage?

One obvious place to look is your direct competitors. But where else could you look?

Non-direct competitors.

Here’s a story to illustrate the perfect Non-Direct Competitor…

Imagine you own a hardware store. You sell a range of shovels and gardening equipment. A customer walks in and tells you that he wants to replace the fence in his garden, so he needs to dig holes for the fence posts.

You show him the different shovels that you have and a manual boring tool that looks like a giant corkscrew.

You spend time talking to the customer about the size of his garden, and you help him to see that your tools would help him with the many improvements that he wants to make.

After half an hour the customer leaves the store empty-handed.

The customer still has a problem. He needs to dig / drill several fence post holes in his garden. You have a range of manual tools that were just not quite right for him. This is where you (the hardware store owner) can help the customer and yourself. You email the customer an offer from another business that rents power tools, small diggers, and skips.

The customer happily rents a motorised boring tool and a skip from the other business and he thanks you for helping him improve his garden.

The business that you promoted gives you some commission because you recommended a customer to them.

This is the perfect Win – Win – Win.

A win for the customer. A win for the other business and a win for you. This type of business relationship is known as affiliate marketing.

Why Affiliate Marketing Can Transform Your Business!

The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you only pay for results!

With traditional advertising, you pay for space… with no guarantee of any result whatsoever. If you've paid for space in a newspaper, magazine or the Yellow Pages than you'll know the pain and disappointment of poor or no results.

Newspaper and magazine advertising can work if you know what you are doing, but there is no guarantee. You are walking a tightrope without a net.

With Google and Facebook advertising you are paying for clicks. That is a measure of response, and it's certainly not cash in the bank.

With affiliate marketing, you only pay if you make a sale, so it is always profitable.

When you do it well, you become a trusted celebrity in a niche community. That will give you sales today and sales in the future.

The Perfect Affiliate Partner

If you want to build your business with FREE advertising, then you need to make a list of business that you could partner with. Businesses that are selling power tools if you are selling shovels.

Equally, it could be businesses selling gardening advice.

Here is another example of the perfect non-compete competitor.

Imagine for a moment that you are a property investor and want to sell workshops teaching people how to invest in buy-to-let.

What types of business should you contact?

The first business you should contact is other property training companies… that do not offer buy-to-let courses. These businesses will be the lowest hanging fruit and the best source of instant sales because they have a community that wants property education. These are the people that will be the most receptive to your offer.

The second type of business that you should contact are bloggers. These are people that share property information, either specifically about education or about the opportunities in the property market. Bloggers will have a loyal community. Their community will be receptive to training because it helps them achieve their property goals.

The third type of business that you should contact are magazines. These organisations will have a list of subscribers and a list of prospects. Both of these lists will be interested in buy-to-let courses because they are interested in creating financial freedom through property.

The final type of business that you should contact are trade shows. If they can attract thousands of people to an event for 2 or 3 days, then chances are they have a list of prospects.

Now that you’ve got a list of different businesses that you’d like to work with it’s time to craft…

Your Irresistible Affiliate Offer

To craft an irresistible affiliate offer you need to remember that selfish is not a bad work in marketing.

If you want your affiliate to immediately say Yes to working with you, then you must make it clear what’s in it for them!

So, what is the affiliate’s motivation?

1. Make more money
2. Do no work
3. Build a stronger relationship with my community

Now you know the 3 things that your affiliate partners want, all you have to do is craft an offer that gives them those 3 things.

Your Irresistible Affiliate Offer – Make More Money

The first and most obvious affiliate desire is to make more money. So what commission on sale are you going to offer them? What would make you say Yes, absolutely!

There is no right or wrong answer to this question. Many people immediately think that 50% commission is the right number. But that's all dependent on the price of the product you are selling. If you are selling a 12-month mentorship program for £10,000, then 50% commission is going to grab an affiliates attention.

But…

Is this a Win – Win – Win? If you are giving away 50% commission are you still growing your business. Are you also winning? If you can immediately say Yes, then make that offer.

If you are selling a low priced product, something that’s less than £50, then you may want to offer 100% commission! Why would you do this? Because you are buying customers and you know that you have something else to sell them that is far more profitable.

I’ve recently worked with a marketer who built a huge training company virtually overnight by giving affiliates 300% commission!

What did that do for his business?

It gave him a flood of instant customers because it attracted vast amounts of affiliates. The affiliates were happy because they were getting good commission and the business was happy because they had a upsell model that was hugely profitable. This was the perfect Win – Win – Win!

So the most important thing to consider with affiliate commission is a Win – Win – Win. Your affiliate must win, or they won't work with you. You must also win, or the relationship won't last, and it goes without saying that your customers must win because you have a product that can help them.

Now let’s look at the second element…

Your Irresistible Affiliate Offer – Do No Work

If you do ALL the promotional work to make the sale AND all the delivery for the product or workshop so the only thing your affiliate needs to do is send a few emails that you've written then why would they say no?

Let’s face it, we are all pressed for time. We all have more opportunities than we can seize. So if you package your opportunity so your affiliate partner has nothing to do except send a few emails, then you are selling free money with no work.

Would you like some of that?

Yes, absolutely!

So, now it’s time to look at the third element…

Your Irresistible Affiliate Offer – Build A Stronger Relationship With My Community

This element is possibly the most overlooked and the one that will set you apart from everyone else.

You see, making the sale is the obvious desire for you and your affiliate partner.

But…

If your sales process burns their list, then the affiliate relationship will die no matter how much money they make. Why? Because their list is their Golden Goose. Even if they can't monetize it in the way that they want, they will be terrified if every email results in a high level of unsubscribes and spam complaints.

So how can you help your affiliate build a stronger relationship with their community?

You personalize the emails to include their stories and their voice. The promotion must sound like the message has come from the list owner.

In most cases, the list owner has never told their story. So, you will do them a great service if you write their story in an exciting way. If you include their story in your promotion, then you are helping the list owner and your sales!

How is that possible?

Because the first thing you must do to make any sale is to earn their trust of your audience. In the case of affiliate marketing, you are borrowing the trust the entrepreneur has with their community, so their recommendation that you will love this results in more video views, webinar registrations, and sales.

You further help your affiliate partner and yourself, when you give their community great value without asking for anything in return. So if you create a trust sequence in the form of a video series, or an ebook, or both, then you make your affiliate partner look good because they are giving their community some valuable content.

You also earn the trust of their community because you are giving upfront value. The more value you give, the more trust you will earn. The more you include your personal swagger in your content the more you brand yourself in the minds of the audience.

If you can show your affiliate partner the value content that you plan to give at the first meeting, then you immediately prove that you want to help them do more than just make the sale. You prove that you do not want to burn their list and that you have great content to give.

This makes it easy for them to say Yes.

Prove You Can Make The Cash Register Ring

If you can prove to your affiliate partner that your funnel or campaign makes sales, then it makes it easy for them to say Yes to working with you.

If you have sold your product to your list or someone else's community, then you can demonstrate that your product and your campaign makes the cash register ring.

Let’s face it, your affiliate partner does not want to send traffic to a campaign that does not convert, even if you are doing all the work! They want to know that they can monetize their list with none of their time. And that’s the key point, that they will make some money from the activity.

Word of warning: do not make outrageous income claims that you can’t prove. All you can do is show the results of previous campaigns and tell them that you expect to get a similar result.

I’ve run many affiliate campaigns. Some of which have pulled in £100,000 from one partner! The same offer to a different partner has made £2,000!

Why is there such a difference in results? Because of the list size, the email open rates, the relationship strength between the business owner and their community, and the match between your offer and the desires of the community.

So, don’t expect every affiliate to make £100,000 in sales! And I want you to know what’s possible when you find the right partner.

Tracking Sales

This can make or break your affiliate relationship. For obvious reasons, they want to be paid for every sale that comes from their community. That’s the agreement that you’ve made so you must have technology in place to deliver your promise.

There are many different affiliate sales tracking software tools, and the one that I've always used is Infusionsoft. Does it always work? Is it easy to use?

Like everything in life, it’s easy when you know how. Like all software, human error can make it fall down.

I’ve run huge affiliate campaigns where the software failed and then spent weeks looking at every sale to trace the source. Why did the software fail? Because of human error!

There are times when you just have to accept your limitations. I’m a creative that understands how the technology works and this is not my flow. So, I’ve teamed up with a certified Infusionsoft expert named Rob Drummond. Rob is a unique expert because he’s not just a techy… he’s also a marketer! This means we both speak the same language. In my experience when marketers try to talk tech, something always goes wrong. Maybe that says more about me and my communication limitations than it does about a coders Infusionsoft ability. With Rob, he can suggest things that I never knew Infusionsoft could do that improve the performance of a campaign.

From an affiliate transparency perspective, it means that you can give them their own Infusionsoft login so they can see the sales they have made and the commission they have earned. You can’t get more transparent than that.

Become A Trusted Celebrity

The perfect affiliate marketing campaign will make sales today and makes you a trusted celebrity with your partners’ community. This will give you sales in the future.

You see, if you want to make sales today, the first thing you have to do is earn the trust of your affiliate partners community. When you create trust with a group of people there will be many that do not buy your product or service right now because the timing is not quite right. But… they will work with you in the future because of the trust that you have created.

You will get a lot of people joining your list because they want to see what else you have to say. They want to work with you in the future when the time is right for them. As long as you continue to give great value, then when you next launch to your list, they will be ready to buy.

Now It’s Your Turn

Now you can see that there really is free advertising that makes instant sales. More than just giving you cash today, it makes you a trusted expert with a crowd of your ideal customers. This will grow your list and give you sales in the future.

You can seize this zero cost growth formula by first making a list of the affiliate partners that you would like to work with. Then you need to craft your irresistible affiliate offer by giving them free money, with no work and a better relationship with their community. Finally, you need some software that will track the affiliate sales in a way that gives your affiliate partner complete transparency. Infusionsoft is the only tool that I can honestly recommend for this because that’s the only tool that I have used.

Like all software, it only works when there is no human error. I’ve seen the chaos caused by human error which is why I would recommend working with an Infusionsoft expert like Rob Drummond.

If you would like some help to seize the zero cost business growth of affiliate marketing then please drop me an email on Roland.Eva@RolandEva.co.uk

If you would like my team to set your campaign up in Infusionsoftso you can track affiliate sales and so you can use the genuinely geeky features to make more sales then drop me an email, and we can discuss your campaign.

If you have found this useful, then please leave a comment below.

If this can help someone you know, then please share it with them.

Until next time…

Carpe diem

Roland Eva

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