Discover the secrets to affiliate marketing success with Amber Spears, an industry leader and co-founder of East 5th Avenue.

With over $530 million in sales generated for clients over eight years, East 5th Avenue’s groundbreaking training methods have transformed over 2,500 companies.

As a sought-after keynote speaker, Amber spoke at events like Traffic and Conversion, Facebook, and Affiliate Summit West, captivating audiences with her expertise.

Join her journey as she unravels the secrets to affiliate marketing mastery! 

Giveaway: visit east5thavenue.com/gift  for exclusive affiliate marketing resources! 

Conquer Local is presented by Vendasta. We have proudly served 5.5+ million local businesses through 60,000+ channel partners, agencies, and enterprise-level organizations. Learn more about Vendasta, and we can help your organization or learn more about Vendasta’s Affiliate Program and how our listeners (like yourself) make up to $10,000 off referrals.

Are you an entrepreneur, salesperson, or marketer? Then, keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy.

Partnering for Profits: How to Build Powerful Affiliate Relationships

Introduction

Jeff Tomlin: I’m Jeff Tomlin and on this episode, we’re pleased to welcome Amber Spears. 

Amber is a recognized industry thought leader in affiliate marketing, known for her coaching, speaking engagements, and her role as co-founder of East 5th Avenue, a leading affiliate management education and marketing company.

East 5th Avenue’s proprietary training methods have generated over $530 million for clients over the last eight years.  They’ve also trained over 2,500 companies, further solidifying their expertise in affiliate marketing education. Amber is a highly sought-after keynote speaker and contributes to this success.

In addition to being a sought-after speaker at industry events like Traffic and Conversion, Facebook, and Mindshare Summit, as well as Affiliate Summit West and Europe, Amber’s expertise is trusted by leading brands like Clickbank, Agora, Dr. Mark Hyman, and many more.

Get ready Conquerors for Amber Spears coming up next on this week’s episode of the Conquer Local Podcast.

Amber Spears shares Affiliate Marketing Success, Emphasizes Collaboration, and Client Value.

Jeff Tomlin: Amber Spears. We have an absolute marketing rock star joining us here today. Welcome to the Conquer Local Podcast. How are you doing?

Amber Spears: I’m doing great. It’s good to see you, and I’m super grateful to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Jeff Tomlin: Hey, well, I’m so pumped that we finally got you in the show. I want to start from the top. $530 million in sales through your partners, incredible levels of success. You’ve got to have some secret ingredients in your toolkit. Why don’t you talk a little bit about how did you get here, who’s your mom, where are you from, and how did you get to these numbers?

Amber Spears: I appreciate that question. It really is a team effort. I’ll tell you, I have a great team at East 5th, and it’s really a credit to one my clients for having such great products that people actually want to promote. I think it starts with having great products, having great marketing around it, having great teams, so it makes it easy to back them and promote them, and also having great affiliate partners that my favourite part of what I do truly, Jeff, is I believe that every single business should have an affiliate program built into their business because of two reasons. One, because algorithms change without notice suddenly and viciously, and so having a channel of customer acquisition that relies on your relationships is a really important thing, because it can cover overhead, it can cover team, it can cover so much of that. I have that passion to help every business, whether it’s brick and mortar or whether it’s a global corporation to put this into their company. The other part of it is, I believe as long as I’ve been working in this industry and as long as I’ve been a founder, that there is an element of loneliness that comes from this brave idea that you have of breathing life into existence of a company and the stress that you have of being responsible for payroll and people’s rents and mortgages and their families. Having a cohort of other companies, founders and brands that are invested into your success, that are sending you customers and clients, really makes that feeling of going at it alone very, very different. And it’s far more inspiring to me than paying Zuck bunch of money, even more money right now to line his pockets. There is that human element that I really love, and I think that’s one of the reasons why we’ve been able to back great companies with great products and bring them out to market and identify other great founders and brands that want to work with them and support them and create that ecosystem of collaboration. 530 million is what clients self-reported or that we’ve personally seen by working with them on an agency level. We typically just track a friend. We’re not tracking lifetime customer values. It’s got to be significantly more than that, but that’s not in one or two years. That’s over the course that we’ve had over the last nine and a half years. It’s been an amazing ride, and I really do feel like it is that spirit of collaboration that really keeps me going and that keeps me excited continuously about this space.

Affiliate Marketing Success requires Sales Skills, Program Design, and Affiliate Management.

Jeff Tomlin: I want to unpack a bunch of things that you touched on there. Number one, you’ve got a really broad diverse background from sales to coaching, to course creation, and I know that some of the success that you have is due to being able to build out really holistic programs. Talk a little bit about that, because I think that in your space, having a complete program is super important to driving success for your partners.

Amber Spears: Totally. I love that question. I started my professional career selling $75 a month search engine optimization packages to companies that did not want my products or services. They’re paying decks and yellow pages, a bunch of money, and they did not understand that. This was the future, and I really cut my teeth on that and helped build a large business at the time for what used to be my boss-turned-business partner, Alona at East 5th Avenue. I had that unique perspective as a salesperson. I think if you’re doing affiliate marketing, you have to understand that you are a salesperson. This is a customer acquisition channel, and you are the salesperson, you’re the driver that’s responsible for it every single day. I took those learnings from SEO and I started working in the affiliate marketing industry and I was running circles around all these other affiliate managers, and other business owners were coming to me trying to poach me for my company.

They kept being like, “You’re a star.” I was thinking like, “Yes, I have the technical training and the experience, and I think that gives me the advantage.” What I’m seeing out there with the other affiliate managers is that they’re just really good with people, but they have no former sales training, sales psychology, or anything. That’s the reason why as someone who is all commissioned for years earning multi-six-figure income, to me, quotas and persistence and structure and standards and getting up every day and working was my baseline. I took everything I learned from affiliate marketing and for all those companies that kept trying to poach me, after I went on my own, I was like, “Listen, you can hire me as a client, or I can teach your team how I’m doing this with my systems and processes and way of thinking about building an affiliate program with a tremendous amount of success.” For those that couldn’t work with us directly, we started training their teams, and that’s how we ended up having courses, and that’s how we ended up training hundreds of affiliate managers because I took the sales expertise and put it into the marketing side of it of the customer acquisition. I think that’s what makes it deadly. When you’re talking about a program, which is what you asked for, I think there’s three pieces to a successful program, and I’m sure you’re probably looking and be like, “Okay, that makes sense.” The first one is the program itself. Building something that works for your business, not just looking and saying, “Oh, my competitor is offering a $100 CPA, so I’m going to offer a $100 CPA.” It’s like really understanding your business, what you can and cannot afford, what your unique selling proposition is, how you’re positioning yourself, what you’re able to pay, what your sales levers are, and also comparing that to industry standard, which is are we at industry standard above or below in terms of our payouts or conversion rates, et cetera. I think most people just, they’re like, “I want to do it and I see what everyone else is doing, so I’m just going to do it and launch it and then not do the second part, which is who’s the people in the driver’s seat internally in your program moving it forward every day? Do they have the capacity and the experience to grow it in the way that you need? Then also externally, who are the people that are going to be your affiliates?” What I see, as a weakness in a lot of programs is they have their marketing director who’s also managing 10 other people and 10 other channels, and this is just another thing on their plate, and so they don’t get a lot of momentum or velocity. That’s another big point. Then the last part is the process because I think the process is what I’m most interested in because that’s the process of getting someone to promote you day after day, month after month, year after year, rinse and repeat. How do we get that and how do we build the moat around them so that I am their one choice for my one particular product and service? And so, I think thinking through it in that way, you can apply that to brick and mortar and you can apply it to multi-nine-figure companies in that way. That’s how I’ve always approached it, which I think makes it unique to me.

Community Fosters Balance for Success, not just Money.

Jeff Tomlin: Yeah, I like that. Community, it’s been super important for the success of the networks that you have. A lot of people in your space, they tend to be solopreneurs, and you touched on this off the top. It can be a lonely trek when you’re trying to work your way towards success. Talk a little bit about that, the importance of community and your secret sauce in building that out and how important it is for the people that you work with.

Amber Spears: No, I love that question. I think we’ve all heard the concept of a small pond. You don’t want to be a big fish in a small pond. I would argue that that is the more common thought, but I would also argue that being in the wrong pond is also just as detrimental to you. I’ll explain what I mean. Community for me is a group of other entrepreneurs that are willing to share what’s working for them now openly, honestly, that we’re masterminding in a true way where we’re peers working on each other’s businesses, but that there’s also a community for me that resonates and works for me is other founders and other entrepreneurs that believe that financial success is very important, but it’s not the only thing. They also believe that relationships with their wives, their husbands, their kids, their team, their legacy, their impact, their wealth, their investments, their future is also incredibly important as well. I’ve made my whole love in life is my community that I built with East 5th and Four Rooms Mastermind, which is full of amazing entrepreneurs and brands that come to me because they like my way of thinking holistically, but also resonate with the fact that when I give you advice, I’m not just going to give you advice that’s going to make you the most amount of money. I’m also going to give you the advice that’s not going to break your team in half, and that’s not going to put you in a position where you’re going to be dangerously low on cash flow or on inventory or things like that. It is a holistic approach to me where it’s making more money and having more growth is important, and it’s not more important than breaking your team in half or breaking your promises to yourself and to other people. Having a community of other founders and having 100 to 200 of them that we’re meeting multiple times a month virtually and multiple times a year in person has been so life-giving to me because there is this grind mentality as an entrepreneur where I’m just going to sacrifice everything on the altar of financial success and then later I’ll clean up everything else. I’ll clean up my relationships, I’ll clean up my health, I’ll clean up all this other stuff because I’m trying to provide for my family, and that means not seeing them now. I just think that that is the type of hustle culture in our industry in general that I think is really dangerous, and that’s why I like having a community of people that are like me in that way.

Affiliate Marketing Leverages Trust for Customer Acquisition.

Jeff Tomlin: Let’s build on that a bit and let’s talk about the importance of affiliate marketing. I’m going to date myself a little bit. But I remember working with affiliate marketing working with ClickBank way back in 1996. I was really-

Amber Spears: OG

Jeff Tomlin: Jeez. Oh, Gee. Yeah. But I remember it was very lucrative, but back then it seemed like the affiliate marketing channel was synonymous with smaller brands, but very, very quickly, mainstream figured it out and figured out how powerful it can be. Then you can see today some of the biggest brands like Amazon, wildly successful working through affiliates and really made them explode as you have other people working for it. Not only is it a great way to scale, but it’s also a great way to de-risk your marketing investments as well. With all the experience you have, we’d be remiss not to talk about some brass tacks and affiliate marketing strategies for companies that aren’t yet taking advantage of affiliate programs to grow. Maybe drop us some knowledge here on some top tips the companies should be thinking about how to leverage affiliate programs and if they’re not doing it right now, maybe why should they?

Amber Spears: Yeah, I think it’s such a great question. I mean, I think it actually, and this might surprise you, but I really feel like affiliate marketing, call it what you will. I’ve Keynoted Affiliate Summit a few times, and I’ve spoken a lot of times, as I’m sure you have, and I don’t know if you saw it, but there’s panels that they have where they talk about what is affiliate marketing. Is it joint venture marketing? Is performance marketing? Is it influencer marketing? There’s all these different terms for it. Is it referral marketing? But I really think it goes back to the core of the very beginning of business, which is I’ve got a guy that I know I can trust. The reason why it works is this transfer of trust. You have me on this podcast and it’s such a blessing, and you trust me to talk to your audience, so that’s why you ask to have me on. In return, I trust you and I’m going to have you on for my audiences, because we know they can trust each other. I think at the end of the day, it works because you have that transfer of trust where people that you look to as subject matter experts, maybe they’re marketing experts that you want to work with one day or you want to hire or you want to be like, you’re going to take their word when they endorse a software or tool or person as gold. It’s the same thing if you trust somebody like Dr. Mark Hyman and you say, “Wow, this guy’s amazing at functional medicine, and I want to get to the root cause of my health issues, not just treat my symptoms. I’m going to follow him and if he recommends this supplement or this blood test or this et cetera thing, I’m going to do it, because I trust him as a subject matter expert.” 

I say all that to say that that is not changing at all in the way that consumers are buying. That’s why consumers are looking toward creators on TikTok, or they’re doing the live demos on Amazon or they’re doing whatever it’s that they’re doing. At the end of the day, it’s a trust transfer from someone that they know and trust to something else, whether it’s brand to brand, creator to brand, et cetera, et cetera. That’s really how I look at it, is becoming more and more important, especially as media starts to get more fractured. You’re listening to the Joe Rogan Podcast, or you’re listening to the Patrick Brett David podcast. You’re not as much watching CNN or you’re not watching the three channels, or you’re not just going to Yahoo. You’re going to so many different places, and usually what you’re doing is you’re following somebody that and trust or a brand that and trust to make that purchasing decision or you’re going with your values, your values of being eco-friendly or your values of being a patriot or your values in however is influencing your buying decision.

I would just argue that every business should think that, should think about who is serving their core avatars and who they’re buying from and listening to and trying to partner up with them to really look at your consumer as a 360 person and not just look at them as like it’s a mom over 45 that buys X, Y, Z thing. It’s like this person is a person with a lot of other interests, and if they want to, let’s say, get healthier, they’re probably also going to want to have a happier marriage. They’re probably also going to want to have a better blood sugar. It’s just really looking at clients that way, and that is where the vast majority of the spend is starting to go, is this trust transfer. And so, you should definitely do it, not just because it diversifies your customer acquisition and it’s based on your relationships with these people that can never be taken away from you and adds a very stable leg to your business, but it’s also where the puck is going. So really just thinking through that. Whether you’re a brick-and-mortar partnering with local people in your community or whether you’re a major brand partnering with a bunch of different types of affiliates, whether they’re traditional affiliates or whether they’re creators, it’s a really, really amazing thing to add in and still a really great time. I don’t like anybody saying like, “Ah, you can’t do it anymore. It’s too saturated. That’s ridiculous.” I work with companies that do seven. eight, nine-plus figures a year with just affiliates. It’s about having a great product and great service and a well-optimized funnel.” That’s all it is.

Affiliate Marketing Thrives on Trust, Explore TikTok Shop & Partnerships.

Jeff Tomlin: Yeah, and I’ll pile onto what you’re saying, Amber, because I think you hit the nail on the head with the trust being the piece of the equation that makes it all work. When you’re looking at different channel models, you’ve got inbound, inbound self-serve, inbound sales-assisted, you’ve got outbound. You’ve got partnerships and then affiliate-type channels. What people will find is that their affiliate channels in terms of conversion rates, when you take a look at the traffic, they’ll convert better than the other channels. It’s because of the trust equation that you’re touching on there. It’s a 100% we saw it in Vendasta, and I got to say that we are late to the game, we should have been focusing on affiliate and growing it way earlier in our life cycle, but we finally got there and are reaping the rewards now and totally recommend. By the way, I wanted to ask you, you see things that are new on the horizon in the affiliate world that have you excited?

Amber Spears: Dude, everything that I’m hearing, it’s all TikTok shop if you have physical products. Every single client of ours, every single media-buying team, everybody’s talking TikTok shop. I think that’s definitely something to watch. If you have a physical products company and you’re not doing that, I would highly recommend that you start thinking about it in a really, really big way. If you’re a brand like you have with software as a service and stuff, doing partnerships is the way to go. I’m seeing companies like SaaS Academy and all these other ones that trust transfer is just so important. I don’t look at anyone as competition. I look at everyone as collaborative, and I can give you a really good example. I’ve been on the back end of many nine-figure offers either as their affiliate team ourselves or training those teams. A really interesting example that I saw many, many, many times we’ve proven it’s true is like let’s say that you’re a weight loss supplement and you do not want to do third-party marketing and you do not want to do affiliate marketing, you don’t want to cannibalize your customers by sending other supplements or other things that look competitive. I cannot tell you how many times we’d run another weight loss offer to that same list, and it would absolutely crush and customers would be happy. They wouldn’t be confused, because the reality is that if you’re in pain for a service or you’re in pain for your health, you’re going to keep trying things until you find something that works for you and you’re not going to be for everybody.

Even if you wanted to remove the current cohort of your customers on subscription and maybe don’t promote to them, but to everybody else, that’s sitting there, that was a former client or a lead, it’s crazy to think that you’re not going to send them reputable third-party customers that would help them so that now you can become an affiliate and add a whole profit channel into your business, because a lot of people just let them sit there. I think that’s a big mistake. If you care about your customers, you want them to have the best. You want them to have the best of every category. You might as well go out and vet the best instead of referral partnerships, become an affiliate of theirs, and have them become an affiliate of yours. Then now you’re really taking care of the end user because who’s winning is the partnerships, not just the person who’s good at marketing their product or service.

Pay Affiliates what you Pay for Customer Acquisition.

Jeff Tomlin: I think that’s such a good mindset, and we learned from that in our early days when we were starting our company, one of the biggest channels that we used is just conferences, because we were trying to get to large-

Amber Spears: Totally

Jeff Tomlin: … big decision-makers at larger enterprises, but we’d run into all sorts of vendors at these conferences. I mean, we’re probably a little extroverted and a little more social than most people, but we didn’t have that mindset that, “Hey, you’re a competitor. You’re a competitor.” But we talk to anybody. Then you end up going out for drinks after the end of the day of the conference and then you like each other and say, “Hey, we’re not actually competitors.” You figure out, and inevitably there’s ways to work with all sorts of different people. I totally pile onto what you’re saying and don’t rule out any relationship or potential relationship, because you don’t think that you think they’re competitive or some other reason. Anyways, good thoughts.

Amber Spears: Thank you. I would just say for somebody who’s wanting to start with affiliate marketing, they don’t know where to start, if you’re acquiring your customers online already or you know what your cost is to acquire a customer, I would just give that to your affiliates. I’ve never understood why you want to pay less to an affiliate partner that you can look in the eye than you would pay Zuck or you would pay to sponsor a booth that’s a big conference and send your whole team out, so you know what it’s costing you to acquire that customer. It might be higher than you like, but going cheapy with your affiliate partners is not the way to get velocity inside your program. I would just say before this awesome interview I’m having with you, I was talking to two other entrepreneurs that were trying to figure out, “Oh, we want to get into affiliate marketing. Here’s our cost of acquisition on Facebook or TikTok,” and I’m like, “Okay, what do you want to offer?”

I’m like, “Well, we’re thinking like 10%.” I’m like, “No one’s getting out of bed for 10%. If you’re paying Zuck $80 CAC, why would you not pay your affiliates?” They’re like, “Oh, I wonder. That’s why no one’s answering me. You have to be generous.” If you know your numbers and you already have a funnel that works or a referral program that works, or a conference strategy that works, going to somebody that has the trust and respect of your ideal customer and paying them what you would pay any other time to acquire a customer, even if it’s a little higher than you want while you’re building that program, that’s the move. That’s a very tactical move that I would recommend anyone to try.

Affiliate Marketing Thrives on Collaboration.

Jeff Tomlin: Another good tip. Amber, if you’ve got one takeaway, one more takeaway for the audience, what’s the thing at the top of your mind you want to leave people with?

Amber Spears: I would say the power of eight is one of my favourite things to leave people with for something tactical. It’s something that I learned from one of my mentors and friends, JJ Virgin. Her and Brenda Bouchard and Mark Hyman, a few other really, really well-known New York Times best-selling authors, incredible thought leaders in the space. It was maybe 15-plus years ago, decided as a cohort that the eight of them that served a very similar avatar. One was mindset, one was functional nutrition, and one was weight loss. They all served a very similar avatar that they would get together for an entire year if one person was invited on the podcast, they also recommended the other seven. If one person was doing a live event, the other seven would promote and show up and speak and support, and they would open doors to each other and give each other opportunities and go all in that year with supporting each other’s launches and doing webinars and showing what’s working. That’s one of my favourite things that I’ve helped my clients put into place, which is like, let’s go find seven other people that are at your level or above that serve the same client avatar that can send you a good cohort of clients or customers and let’s get them all together for a year and really support each other and go all in in this specific category and service and all grow together. It’s a really simple way of doing it. I’ve seen people that are like videographers working with a catering company, with a wedding dress company with… They can do it. Anyone can do it at any level of business. It does require the vision, and it does require the understanding of who we’re serving, and it does require you to have good payouts, good optimization on your funnels. It does require you to have something there, but it can be done, and you have seven other companies or founders that are invested in your success and it’s pretty amazing. They grew that and they grew a lot. They’re all incredibly talented visionary people that would’ve succeeded anyways, but I believe they succeed a lot faster because of that collaboration. I think it’s a really cool thing to think about.

Getting in touch with Amber Spears 

Jeff Tomlin: Oh, what a super smart program. Amber Spears, it’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the Conquer Local podcast. First off, I want to say thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy day to join us here. If people wanted to continue the conversation with you, how do they get a hold of you?

Amber Spears: Oh, man. I love just giving my email address. It’s mine and I answer it. If anyone needs any help, it’s amber@east5thavenue, five 5TH, Avenue fully spelled out. If they want to do more affiliate partnerships, having us train, and recruit their affiliate managers to do agency work and do all that. If you go to east5thavenue.com/gift, we have amazing checklists and calculators and all kinds of stuff that will help you on your journey and want to leave you better than I found it.

If you’re a founder of a seven, eight, or nine-figure company and you want to meet other really amazing entrepreneurs that are all growing together, also care about their health, their wealth, and their success, I have a mastermind called Four Rooms Mastermind. We have hundreds of amazing entrepreneurs there, and we have amazing meetups and world-class experts. If they ever want to contact us there, amber@fourroomsmastermind.com is another place. Email me. I’m happy to answer questions, happy to support. This is literally part of my life’s mission. I’m so grateful, Jeff, that you asked me to be here. I feel really honoured, and very fortunate.

Jeff Tomlin: Amber, you’re a wealth of knowledge and a pleasure to chat with. I hope you come back onto the show in the not-too-distant future, and we can pick your brain for another 20 minutes or so.

Amber Spears: I’m in, anytime. Thank you for having me. 

Jeff Tomlin: All the best. Amber Spears, ladies and gentlemen. Hope to have her back. Good stuff, Amber. Cheers.

Amber Spears: Thank you. Cheers.

Conclusion

Jeff Tomlin: Amber is a real community ambassador at her heart. She’s giving with her time and her knowledge and she’s one of those leaders that you see at tons of events and always engaging.

A couple of takeaways that I noted:

One is the Power of Community for Sustainable Success: Amber challenges the “hustle culture” often associated with affiliate marketing. She emphasizes the importance of building supportive communities. They foster trust, they share and build knowledge, and collaboration, leading to more sustainable and holistic success that goes far beyond just financial gain.

The second takeaway is that Building Trust is the Cornerstone for Effective Affiliate Marketing. I’d say any marketing but trust is the foundation for successful online affiliate marketing. Consumers are increasingly reliant on recommendations from trusted sources. Partnering with affiliates who share your brand values and have established trust with their audience is key to driving sales and customer acquisition in an increasingly saturated market.

If you’ve enjoyed Amber Spear’s episode discussing building successful partnerships to drive sales and growth, keep the conversation going and revisit some of our older episodes from the archives: Check out Episode 712: From Stagnant Sales to 6-Figure Success: Proven Affiliate Marketing Hacks with Seth Greene or Episode 648: Building a Successful Agency and Establishing Long-Term Client Partnerships with David Reske

Until next time, I’m Jeff Tomlin. Get out there and be awesome!