In this episode of the effective e-commerce podcast we’re gonna be talking about Affiliate in Influencer marketing which is something I’m gonna be doing for my new company performance nut butter pretty heavily. So I did ate a lot of research on the best ways to do Influencer and Affiliate marketing we talked about what the difference is between Influencer and Affiliate marketing we’re gonna go into the how to’s of how to do it all that fun stuff but before we get into that I do have a quick announcement performance nut butter just launched its jars on Amazon. So if you go to Amazon just search performance nut butter checkout the jars it is that a hugely discounted rate I’m actually losing a little bit of money. So if you ever wanted to try the product this is a great time to do it I put it at a discounted rate early on to gain some sales velocity gains some sales traction but anyways the the product is live. So if want to try it go to Amazon type in performance nut butter calm and you’ll see it there. So let’s go over Influencer and Affiliate marketing. So what is Influencer marketing versus Affiliate marketing Influencer marketing is hiring people on Instagram Pinterest YouTube any social media platform any anywhere that there are Influencers and basically paying them or giving them free product in exchange for posts Affiliate marketing is a little bit different even though it’s fairly similar with Affiliate marketing you give your you give these Influencers links and they only make money if they make sales. So I might approach a youtuber and say hey about this product performance nut butter every time someone uses one your links and makes a purchase I’ll give you 20% of the sale

They don’t have to do anything all they have to do is share my product and if they love the product there they would probably do that for free anyway. So that’s a way for them to make some money. So with Influencer marketing which I think we will probably start with first there’s Instagram Pinterest and YouTube mostly social media Affiliate marketing tends to be a little bit more via email or via blogs or as well via YouTube there’s definitely some overlap in the two. So let’s get started with Influencer marketing I think a lot about this with Instagram you’ll see people with a lot of followers a lot of times do sponsor posts though they’ll post and they’ll talk about some kind of a product that’s fairly common and a lot of times those companies are paying them to do it or if they’re not paying them they’re giving them free product. So how would you do this well I recommend first off you’re gonna want to compile a list of different Influencers to reach out to you can search via hashtags you go to the Instagram app figure out which hashtags people that would like your product or likely to post under and then go through those hashtags go through the pictures specifically the pocket most popular posts and reach out to those accounts another thing you can do is look at your competitors product search for your competitors product search for their hashtags search for people that have posted about it because if you have an established competitor or remember every time I said competitor it could also be a similar website for instance performance nut butter there’s also companies out there that sell like ghee like butter ji-hae and a lot of times people that like D like dairy you know like cow’s butter also like nut butters because they’re interested in the high fat content. So what I would do is look at all right who has posted about different companies get product or some of my competitors’ products and then go on and talk to them and say hey I’ll send you some free product or I will give you some money and one of the things I’ve been doing a little bit just testing the waters on is giving people free boxes in exchange for doing a post and giving a coupon code and that’s made me some sales that’s gained some awareness for the brand for sure one thing I do is well this is just a little wrinkle is when people approached me and saying hey I want you know I’d like a free box in exchange for an Instagram post I make him jump through a hoop first I say sure right now most my inventories in Amazon would you mind just buying it off Amazon and I’ll venmo you the money and most people say yes and then what ends up happening too is I asked them you know could you leave a review for the product as well and obviously I asked them you know an honest review but I’m hoping that they’re gonna give five stars.

It’s a way for me to get a review as well and most of these like low-level Influencers people with a thousand to ten thousand followers on Instagram they’re happy to do it they’ll they’ll share they’ll share my product and they’ll leave a review they just want to work with me. So Webster grand Webster Graham and ikono Square are two different places where you can go to search for hashtags that are related to your product I think they also might help you find accounts fame bit famebit which is a website where you can go to find people to hire where you can pay them to basically post about your product this includes YouTube Influencers Instagram Influencers a bunch of other ones like that in just a minute I’m gonna get to Affiliate marketing which is part of the reason why this podcast was delayed. So I just want to pause really quick and explain that this this podcast was delayed because I actually ended up meeting with someone in hiring somebody to teach me about Affiliate marketing and I wanted to wait to post this podcast till after I met with them okay. So let’s get let’s get back to the rest of what I was talking about finish off this Influencer marketing. So buzzsumo clear spelled with AK a ninja outreach and snap Influencer also make it easier to find micro Influencers engage with and that’s one of the things I really want to dive into is working with micro Influencers people with an audience of a thousand to ten thousand maybe thousand to twenty thousand and the reason is I think they’re just. So much more excited to work with people like me I mean if you have a thousand to ten thousand Influencers on Instagram you’re not that big of a deal yet and somebody reaching out and saying hey I’d like to give you some free product that’s pretty cool. So they’re they’re very likely to want to work with you happy to share all that kind of fun stuff similar web and Alexa for finding similar sites as well yeah one of the things I do is well I think I mentioned this is I give them a coupon code and I tell them very bluntly hey I’ll give you a free box if you you know post it with this coupon code and if a lot of people use that coupon code will work again in the future we’ll work together again in the future and basically if nobody uses it I’m never gonna give you a free box again.