Because you’re reading Revenue, which is as focused upon affiliate marketing as you are, I doubt if I have to remind you of the glories of such marketing. If ever there was a win-win business proposition, this is it. If affiliate marketing is good enough for Wal-Mart, Amazon and eBay, I’m figuring that you realize it’s also good enough for you. Do you know what you have by the millions? Potential affiliates.

But (and my wife once warned me to listen extra carefully to everything that comes after the word “but”) like the Web, affiliate marketing does not do the job. It only helps to do the job.

“The job” is to market your program to planet Earth, especially to your own affiliates. They are well-meaning people, every last one of them, but they need you to show them how to cash in on their affiliation with you.

In addition to giving your affiliates a dynamite product or service, a generous commission and a vision of financial splendor, you’ve got to give them non-stop sales support. You’ve got to arm them with ultra-powerful marketing tools to help them sell your offering.

So send them ads that they can put in their e-zines, email letters they can customize for their customer lists, banners to add pizazz and profitability to their sites, even online audio marketing to keep your marketing fresh and up-to-the-moment. You’ll see the difference.

If you can create killer articles with a link to their site, they can send those articles to their newsletter readers. Traditional marketing is a full-spectrum affair, affiliate marketing is no different.

Set a time each month for a tele-class pep talk to your affiliates. Single out the ones who have done the best and share their secrets with your other affiliates. Let them know that you sincerely care about their success with your marketing support, your regular telephone presence, your tone of voice, your passion. Passion is contagious, you know. And you want passionate affiliates.

But mere passion isn’t quite enough. You also need solid marketing savvy, which means marketing your affiliate program anywhere and everywhere you can.

Guerrillas know that all the media work better if they’re supported by the other media. Feature your affiliate program on your Web site. Put your Web site onto your TV commercial. Mention your advertising in your direct mail. Refer to your direct mail in your telemarketing. Plant the seeds of your affiliate program offering with some kinds of marketing, then fertilize them with other kinds.

You’re not really promoting your affiliate program unless you’re cross-promoting it. Your trade show booth will be far more valuable to you if you promote it in trade magazines and with fliers put under the doors of hotels near the trade show. Guerrillas market their affiliate programs with the same zest and vigor devoted to their primary offering.

Multimedia

Your prospects, being humans, are eclectic people. They pay attention to a lot of media, so you can’t depend on merely one medium to motivate a purchase. You’re got to introduce the notion of your affiliate program, remind people of it, say it again, then repeat it in different words somewhere else. That share of mind for which guerrillas strive? They get it when they combine several media. They say in their ads, “Email, call or write for our free brochure.”

They say in their yellow pages ad, “Get even more details at our Web site.” They enclose a copy of their magazine ad in their mailing. They blow up a copy to use as a sign. Their Web site features their print ads.

Guerrillas are quick to mention their use of one medium while using another because they realize that their affiliates equate broadscale marketing with quality and success. They know that people trust names they’ve heard of much more than strange and new names; and guerrillas are realistic enough to know that people miss most marketing messages, often intentionally. (The remote control is not only a way for TV viewers to save their steps but also a method of eliminating marketing messages.)

No matter how glorious their newspaper campaign may be, guerrillas realize that not all of their prospects read the paper so they’ve got to get to these people in another way. No matter how dazzling their Web site, it’s like a grain of sand in a desert if it is not pointed out to an unknowing and basically uncaring public.

Cross-promoting your affiliate program in the media is another way to accomplish the all-important task of repetition. One way to repeat yourself and implant your affiliate program message is to say it over and over again. Another way is to say it in several different places. Guerrillas try to do both. Nothing is left to chance.

If you saw a yellow pages ad that made you an offer from a company you’ve never heard of and another with the same offer except that the ad said, “As advertised on television,” you’d probably opt for the second because of that added smidgen of credibility. I rest my case.

Psych ’em

The psychology of marketing an affiliate program requires basic knowledge of human behavior. Human beings do not like making decisions in a hurry and are not quick to develop relationships. They certainly do want relationships, which is what affiliate programs are all about, but they’ve been stung in the past, and they don’t want to be stung again.

They have learned well to distrust much marketing because of its proclivity to exaggeration. All too many times they’ve read of sales at stores and learned that only a tiny selection of items were on sale. They’ve been bamboozled more times than you’d think by the notorious fine print on contracts. And they’ve been high-pressured by more than one salesperson. In short, they’ve been used.

That’s why they process your marketing communications about your affiliate program in their unconscious minds, eventually arriving at their decisions because of an emotional reason even though they may say they are deciding based on logic. They factor a lot about you into their final decision – how long they’ve heard of you, where your marketing appears, how it looks and feels to them, the quality of your offer, your convenience or lack of it, what others have said about you, and most of all, how your offering can be of benefit to their lives.

Although they state that they now want to help you sell what you’re selling, and they do it in a very conscious manner, you can be sure they were guided by their unconscious minds. The consistent communicating of your affiliate program benefits, your message and your name has penetrated their sacred unconscious mind. They’ve come to feel that they can trust you, and so they decide to sign up and work their tails off for you.

Any pothole in their road to purchasing at this point might dissuade them. Are they treated shabbily on the phone or forced to wait for an email response? You’ve lost them. Do they access your Web site for more information and either find no Web site or find one littered with self-praise? They’ll leave. Do they visit you and feel pressured or misunderstood? They’re gone.

You’ve got to realize that the weakest point in the marketing of your program can derail all the strong points. Excellence through and through, start to finish, is what potential affiliates have come to expect from businesses, and these days, they won’t settle for less.

Understand Them

Just keep in mind that affiliate marketing is a 360-degree process, and you’ve got to do it right from all angles at all times. When it comes to affiliate marketing, people have built-in alarm systems, and any shady behavior on your part sets the bells to clanging, the sirens screaming.

It is very difficult to woo a person from the programs they support right now to your program. Although they are loathe to change, they do change. And when they do, they knock themselves out as high-energy affiliates and all because you’ve proven that you understand the psychology of human beings and the true nature of marketing. That depth of
understanding is what they’re hoping for.

If you give your affiliates exactly what they hope for, there’s a strong chance they’ll help you get what you hope for.

Guerrilla marketers are able to get what they hope for because they know that the key to successful guerrilla marketing is in embracing not the concept of competition, but the beauty and advantage of cooperation. And cooperation is the lifeblood of affiliate marketing, it’s raison d’tre.

One of the most rewarding, inexpensive, underused and effective methods of all marketing is to align your marketing efforts with the efforts of others. In the

U.S. this used to be known as “tie-ins.” A Business Week cover article referred to it as “Collaborative Marketing.” In Japan and by guerrillas worldwide, this make-everybody-wealthy marketing tactic is called “fusion marketing.” Affiliate marketing is the highest form of fusion marketing because it is so performance-based and has mutual gain as its goal.

Fusion marketing is the guerrilla saying, “Hey Sara, if you enclose my brochure in your next mailing, I will enclose your brochure in mine. And I’ll give you $5.00 for every new customer who mentions your name.” And it is, “OK, Randy. And if you put up a sign for my store in your business, I’ll put up a sign for your business in my store. If I get a customer who says you sent them, I’ll give you ten bucks.”

Sara and Randy immediately see the wisdom in the guerrilla’s affiliate offer. Their marketing exposure has just been expanded. Their marketing costs have just been reduced. Hey, this is a good idea! Of course it is! Why do you think you’re watching all those McDonald’s commercials that turn into Coca-Cola commercials and end up as Finding Nemo commercials? Why do you think so many members of frequent flier clubs have learned that their airlines have fused with hotel chains, auto rental companies, even cruise lines? Because there’s a whole lot of fusing going on. And today, the majority of it is affiliate marketing, by whatever name you choose.

Gone Cyber

Now it’s online. It’s happening very visibly among the large businesses, but it’s happening more frequently among small businesses, even teeny-tiny businesses. The gas station fuses with the video store. The restaurant fuses with the clothing store. The sporting goods store fuses with the ski area and the tennis club and the golf course. It’s happening all over.

The purpose of an affiliate marketing arrangement is mutual profitability. Glad we’re clear on that one. Realize that almost everyone in your community and on your planet is a potential affiliate, that almost all of them will see the wisdom in your suggestion of a connection for mutual profit.

The key for you to keep in mind at all times is that your affiliate program is a lot like your product or service. It must spring from a basic marketing plan. It should adhere to your marketing calendar. It requires patience, repetition, consistency, and aggressiveness in your overall marketing effort.

It takes commitment to your plan, an assortment of marketing tools, constant testing, precise measurement of results, and your time, energy, imagination and knowledge. But it does not take your money. It provides you – and your affiliates – with money if you go about it the right way.

In this magazine, you’re learning how to go about it right. In this article, you’re learning how to market it right. You can’t ask your Dad or your college professor to help you on this one. Affiliate programs are too new for them. But they’re right on the money for you.

There is no real magic in marketing. And there is no real magic in affiliate marketing. But when you combine the two and season them with your own marketing insight, “abracadabra” might become your battle cry.

Jay Conrad Levinson, is the author of the Guerrilla Marketing series of books, the most popular marketing series in history, with 14 million copies sold in 39 languages. GuerrillaMarketingAssociation.com features marketing ideas and information about its affiliate program.