Suze Bragg

Taking Affiliate Marketing Offline -- Very Successfully
November 6, 2007

A fellow writer, Edith Zimmerman, contacted me about my thoughts on Karmaloop, a leading online streetware retailer.  Their founder and CEO Greg Selkoe has a unique marketing strategy that I find fascinating.  He found a way to save on their marketing expenses by allowing their customers to market for them.  Here's how it works:

First, they appealed to the very basic need of their target audience:  to be different from the "McFashion" stores in the mall and become an individual with unique "street clothes".  This sounds simple, and it is if you know exactly who you are marketing to and their niche needs.

Second, instead of following the traditional method of affiliate marketing [where companies or individuals with web sites sign up to promote your goods on their sites], they signed up their customers to take it off-line and into their daily lives.  Their customers, or reps as they have become at this point, are then rewarded with cash or clothing to help spread the word.  It's a genius idea.  The reps are encouraged to get creative with their promotions.  They put them in fortune cookies to pass out at parties, they hand out coupons at nightclubs, and they have a forum online where the top performers are highlighted and reps are encouraged to submit their creative designs with others.  Karmaloop, in turn, uses their branding ideas for their own use.  All of this without having to pay designers' fees.

Then Karmaloop took it a step further.  They encouraged their reps and budding designers to apply to sell their own clothing concepts on their new site Kazbah.  This helps satisfy their supply and fulfillment model without having to deal with buying trips and middlemen.  

All of this has paid off handsomely for the company, who reported made around $140,000 in 2001 and are expecting to hit sales totals of $20,000,000 in 2007.  They accomplished their marketing goals one full-time person and a couple of interns.  Not too shabby.

How can you do the same?  

1.  Who is your target market and what do you offer that makes you stand out?  Think outside the box and don't limit your thought process.

2.  What will they get out helping you?  Can they host private parties to spread the word (AKA Mary Kay) or email coupons to their friends?  

3.  There are thousands of crafty individuals out there who are dying to sell their merchandise.  How about investigating this option to help your supply chain?

Posted by Suze Bragg on November 6, 2007 | Comments (0)