How to Motivate Affiliates to Promote Your Business

Word of mouth is one of the most powerful ways businesses can market themselves. During the buying process, a customer’s personal recommendation is one of the biggest influences on someone’s decision to purchase. That’s why creators are eager to pair with affiliates and influencers to get real opinions out there to established audiences to bring in new customers to their courses.

On Teachable, creators who want to reach new audiences use affiliate marketing features to not only harness the power of word-of-mouth marketing but also to give an affiliate, ambassador, or influencer a custom link that tracks sales made through that unique link. Then, creators give a percentage commission to these affiliates on any sales they helped generate.

Affiliate marketing is an effective way to bring in new customers because you only pay commissions to the sales made, instead of paying for advertising upfront. We know finding these affiliates and influencers is the first step to building an effective affiliate, influencer, or ambassador program for your business.

Knowing your target audience is the key to finding the most effective affiliates who will build your business. Once you know that audience and connect with them your next step will be to keep them engaged and motivated to get the word out. Affiliate marketing is only effective when your affiliates are actively sharing about your courses or products.

Here are a few ways you can motivate your affiliates to share about your courses and online products.

Start an affiliate newsletter

Affiliates are likely running their own businesses and are concerned with the same day-to-day business worries as you are. They’re thinking about how to keep their own audiences engaged, what to write in their next blog post, or creating their next course or product.

Just like with your regular customers, you want your affiliates actively engaged and to keep your business front of mind, that way they remember to share their affiliate link whenever relevant conversations or opportunities come up. One of the best ways to remind them about what you’re up to is through a regular affiliate newsletter.

Setting up a bi-weekly or monthly newsletter is a fantastic way to keep your affiliates engaged and motivated to share about your business. Instead of their affiliate work falling on the back burner, they’ll get regular reminders of how and when to share about what you’re up to.

An affiliate newsletter should be different from your regular customer newsletters. This is a chance to highlight top affiliates, provide helpful tips and resources for sharing their links and marketing about your courses. You can use this newsletter to give affiliates a heads up on big sales you’re having soon, like Black Friday, so they can prepare and integrate your products and their affiliate links into their plans in advance.

No matter what you call your affiliate marketing strategy, an ambassador program, VIP program, affiliates, or even influencers, this is a great way to keep your collaborators in the loop on opportunities for them to increase their own revenue by helping to sell your products.

Give affiliates access to your products

When it comes to word of mouth marketing, customers want to hear real opinions about products they’re interested in buying. For an affiliate marketer to be effective, it’s important they experience whatever products they’re sharing about themselves.

As a creator, you can give your affiliates the best chance at genuine marketing and recommendations for your products when you give them access. Affiliates who take your course, go through your coaching program, who see first-hand the value you’re bringing, will be even more empowered to share about it with their own audience in an authentic way that brings trust.

Giving affiliates access to your products before they start marketing them is not only great for their own strategy when they share, but it’s a bonus for creators too. Your affiliates can also make great beta testers for new courses or offerings you have. They can give you early feedback that help your products become the best possible version you could put out on the market.

Genuine marketing and real opinions are a core part of word of mouth marketing. If your affiliates love your course, product, or coaching experience, they’re far more equipped to talk about how great it is, how it helped them, and why they believe it brings great value to their own audience.

Create marketing resources for your affiliates

The most effective affiliates use a variety of resources to drive sales using their unique link. As a business owner, you know how vital visuals are for marketing. You need visuals to reinforce your brand and capture a customer’s attention quickly. Affiliates need the same thing, but the difference is they’re working for you on commissions, and you’re the business owner. This means it’s hard for them to generate visuals for your product.

You can streamline the affiliate marketing process by providing them with marketing resources you’ve already made. If you want your affiliates to share about your course on Instagram, give them an Instagram-sized visual asset to pair with their unique link.

There’s an endless amount of visual assets you can give to your affiliates to help them share about your business without having to spend their own time coming up with marketing ideas. Whether it’s a set of images, social media options, or even downloadable PDFs they could share with their audience, you can now provide all these resources directly to your affiliates right inside Teachable. When they’re logged in, they can download any resources you provide to them.

In fact, you can use our resource download feature in affiliates for more than just marketing resources. You can also provide them with tips and ideas on marketing in those resources. Create a PDF with a list of places an affiliate can use their unique link, an ebook on affiliate marketing techniques, or even a short guide on how to write the perfect blog post to attract affiliate sales through their link.

You know your business best, and how to talk about what you offer. You can make the most of your affiliates and motivate them by sharing that knowledge with them.