Affiliate marketing is an effective way to create more sales and to introduce your products and services to a wider audience. Even better, you only pay for sales.
This is, in contrast, to pay per click advertising that requires you to pay each time someone shows an interest in your products, even if they don’t convert. Imagine paying a commission to a salesperson every time someone walked into your store. Now, imagine paying commission only when that person makes a sale. Only the second one makes sense, right? That’s why affiliate marketing is such a great strategy.
Adopting affiliate marketing is just the first step. Next, you have to create an affiliate marketing strategy. These seven tips will help you get the most out of your affiliate marketing efforts.
1. Develop Affiliate Marketing Expertise
Affiliate marketing is a great way to earn money and expose your brand to potential customers. However, to get the best start, there is a bit of a learning curve that you will have to overcome. Take some time to learn exactly how affiliate marketing works, which options are available to you, and the tools that you can use. Fortunately, there are great opportunities to get educated about affiliate marketing online.
2. Select Your Affiliate Marketers Carefully
You have a few options here. Rarely, advertisers work directly with bloggers and publishers. In most cases, they use an affiliate network. The network handles all transactions, tracking, and payments between the advertiser, and the affiliate marketer. The network will also work with marketers who use various channels to connect with potential customers.
Even if you do use an affiliate network, that doesn’t mean you have no choice in the marketers you work with. Start by choosing the right affiliate network, and ensuring that they work with publishers who have audiences that will be attracted to your products. Then, you can work closely with your connection at the affiliate network to help you present your business in a way that attracts the right publishers and bloggers.
3. Create Landing Pages Aimed for Conversions
It is the job of the affiliate marketer to present your products in a way that makes their readers click that link. When that happens, potential customers come to your landing pages. From there, success is in your hands. Part of your affiliate marketing strategy must be creating high-converting landing pages.
Not only will you profit by doing this, the marketer who advertises your products also receives payment. This allows you to create a good track record and makes your products attractive to affiliate marketers.
4. Use Coupons and Special Offers
Coupons and other special offers are like magnets to consumers. Make coupon codes in other deals available through the affiliate networks that you choose. You can also work directly with deal and coupon sites.
On their end, affiliate marketers can use your coupons and special offers to attract more readers oh, and get them to click your products links. Marcus Wallace is a marketing account manager at Studicus. He says, “It’s really simple. People love a deal. If you can offer a targeted audience a discount or freebie, it’s quite remarkable at the response you will receive.
5. Build Trust and Awareness Elsewhere
The best bloggers know how to make your products seem attractive to their audience. Of course, some will do a better job with this than others. You can help by working hard to increase brand awareness, and to establish your company as a trustworthy entity.
you can do this by ensuring you put out only the best products, and offer great customer service. You can also build thought leadership by developing a positive social media presence, and blogging. Try using tools like Canva, Grab My Essay, White Smoke, BestEssay.Education, and Grammarly.
6. Learn to Use the Tools Provided to You
Every good affiliate Network should provide both advertisers and publishers with helpful tools. These might include tutorials, information on branded short links and best practices on using them, dashboards, reporting tools, analytics, and more.
These tools are exceptionally valuable to you. Take the time to learn how to use them. Dig in deep so that you can maximize their potential. These are the tools that will allow you to track your affiliate marketing efforts, and learn exactly how much inbound traffic you are receiving as the result of your efforts. Most affiliate networks will offer you some form of online tutorial or training so that you can better understand how to use the tools provided in the dashboard.
7. Know Your Goals
There are several reasons that your business should consider affiliate marketing. Before you write your strategy, it’s important that you know which of these goals will be your focus. Think about what you might like to achieve. This could include:
- Increasing SEO
- Decreasing marketing expenses
- Increasing Conversions
- Boosting Website Traffic
- Achieving Controlled Growth
- Introducing Your Product to Global Markets
- Building a Large Pool of Affiliate Marketers
- Targeting Specific Vertical Markets
Final Thoughts
This year, it’s predicted that affiliate marketing will become a 6.8 billion dollar industry. Further, 81% of brands are already using affiliate marketing. Chances are, some of them are your competitors. Not only should you be entering this space, but you must also do so with a clear strategy. By following the seven tips listed above, you can be certain your affiliate advertising will pay out.
Author Bio:
Angela Baker is a true self-starter. She is a writer who specializes in marketing and enjoys a very rewarding freelance career. She works as a contributing writer at Trust my Paper. She also contributes to other online publications. One of these is the up and coming lifestyle magazine, LiveInspiredMagazine. Angela hopes that her writing helps and inspires others both in their careers as well as their personal lives.