Hi, we’re Katie and Eric Roering; the founders of Fontana Candle Co. In 4 years we took our hobby of making candles in our basement, and selling them at craft shows and makers markets and we turned Fontana into a nationally recognized eCommerce brand. This year we are doing 7 figures of revenue and have 12 employees. So how did we do it?

Welcome to The Candle Couple Podcast, where we will share the nitty gritty of scaling our e-commerce brand quickly. We are spilling the tea, so hopefully we can help you scale your brand quickly too.

This is Episode 20: How to Market Your Candle Business Using Influencer & Affiliate Marketing

An influencer program can be a strategic channel for growth, if done right. Today we're discussing how our Affiliate Program started very organically with product seeding, and has grown into a full time program with over 100 active affiliates. We get candid with our frustrations with the program, our wins, and how we are continuing to learn what works best for our company!

00:41 Whats the difference between Affiliates and Influencers?

1:30 A strategic channel for growth

2:00 Product Seeding

3:53 Budget your gifting

5:00 Every candle matters. Or does it?

6:25 You need lots of eyes on your business

7:05 Finding influencers in your niche is key

8:50 Outreach in the beginning

10:10 Our first big campaign: a turning point

11:40 Loyalty?

12:40 Current Market Rates

13:20 Over saturation of the market?

15:12 Take control of the deliverables

15:40 Top of funnel vs. bottom of the funnel

17:20 Time consuming program

18:38 Our KPIs

20:56 We're still learning