Affiliate Marketing Lies: Meghan Markle is a Liar. Learn 4 Ways That The Affiliate Marketing Industry Lies too. (#8)

I’m guessing you have heard about the recent Oprah interview. You know, the one with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. You’d have to be living under a rock to miss this story! A good number of people I know watched the interview in its entirety. Myself included.

Meghan pulled off the greatest performance of her career. At least, so far. Harry looked like a prisoner suffering from Stockholm syndrome.

The interview fallout

After watching the interview I felt the British Royal family was facing a PR nightmare. I was wrong. In the UK at least, it seems that support for them has grown immensely since March 7th. Part of this is due to the passing of Prince Philip. The main reason though is fury over Meghan’s behavior and the many lies that she told during the interview. Some of which were obvious lies.

There are plenty of articles on Meghan’s lies. Two good articles worth reading are in the Daily Mail and news.com.au. Both articles cover the Tucker Carlson interview with Piers Morgan. In the interview, Piers outlines 17 claims made by the couple which are either false, exaggerated, or are unverifiable.

I find it odd that anyone would tell such obvious lies on one of the most anticipated, and watched, interviews of the 21st century. How they expected to get away with these untruths is quite beyond me. They must have known that every sentence which came out of their mouths would be analyzed to death. The most idiotic lies are:

1. The secret wedding.
2. Archie has a birthright to be prince.
3. Archie wouldn’t get 24/7 security because he wasn’t a price.

Then there are the casual accusations of racism. And claims of no help for Meghan’s mental anguish. While these claims are possible, they don’t stack up.

Cui bono?

Ultimately, the interview was a $hitshow. The only people that benefited from the interview were Oprah and her advertisers. According to the New York Post:

The longtime talk show host’s Sunday night interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle was a ratings hit, pulling in 17.1 million viewers. That includes an admirable 2.6 rating among the coveted demographic of adults aged 18 to 49, according to CBS.

By comparison, that’s more than double the ratings of this year’s Golden Globes on NBC. The show brought the largest primetime audience for an entertainment special since the 2020 Oscars.

Like the Oprah interview, the affiliate marketing industry suffers from obvious lies. 4 lies are so often repeated that they are now myths. These lies can cause businesses to pass on affiliate programs. A terrible mistake.

So what are they?

Affiliate Marketing Lies #1: Affiliate marketing is an outdated strategy

Google’s constantly updated algorithms for SEO have impacted many affiliates. It’s fair to say that SEO is way more difficult than it used to be. While this has discouraged some affiliate activity there are still many ways to use SEO to build a brand.

If we put Google and SEO to one side, there are still many channels for affiliate marketers to leverage. Social media, video, email lists, paid search… All these channels offer huge opportunities. This is just scratching the surface, too!

We would also be remiss if we didn’t mention the Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). While it’s not clear how this will impact the affiliate marketing industry. And it will. One thing you can be sure of is that some affiliates will benefit from the changes. Others won’t.

Affiliate Marketing Lies #2: You need to be in a popular niche to make affiliate marketing work for your company

Many companies don’t even try to launch an affiliate program. The reason being that they think their target market is too small. In some cases, companies will try to target bigger niches/verticals than where they fit. This is a mistake. You should never sacrifice your company’s mission for short-term untargeted goals.

Certain niches/verticals do extremely well with affiliate marketing. Think tech, health, digital marketing, personal finance, and fashion, and beauty, for example. With this said, you can still be wildly successful with far smaller niches/verticals. The trick is to find affiliates who understand the market and have access to the right traffic.

Affiliate Marketing Lies #3: Success means getting your product on as many sites as possible

To deliver sustainable results, the trick is to focus on quality rather than quantity. It’s easy to find many small websites that will promote your product or service. What you need to do though is find partners that will deliver conversions. Many companies have thousands of affiliates approved to their program. What you’ll find is that most have less than 100 affiliates generating transactions. And the top 10 affiliates generate 90% of all orders. Not results to write home about!

We recommend building a close relationship a small number of core affiliates. Build a system that works for both you and them. Results will follow.

If you follow this framework it will be much easier to police what affiliates are doing. Having thousands of affiliates is a big risk as you won’t know what they’re doing. A good question to ask yourself is this: ‘Is the reputational/brand risk worth the reward?’

Affiliate Marketing Lies #4: Affiliate programs are quick and easy to manage

This is wrong. Profoundly wrong. Setting up an affiliate program is a huge undertaking and a lot of work. If you think all you have to do is launch through an affiliate network/system and leave the program on auto-pilot, think again.

The affiliate marketing business relies on fostering relationships with your partners. You do this by:

• Bringing the right partners into your program.
• Seeking out better and more efficient partnerships.
• Updating promotional materials regularly to keep things new and fresh.

An important note that many forget. An affiliate program will only bring traffic to your website or business. You are responsible for converting that traffic into sales.

Are there other affiliate marketing lies that we have missed? I’d welcome comments and feedback!

Check out more ‘Revelations’ here.