Inspired Marketing
Sean Malarkey came into the e-learning and digital marketing space through Twitter training courses in 2008, but it was his partnership with Lewis Howells that truly launched him into the industry. Lewis was one of the early LinkedIn experts, and together they identified an opportunity: their existing training was five figures and focused on multiple platforms, but there was demand for something more affordable and niche-focused. They decided to launch LinkedIn Influence, a dedicated course teaching people how to grow their business using LinkedIn—a platform that was emerging as critical for B2B networking and lead generation.
The course was delivered as video training hosted on a Wishlist membership site, giving customers access to a comprehensive handbook-style playbook covering the entire LinkedIn platform. The training addressed multiple use cases: building contacts, driving traffic to websites, creating communities, and establishing thought leadership. The product was positioned as an accessible alternative to their higher-priced offerings.
Their launch strategy was deliberately grassroots but strategic. Rather than relying solely on their own audience, Sean and Lewis reached out to key influencers and experts in their network with a clear philosophy: build goodwill first, ask for promotion second. They offered free help in various forms—promoting other people's products, improving their social media, even handling operational tasks. This relationship-first approach paid off. The initial launch, while described as "really tame," generated around $100,000 in revenue within three weeks, primarily driven by affiliate promotions from their carefully cultivated network.
The affiliate model became their growth engine. Of the over $2 million the LinkedIn Influence course has generated to date, 60-70% came from affiliates—influencers with established audiences who promoted the course for a 50% commission. Sean also discovered the power of audience data intelligence. By uploading their 100,000-person email list to Facebook and using the platform's matching technology, they could identify that 80% of their emails matched Facebook users. They then used process-of-elimination targeting (filtering by gender, age, education, geography) to build detailed demographic profiles of their ideal customer, enabling precision ad targeting.
On the direct marketing side, Sean made continuous improvements to conversion. After nearly two years, they redesigned the LinkedIn Influence sales page—updating the design, look, feel, and copy—and saw conversions nearly double. Rather than guessing which elements drove the improvement, they committed to systematic A/B testing going forward using Visual Website Optimizer.
Inspired Marketing now sells multiple courses (LinkedIn Influence, Facebook Influence, YouTube Influence, Email Marketing, Webinar Marketing, and more) with LinkedIn training leading the charge. Last month, the LinkedIn course alone brought in 400 customers and approximately $40,000 in revenue—about 25% of the company's total revenue. The business is at an inflection point: Sean mentioned "exciting shifts" coming to the business model that prioritize more value for customers and simplification of the business itself, though he couldn't publicly discuss details yet. The vision is clear: continue the affiliate-driven model while scaling direct marketing efficiency, all while reducing reliance on any single founder or face brand.
- •By positioning themselves as helpful collaborators first and salespeople second, they built authentic relationships with influencers who had established audiences, enabling 60-70% of revenue to come from high-trust affiliate promotions rather than cold outreach.
- •They solved a specific, acute pain point—affordable LinkedIn training—by identifying demand for a niche alternative to their expensive existing offerings, making the product immediately relevant to a defined market segment.
- •They leveraged data matching (email-to-Facebook conversion) to reverse-engineer the exact demographics of their paying customers, enabling precision targeting that maximized return on paid advertising spend.
- •They treated conversion optimization as a continuous discipline through systematic A/B testing rather than one-time design work, discovering that redesign and copy changes alone could nearly double conversion rates.
- 1.Identify 20-30 influencers and experts in your target space and reach out with a concrete offer of free help—promoting their work, improving their marketing, or solving a specific operational problem—before asking for any promotion in return.
- 2.Upload your existing customer email list to Facebook's Custom Audience tool and use demographic filters (age, gender, education, location) to build a detailed profile of your ideal customer, then use that profile for lookalike audience targeting.
- 3.Structure affiliate commissions at 40-50% and actively recruit promoters by building relationships with creators who already have audiences in your target market, making their promotion a primary growth channel rather than a secondary one.
- 4.Set up A/B testing infrastructure (such as Visual Website Optimizer) before scaling and commit to testing at least two variables monthly on your sales page—copy, design, positioning, or calls-to-action—tracking the impact on conversion rate.
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