Partnering with Product Creators
This case study has an interesting twist – rather than hunting down just any affiliates to promote his membership site, ‘Bob’ targets only people who are launching their own product.
Here’s how it works:
Bob has a membership site in the online marketing niche. It’s a great site, and the monthly membership is less than $50 a month. (He’s asked me to keep some details vague to not directly identify his site.)
Naturally, with a membership site the idea is to get new members and of course retain the members he already has.
Typically, a membership site owner will act just like any other product seller and try to recruit affiliates, as well as promoting his site through social media, paid advertising and so forth.
But Bob does none of these things.
Instead, he watches to see who is launching a new product. He targets marketers who have done launches before, so they already have a following and relationships with affiliates. In other words, he’s looking for people who can bring in plenty of buyers.
Now, you might think his next step is to suggest to the product seller that he or she adds his membership site to their sales funnel. But you can see the problem that would cause; instead of the monthly membership fee being split two ways, it would be split three ways:
Bob would get a third, the marketer doing the product launch would get a third and the affiliate would get a third. It gets complicated, and the pie gets cut into too many pieces.
Instead, Bob proposes that the marketer send out an email sequence right after their launch, promoting his membership site.
Bob provides the emails, and they’re written in such a way that the marketer is offering this opportunity ONLY for those who just purchased the product, and it’s only available now, at this special price.
Bob has a main sales page for his membership that extols all the benefits of joining, with the ‘regular’ price of perhaps $97 or $197 per month. The emails refer to this page, with instructions NOT to order on that page without the coupon code that gives them a discount.
He provides a different coupon code for each marketer, one that incorporates their name so that buyers know this discount is just for them and not for everyone.
An alternative to this is to create a separate web page for each marketer where they can send their buyers. They can refer to the full price page first, and then to the discounted page. Place their name prominently near the top.
The email sequence will emphasize how the membership is KEY to a successful online marketing business, and works well with the product just purchased.
Here’s why this works so well…
- Bob’s membership site isn’t advertised in the traditional ways. It’s under the radar, and only known to buyers of IM products. This way buyers can’t say, “I can always buy this later.” The coupon code has an expiration, and they can’t find another coupon through a Google search.
- These are BUYERS, not lookers. Buyers always buy more than freebie seekers.
- They’re not only buyers, but they just made a purchase the very same week. They are in BUYING mode and this is the PERFECT time to offer them something else.
- These buyers are opening most everything from your marketer because they just bought a product from him or her. Thus, the email sequence will be opened and read (This timing is incredibly VALUABLE to you and your sales!)
Success Tips:
- Watch sites like Munch Eye, JVZoo, JV News Watch, JV Notify, CB Trends and Warrior for launches.
- For best results, contact sellers who have already done at least a couple of successful launches.
- When the email sequence ends, ask your product launcher if s/he wants to remove the email sequence from their autoresponder. Because it’s profitable for them, they will almost always say no, they want to leave it in place for future launches.
- Consider making your offer even more special than a discounted price on the membership. If you make the entry level just $1 for 10 days, or $5 for the first month, you will get even more people signing up.
- Once people join, make them a special offer good only for a very short time that allows them to subscribe to the membership for an entire year for a discount. Make this offer via email twice per day until the expiration. This gives new subscribers a chance to check out the membership and see the value. Once you know your attrition rate for your membership, it will be easy to calculate a winning price for both you and your subscribers. Give your marketer the same commission on this annual plan as you do on the monthly plan (usually 50%.)
- Fill your sales sequence with marketing content, humor and stories as well as the special discount. Have the marketer launch this sequence right after the launch ends.
- Make the entire thing as simple for the marketer as possible. You propose they send out the email sequence, you provide the sequence in a copy and paste ready-to-go fashion. All they have to do is paste the emails into their autoresponder, schedule it for the day after the launch ends and forget about it.
Special Sauce
This is optional but I HIGHLY recommend this: Consider making each marketer your ‘partner’ in the membership for the sake of appearance.
In the emails you can say that marketer ‘Joe’ worked together with you to make this membership for Joe’s best customers.
Create a separate web page for each marketer and write it as though it’s coming from both of you.
Have a little intro at the top that comes from THEM (you can write it).
Have their photo – the same photo they used during their launch – at the top of the page, too, as well as at the bottom. Sign the sales letter as coming from BOTH of you, with the marketer’s name first and yours second.
This will often increase sales significantly, since the marketer’s name is trusted by their customers.
This system is the only thing my friend ‘Bob’ does to promote his membership site, and he makes anywhere from $10K to $25K per month.
Not bad.
Irving
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