Today, affiliate marketing is one of the fastest-growing and most efficient ways to advertise your products. Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to start earning residual income, provided you put hard work into it.
The big question is, how to build a successful affiliate marketing program or business. To help you answer that questions, here are 10 things you should know about affiliate marketing that will help you be more successful:
Here’s What You Need To Know About Affiliate Marketing
1. Good relationships
Consumers need to know that they can trust your brand or the brand you are marketing. Building relationships is the key to that. As an affiliate marketer, you may spend a lot of money advertising or trying to get those first clients to buy. The trick in building an ongoing affiliate marketing program or business is to leverage recurring business, meaning customers who buy repeatedly, coming back to your product.
With so many products on the market and so much competition, you may be selling or representing the best product ever, but if you do not build relationships with your customers or with your team you will always be open to the competition taking a share of your market.
2. Keeping everyone happy
One of the best ways to kill an affiliate marketing program is failing to notice and fix any disagreements or upsets within your program, be it you as an affiliate marketer, within your team, or with your clients. As a brand, keeping your affiliate marketers happy is one of the most successful ways to guarantee long-term success.
3. Timing is everything
The product or services you market for will always have their timing. Suntan lotions are best sold in the spring or summer, while other products may be better in the winter. Timing also has to do with modern trends. Keeping in touch with social media and industry publications, print or online, will help you better understand trending subjects and where your product fits in.
Some brands will have many products that can be marketed in different seasons and some products may be year-long products. But the way you market them and position them always has to do with timing.
4. Get connected
To be very successful at marketing your products you must be connected with your industry, competition, and market. To do so, get yourself connected to newsletters, competitors, publications, and influencers or social media that promote your products or similar products or services. Knowing the market will not only help you understand where you fit in but also give you ideas on how to be successful. There is no need to reinvent the wheel.
5. Smart search optimization
The subject of SEO and showing up in search engines like Google is an entire subject in itself. But as an affiliate marketer, generating content is a big part of your job. The trick is not only to generate good and helpful content but to get it seen. This can be done by smartly choosing your subject lines, content materials, and keywords. Trying to rank for a word that everyone is looking for may be very difficult due to competition but niching it down may make it easier. Instead of writing about “the best moisturizing cream” write about “non-greasy, all-day, SPF moisturizing cream for women above 50.”
6. Competitions and giveaways
When managing or running an affiliate marketing program, competitions and give-aways can apply to markets and clients alike. Who doesn’t like the opportunity for free stuff? If you make the giveaway attractive enough people will participate. In doing so, make sure that it will be lucrative for you as well. Be it a goal to gather up e-mails and phone numbers to which you can market or make more sales. Games, competitions, and giveaways also help your audience interact with you.
7. User experience
How boring is your online presence? By that I mean, if someone is searching for your product and they come across your content, will they be attracted to it, will they engage, or will they scroll for a few seconds and then bounce off your pages and onto your competitors?
Today, users’ attention span is limited as the internet and social media provide fast hits of entertainment and boundless options.
Users are attracted to things that move and engage them. People buy based on emotion. Capture that and engage them online and you will see an increase in sales.
8. Consider hyperlocal
Probably one of the biggest mistakes made by a brand or product is to consider that their product or service applies to everyone everywhere. For sure it does, but when it comes to affiliate marketing trying to promote or market nationally can mean a lot of money and not too many results.
Hyper localizing, meaning choosing a specific location and trying to capture and own that market will not only make it easier and help people within your targeted area gain more exposure to your brand but it will help you hyper personalize your marketing.
Remember, you do not need to capture the entire market you just need to capture a portion of it to be successful.
9. Flexible with commissions
An affiliate marketing’s commission structure has everything to do with its success. Promotion and advertising can cost money and at the end of the day, you’re doing this to make a profit and earn money.
If you are an affiliate marketer, be sure to choose a brand or product that offers a sustainable and reliable commission structure where you can see success.
If you are a brand or product, build a commission structure that allows hard-working affiliate markets to earn a very good living, including bonuses and incentives to do more.
10. Discount, discount, discount!
If you have studied online marketing, you may have come across the term click funnels or funnels. One of the fundamentals that made the funnel concept hyper-successful was the concept of a discounted upsell.
The concept of a discount or saving money is not new. Most people know that discounts are hard to pass up and that sales are used to help move products. However, sale after sale after sale can start to make your product worth less, not worthless but worth less in the eyes of the consumer.
Discounts can start to lose their lust if a product is always on a discount.
So, while the occasional sale works, start to consider discounts for high-demand items bought in bulk. If a client purchases one product, and then two months later they return to buy another it means they like it. Well, offer them 5 for the price of 4 and they’ll most likely buy. Or the next time they come back for that product, offer them a similar product at a discount and they’re now potentially hooked on two products.
Using discounts wisely can help you increase the value of each purchase and contribute to your success as an affiliate marketer.
Penny Millions
Editor, Sleepy Money
(570) 903-8960
info@sleepymoney.com