Paying affiliates for phone orders?
Over the weekend I had a discussion with a pretty big name in our industry regarding paying affiliate marketers for phone order referrals. It wasn’t a heated debate by any means, but it’s one that I’ve dealt with for years! He was saying how it’s a big ‘no no’ in internet marketing to give out a phone number for affiliates to drive traffic to, and I was saying that companies should pay affiliates for phone sales.
The companies I’ve chosen to work with (BigTrends.com/ETFTradr.com and TheTechnicalTraders.com) have both heeded my advice and CREDIT AFFILIATES WITH PHONE SALES! I believe it’s the right thing to do…
But he (and many other companies) do not agree…
So I thought I’d ask you on which side of the argument you fall and give you some reasons that I’ve heard why companies don’t pay…
1st…
They Say: “Affiliates are there to drive traffic to the sales pages and lead offers, not to phone sales.” Affiliate marketing is web focused so therefore their efforts should stay web focused.
I Say: “WHY HAVE YOUR NUMBER OUT THERE AT ALL??” If you’re not going to pay affiliates for phone sales and affiliates are a major part of your marketing…why have a phone number at all? It’s a simple question that’s often answered with the reason of ‘support calls’ and/or ‘we do our own advertising’. Not a good enough excuse to not pay affiliates for driving traffic to your site, where you have a phone number clearly displayed!
2nd…
They Say: “We can’t take up time to dig to find affiliate credit.” Makes sense. People get confused about how they heard about the offer, don’t remember the email, etc etc. You don’t want to bother them with ’20 questions’ and turn them off.
I Say: “Are affiliates not worth 5min of your time?” Honestly, properly trained support people can dig through the back-end quickly, ask easy questions, and find out if there is affiliate credit. You can’t tell me that if that person is in your system FROM AN AFFILIATE that the affiliate should not get credit.
3rd…
They Say: “We have to pay customer support people hourly wages and (possibly) commissions for sales they take over the phone.” It’s a pretty easy argument to be honest, and makes some sense. They are paying for the phone support person and there is time and costs involved to generate that sale. So if they have to pay an affiliate 30% AND a phone support person 10-15% then they’re not making as much per sale.
I Say: “Are your margins so thin or your greed so great that you cannot credit affiliates for their efforts?” Affiliate marketers are spending their time, their effort, their site space to drive traffic to a site…do they not have expenses as well? Shouldn’t they receive credit for their efforts? Basically phone in sales cost a company more and instead of bearing the burdon themselves, they put it on the affiliate to lose all the money.
So before I tell you SOLUTIONS I want to hear from you!
Do you think it’s a good idea for companies like BigTrends.com/ETFTradr.com and TheTechnicalTraders.com to credit affiliates with phone sales?
I’ll be responding to all comments with your thoughts and reasons behind one side of the argument or the other.
All my best,
Brad
P.S. There are a lot of people reading my articles so when you publish your article make sure you put your site or affiliate url in your name so we can check out your affiliate program and site!