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Fundamentals of a High Converting Sales Funnel
Each one of the stages of a sales funnel has an influence on consumer behavior, so you should make sure your customers relate to them intimately. By familiarizing yourself with each step, you can use tactics to increase the number of people that go through the steps of the sales funnels. This will have a significant impact on your overall business performance.
If you are able to double the number of people at 2 steps of your funnel, that means you are likely to double your leads and double the percentage of customers you are able to close. That gives you 4 times the number of new customers you get every month. So, defining and managing your sales funnel is one of the most powerful concepts in business. Let’s now look at the sales funnel in more detail.
What is a Sales Funnel?
The sales funnel is each step that someone has to take in order to become your customer.
Let’s look at a brick-and-mortar sales funnel.
The people at the top of the sales funnel walk by your store. A certain percentage of them decide to walk in, that’s the next of the funnel.
A customer sees a rack of T-shirts on clearance. He or she thumbs through the rack, now they’re at the next step of the funnel. Then the customer selects four t-shirts and walks to the check-out. They’re at the last step. If all goes well, they finish the purchase and reach the bottom of the funnel.
This same process plays out for every business in one way or the other. Your sales funnel could exist as:
- Retail store
- Sales team
- Website
- Personal consultation
Any marketing channel can be part of your sales funnel. And your funnel might be spread across several channels.
Why is a sales funnel important?
Your sales funnel illustrates the path prospects take.
Understanding your funnel can helps you find the holes in the funnel — the places where prospects drop out and never convert.
If you don’t understand your sales funnel, you can’t optimize it. We’ll go into the specifics of how the funnel works below, but for now, understand that you can influence how visitors move through the funnel and whether they eventually convert.
The Sales Funnel Explained: How it Works
While there are lots of words used to describe different sales funnel stages, we’re going to go with the four most common terms to explain how each stage works as a consumer goes from a visitor to a prospect to a lead to a buyer.
A visitor lands on your website through a Google search or social link. He or she is now a prospect. The visitor might check out a few of your blog posts or browse your product listings. At some point, you offer him or her a chance to sign up for your email list.
If the visitor fills out your form, he or she becomes a lead. You can now market to the customer outside of your website, such as via email, phone, or text — or all three.
Leads tend to come back to your website when you contact them with special offers, information about new blog posts, or other intriguing messages. Maybe you offer a coupon code.
The sales funnel narrows as visitors move through it. This is partially because you’ll have more prospects at the top of the funnel than buyers at the bottom, but also because your messaging needs to become increasingly targeted.
Understand the 4 Sales Funnel Stages
It’s easy to remember the four sales funnel stages by the acronym AIDA: Awareness, Interest, Decision, and Action. These four stages represent your prospective customer’s mindset.
Each stage requires a different approach from you, the marketer, because you don’t want to send the wrong message at the wrong time. It’s kind of like a waiter asking you what you want for dessert before you’ve even ordered drinks and appetizers.
Let’s look at each stage in the sales funnel in more detail.
Awareness
This is the moment at which you first catch a consumer’s attention. It might be a tweet, a Facebook post shared by a friend, a Google search, or something else entirely.
Your prospect becomes aware of your business and what you offer.
When the chemistry is just right, consumers sometimes buy immediately. It’s a right-place, right-time scenario. The consumer has already done research and knows that you’re offering something desirable and at a reasonable price.
More often, the awareness stage is more of a courtship. You’re trying to woo the prospect into returning to your site and engaging more with your business.
Interest
When consumers reach the interest stage in the sales funnel, they’re doing research, comparison shopping, and thinking over their options. This is the time to swoop in with incredible content that helps them, but doesn’t sell to them.
If you’re pushing your product or service from the beginning, you’ll turn off prospects and chase them away. The goal here is to establish your expertise, help the consumer make an informed decision, and offer to help them in any way you can.
Decision
The decision stage of the sales funnel is when the customer is ready to buy. He or she might be considering two or three options — hopefully, including you.
This is the time to make your best offer. It could be free shipping when most of your competition charges, a discount code, or a bonus product. Whatever the case, make it so irresistible that your lead can’t wait to take advantage of it.
Action
At the very bottom of the sales funnel, the customer acts. He or she purchases your product or service and becomes part of your business’s ecosystem.
Just because a consumer reaches the bottom of the funnel, however, doesn’t mean your work is done. Action is for the consumer and the marketer. You want to do your best to turn one purchase into 10, 10 into 100, and so on.
In other words, you’re focusing on customer retention. Express gratitude for the purchase, invite your customer to reach out with feedback, and make yourself available for tech support, if applicable.
An Effective Sales Funnel Example
Imagine that you own an ecommerce business that sells vintage signs. You know that your target audience hangs out on Facebook a lot and that your target customers are males and females between 25 and 65 years of age.
You run a fantastic Facebook Ad that drives traffic to a landing page. On the page, you ask your prospect to sign up for your email list in exchange for a lead magnet. Pretty simple, right?
Now you have leads instead of prospects. They’re moving through the funnel.
Over the next few weeks, you send out content to educate your subscribers about vintage signs, to share design inspiration, and to help consumers figure out how to hang these signs.
At the end of your email blitz, you offer a 10 percent coupon off each customer’s entire first order. Bang! You’re selling vintage signs like crazy. Everyone wants what you’re selling.
Next, you add those same customers to a new email list. You start the process over again, but with different content. Give them ideas for gallery walls, advise them about how to care for their signs, and suggest signs as gifts. You’re asking them to come back for more.
There you have it:
- Awareness: You created a Facebook ad to funnel (pun intended) people to your website.
- Interest: You offer something of value in exchange for lead capture.
- Decision: Your content informs your audience and prepares them for a purchase.
- Action: You offer a coupon your leads can’t resist, then begin marketing to them again to boost retention.
How to Build a Sales Funnel Fast
You’re stoked now, right? You want to create a sales funnel now—and fast. Don’t worry. It’s not as difficult as it might seem.
Step 1: Analyze Your Audience’s Behavior
The more you know about your audience, the more effective your sales funnel becomes. You’re not marketing to everybody. You’re marketing to people who are a good fit for what you sell.
Sign up for a Crazy Egg account and start creating Snapshots. These user behavior reports help you monitor site activity and figure out how people engage with your site.
Where do they click? When do they scroll? How much time do they spend on a particular page? All of these data points will help you refine your buyer personas.
Step 2: Capture Your Audience’s Attention
The only way your sales funnel works is if you can lure people into it. This means putting your content in front of your target audience.
Take the organic route and post tons of content across all of your platforms. Diversify with infographics, videos, and other types of content.
If you’re willing to spend more cash, run a few ads. The ideal place to run those ads depends on where your target audience hangs out. If you’re selling B2B, LinkedIn ads might be the perfect solution.
Step 3: Build a Landing Page
Your ad or other content needs to take your prospects somewhere. Ideally, you want to direct them to a landing page with a can’t-miss offer.
Since these people are still low in the sales funnel, focus on capturing leads instead of pushing the sale.
A landing page should steer the visitor toward the next step.
You need a bold call to action that tells them exactly what to do, whether it’s downloading a free e-book or watching an instructional video.
Step 4: Create an Email Drip Campaign
Market to your leads through email by providing amazing content. Do so regularly, but not too frequently. One or two emails per week should suffice.
Build up to the sale by educating your market first. What do they want to learn? What obstacles and objections do you need to overcome to convince them to buy?
At the end of your drip campaign, make an incredible offer. That’s the piece of content that will inspire your leads to act.
Step 5: Keep in Touch
Don’t forget about your existing customers. Instead, continue reaching out to them. Thank them for their purchases, offer additional coupon codes, and involve them in your social media sphere.
Measuring the Success of a Sales Funnel
Your sales funnel might need tweaks as your business grows, you learn more about your customers, and you diversify your products and services. That’s okay.
A great way to measure the success of your sales funnel is to track your conversion rates.
How many people, for instance, sign up for your email list after clicking through on a Facebook Ad?
Pay careful attention to each stage of the sales funnel:
- Are your capturing the attention of enough consumers with your initial content?
- Do your prospects trust you enough to give you their contact information?
- Have you secured purchases from your email drip campaign and other marketing efforts?
- Do existing customers come back and buy from you again?
Knowing the answers to these questions will tell you where you need to tweak your sales funnel.
Why You Need to Optimize Your Sales Funnel
Here’s the truth: Your prospective customers have lots of options. You want them to choose your products or services, but you can’t force it. Instead, you have to market efficiently.
Without a tight, optimized sales funnel, you’re just guessing about what your prospects want. If you’re wrong, you lose the sale.
Use Crazy Egg Recordings to watch how people engage with your site during a session. Where do they click? Does anything seem to confuse them? Are they focusing their attention where you want?
This is particularly important for those landing pages we talked about. If they’re not optimized for conversions, most people will just click away.
How to Optimize Your Sales Funnel
You can optimize your sales funnel in myriad ways. The most important places to put your focus are on the areas when consumers move to the next point in the funnel.
We talked about Facebook Ads. Don’t run just one ad. Run 10 or 20. They might be very similar, but direct them to different buyer personas and use Facebook’s targeting features to make sure those ads appear in front of your target audience.
A/B test your landing pages. It takes time, but you’ll reach more people and convert prospects more reliably.
You can also A/B test your email campaigns. Change up your language, imagery, offers, and layouts to figure out what your audience responds to.
The best way to optimize your sales funnel, though, is to pay attention to the results.
Start with the top of the funnel. You’re creating content, whether paid or organic, to get eyeballs on your brand and to encourage people to click on your CTA. If one piece of content doesn’t work, try something else.
Move on to your landing page. Make sure the offer and CTA mimic the content in your blog post or Facebook Ad, or whatever other asset you used to drive traffic there. Test your headline, body copy, images, and CTA to find out what works best.
When you ask people in the Action stage to buy from you, A/B test your offer. Does free shipping work better than a 5 percent discount? These little things can make a huge difference in your revenue.
And finally, track your customer retention rate. Do people come back and buy from you a second, fifth, and twentieth time? Do they refer their friends?
Your goal is to keep your brand top-of-mind. If you never disappoint your audience, they won’t have a reason to look elsewhere.
Conclusion
Creating and optimizing a sales funnel takes time. It’s hard work. But it’s the only way to survive in a competitive marketplace.
Believe it or not, a detail as small as font choice can impact conversions. And if you ask people to buy from you too quickly, you’ll chase them away.
Take time to build out a sales funnel that represents what you want and what your audience wants. Cultivate it over time, adjust your approach to various sales funnel stages, and find out why your efforts aren’t working.
How To Direct High Converting Traffic to Your Landing Page
Landing pages have one purpose: to drive conversions and leads. They provide a dedicated place for audiences to complete a specific call-to-action (CTA) in digital campaigns. They keep customers’ eyes on the ultimate goal, be it signing up for an email newsletter, completing a purchase, or starting a free trial.
Still, you can’t drive those conversions without traffic. You first need to send people to your landing page so they can see your value proposition and then, hopefully, respond to your CTA.
This article explores free strategies for driving traffic to landing pages, so you generate conversions and sales without burning your budget.
- Create Compelling Referral Content
- Launch Email Newsletters
- Guest blog on relevant sites
- Reach Audiences on Premium Publisher Sites
- Use search advertising
- Partner with influencers
- Ramp up your social media strategy
- Engage in comment sections and forums
- Link internally across your website
- Use social media advertising
You’ve put the work into building a strong landing page with intuitive navigation and a clear CTA. Now it’s time to drive traffic to it.
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Here are three tips for driving free traffic to your landing pages:
1. Create Compelling Referral Content
Well-written copy effectively conveys your brand message and motivates your audience to complete a specific goal in your digital campaign. So, it’s important to optimize content in the referrals or ads that drive people to your landing pages, as well as the content on the landing pages themselves.
This content must provide enough information to pique your readers’ interest and tease your value proposition, but not so much information that it overwhelms or frustrates them. Landing page content should also match the referral content that gets audiences to click on to the landing page in the first place.
Moodle Workplace, for example, created this tweet to drive users to a landing page where they can download an ebook.
The copy, design, and messaging are cohesive across the ad and landing page, guiding readers on their journey from consideration to decision.
There are many strategies for writing landing page content that converts after visitors make it to your site. Landing page content should emphasize the benefits of your product or service, instead of just features. It should appeal emotionally to consumers’ needs and pain points.
Take this landing page for smart-shopping assistant, Honey. Instead of writing: It’s a Chrome extension that automatically searches for coupon codes and discounts on e-commerce sites, the brand uses a simple, catchy headline: If there’s a better price, we’ll find it. The page speaks to the customers’ pain point right away. ‘Stop wasting money’ is its underlying message. And, if customers choose to click on the CTA button, they know what they’re getting into. Instead of a generic Download, or Try now, the button reads, Add to Chrome — It’s Free.
2. Launch Email Newsletters
People spend an average of five hours a day checking their email, according to a 2019 study by Adobe. Think about it, email is where you receive correspondence from bosses, colleagues, family and friends. It’s no surprise that email is an effective tool for brands to reach consumers and drive traffic back to their landing pages.
Just use a short and sweet subject line that stands out in a crowded inbox and doesn’t get cut off by the user’s email platform. Marketing emails need a single focus — just like your landing page — providing readers with a simple message and a specific CTA.
Hulu, for instance, sent this straightforward, eye-catching email with the subject line, Last Chance: Try a Free Month of SHOWTIME.
Those who click TRY ONE MONTH FREE get taken to a landing page with more in-depth information about the offer and another clear CTA to start their free trial and convert.
3. Guest blog on relevant sites
Advertisers can tap into new audiences by guest blogging on industry-relevant websites. Start by searching for blogs with crossover appeal in your field and study their content. Read the comments too, to learn about audience behaviors and interests.
Create a list of suitable sites to reach out to and begin pitching ideas for guest blogs. You may offer to let them post a guest blog on your site as well. Within your guest blogs, include links or CTAs to your landing page to attract new, high-quality readers who’ve already engaged with your messaging.
Here are three tips for driving paid traffic to your landing pages:
4. Reach Audiences on Premium Publisher Sites
Advertisers can reach audiences across top publisher sites with Taboola. We partner exclusively with premium digital properties to help marketers drive high-quality, engaged audiences to their landing pages.
Nespresso Thailand, for example, needed to drive traffic to its advertorial sites to promote new products. The brand worked with Taboola to launch sponsored ads across our network of premium publishers. As a result, Taboola drove 85% of all traffic to those advertorial sites. Nespresso Thailand also saw a ten-fold lower average cost-per-page view from Taboola than from any other channel.
The ads show in-feed as recommended content, fitting seamlessly into the reader or viewer experience. They reach people when they’re done with an article, right at the moment they’re ready to engage with something new. Advertisers can also manage their campaigns by creating audience segments and retargeting key consumers.
When Hear.com, for instance, needed to reach niche audiences at scale across ten countries, it partnered with Taboola. The hearing-aid brand created custom landing pages for each target geographical region. It matched these with custom ads spread across Taboola’s network. Over two years, Hear.com saw a ten-fold increase in traffic and launched into three new markets, including the U.S.
5. Use search advertising
Paid search or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising involves creating ads that show up on search results pages. Google’s PPC platform Google Adwords, for example, lets publishers bid on search keywords for a chance at a top placement.
Take this search for “how to file taxes.” The first three results are ads.
To earn those spots, brands might’ve bid on popular keywords, such as: “how to file taxes,” “free tax filing,” or “online tax filing.” Since they’re front and center on the results page, these ads help drive traffic back to a brand’s website for a certain price per click.
6. Partner with influencers
Influencers are social-media gurus who’ve built engaged followings, often in niche communities. By partnering with influencers, advertisers expand their reach, build user-generated content, and drive traffic back to their landing pages. Brands also gain credibility since people trust recommendations from others more than they do from businesses.
Cooking appliance brand, Brava, for example, partnered with technology YouTuber iJustine to promote its smart countertop oven. The company even gave the influencer a bespoke link to share with her viewers, which gave them $100 off their purchases.
Just be sure to follow FTC guidelines for influencer marketing to properly disclose partnerships and avoid penalization.
7. Ramp up your social media strategy
Social media has become a massive source of traffic and engagement for brands around the world. Various platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter allow brands to multiply their following and build stronger relationships with their existing followers.
For many brands, this translates into revenue. For example, one study showed that users who follow a brand will engage highly with it: 91 percent visit the brand’s website or mobile app, 89 percent make a purchase from the brand, and 85 percent make a brand recommendation to their friends or family.
To drive traffic to your landing page and build meaningful connections with users, focus on posting high-quality content that appeals to your target audience’s likes, interests, and pain points. Choose a posting schedule and post consistently so that you can build momentum. Be sure to reply to every comment and message from users.
8. Engage in comment sections and forums
One of the best ways to build relationships, and ultimately traffic, is to get your hands dirty. Engage with users in the comment section of various places across the web, like social media posts, blog comment sections, and forums like Quora.
The key here is to post authentic content that truly adds value. Don’t just spam them with links to your landing page and no contribution to the conversation.
In this example, telecommunications company Verizon engages with Huff Post, showing agreement and celebration toward the post’s content. This doubles as a technique for establishing and reinforcing brand identity, showing Huff Post readers that the company holds similar values.
Authentically engaging with users, whether they’re companies or individuals, helps to establish credibility and trust. This in turn can entice users to want to learn more about your brand.
9. Link internally across your website
Internal linking is the practice of hyperlinking to other pages on your website’s domain.
For example, say that you’re trying to drive traffic to a sale landing page for a specific product on your website. You might place the landing page’s link on the webpages where you discuss other products in the same collection.
Internal linking is an excellent way to keep your visitors on your website longer, as well as introduce them to content they may not have otherwise seen on their own.
As a bonus, this practice can also improve the overall SEO value of your website, which can also help you rake in more landing page traffic in the long run.
10. Use social media advertising
In addition to advertising on search engines, consider advertising on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. These platforms also use a pay-per-click (PPC) model.
Many of these platforms have incredible targeting capabilities that can help you connect with interested and engaged users as quickly as possible. Facebook and Instagram are renowned for their Audience Insights tool, which helps you dig deep into customer personas to better understand who’s most likely to engage and connect with your brand.
Many advertisers find that these sophisticated targeting tools decrease their cost per click and increase the value of their advertising dollars.
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Measure and Test Your Results
All the best design and copywriting tactics will only take you so far in the real world. After all, your visitors aren’t necessarily going to line up perfectly with everything you’ve read in this or any other blog post. That’s why it’s so vital to test your landing pages constantly.
The idea behind an A/B test is simple: you change one thing about the most successful version of your landing page — the headline, the wording of the CTA, even the color of the text — and record the results. Then, you compare the two and keep the one that performs better. Then, rinse and repeat for as long as you’re pursuing the goal represented by that landing page.
While you can do A/B testing manually, it’s not fun or easy. And, if you’re dealing with more than a couple of pages at a time, it can become very time-consuming. We recommend using a tool designed to handle the busy work for you. Examples include Unbounce, Landingi, and some WordPress plugins. And, if you’re using native advertising to generate traffic, Taboola can help with A/B testing as well.
Direct Traffic to Your Landing Page
Creating a compelling landing page is the first step to driving leads and conversions. Advertisers must also know how to direct traffic to a landing page, so people are there to complete those conversions and consume that brand messaging.
Use these proven tips for getting free and paid traffic to a landing page. Write cohesive referral copy, launch email newsletters, and distribute content across premium publisher sites. With these strategies, you will be well-prepared to engage prospective leads and build audience relationships.
Beginners Simple Guide To Affiliate Marketing
Wake up at an ungodly hour. Drive to the office through total gridlock, streets jammed with other half-asleep commuters. Slog through email after mind-numbing email until the sweet release at five o’clock.
Sound terrible?
What if, instead of dealing with the monotony and stupor of the rat race to earn a few bucks, you could make money at any time, from anywhere — even while you sleep?
That’s the concept behind affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is a popular tactic to drive sales and generate significant online revenue. Extremely beneficial to both brands and affiliate marketers, the new push towards less traditional marketing tactics has paid off. In fact:
- 81% of brands and 84% of publishers leverage the power of affiliate marketing, a statistic that will continue to increase as affiliate marketing spending increases every year in the United States.
- There is a 10.1% increase in affiliate marketing spending in the United States each year, meaning that by 2020, that number will reach $6.8 billion.
- In 2018, content marketing costs were gauged to be 62% of traditional marketing schemes while simultaneously generating three times the leads of traditional methods. In fact, 16% of all orders made online can be attributed to the impact of affiliate marketing.
- In March of 2017, Amazon’s affiliate structure changed, offering rates of 1-10% of product revenue for creators, providing the opportunity for affiliates to dramatically increase their passive income based on the vertical they’re selling on.
- The affiliate marketing of Jason Stone, otherwise known as Millionaire Mentor, was responsible for as much as $7 million in retailer sales just in the months of June and July in 2017.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the process by which an affiliate earns a commission for marketing another person’s or company’s products. The affiliate simply searches for a product they enjoy, then promotes that product and earns a piece of the profit from each sale they make. The sales are tracked via affiliate links from one website to another.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Because affiliate marketing works by spreading the responsibilities of product marketing and creation across parties, it manages to leverage the abilities of a variety of individuals for a more effective marketing strategy while providing contributors with a share of the profit. To make this work, three different parties must be involved:
- Seller and product creators.
- The affiliate or advertiser.
- The consumer.
Let’s delve into the complex relationship these three parties share to ensure affiliate marketing is a success.
1. Seller and product creators
The seller, whether a solo entrepreneur or large enterprise, is a vendor, merchant, product creator, or retailer with a product to market. The product can be a physical object, like household goods, or a service, like makeup tutorials.
Also known as the brand, the seller does not need to be actively involved in the marketing, but they may also be the advertiser and profit from the revenue sharing associated with affiliate marketing.
For example, the seller could be an ecommerce merchant that started a dropshipping business and wants to reach a new audience by paying affiliate websites to promote their products. Or the seller could be a SaaS company that leverages affiliates to help sell their marketing software.
2. The affiliate or publisher.
Also known as a publisher, the affiliate can be either an individual or a company that markets the seller’s product in an appealing way to potential consumers. In other words, the affiliate promotes the product to persuade consumers that it is valuable or beneficial to them and convince them to purchase the product. If the consumer does end up buying the product, the affiliate receives a portion of the revenue made.
Affiliates often have a very specific audience to whom they market, generally adhering to that audience’s interests. This creates a defined niche or personal brand that helps the affiliate attract consumers who will be most likely to act on the promotion.
3. The consumer.
Whether the consumer knows it or not, they (and their purchases) are the drivers of affiliate marketing. Affiliates share these products with them on social media, blogs, and websites.
When consumers buy the product, the seller and the affiliate share the profits. Sometimes the affiliate will choose to be upfront with the consumer by disclosing that they are receiving commission for the sales they make. Other times the consumer may be completely oblivious to the affiliate marketing infrastructure behind their purchase.
Either way, they will rarely pay more for the product purchased through affiliate marketing; the affiliate’s share of the profit is included in the retail price. The consumer will complete the purchase process and receive the product as normal, unaffected by the affiliate marketing system in which they are a significant part.
How Do Affiliate Marketers Get Paid?
A quick and inexpensive method of making money without the hassle of actually selling a product, affiliate marketing has an undeniable draw for those looking to increase their income online. But how does an affiliate get paid after linking the seller to the consumer?
The answer can get complicated.
The consumer doesn’t always need to buy the product for the affiliate to get a kickback. Depending on the program, the affiliate’s contribution to the seller’s sales will be measured differently.
The affiliate may get paid in various ways:
1. Pay per sale.
This is the standard affiliate marketing structure. In this program, the merchant pays the affiliate a percentage of the sale price of the product after the consumer purchases the product as a result of the affiliate’s marketing strategies. In other words, the affiliate must actually get the investor to invest in the product before they are compensated.
2. Pay per lead.
A more complex system, pay per lead affiliate programs compensates the affiliate based on the conversion of leads. The affiliate must persuade the consumer to visit the merchant’s website and complete the desired action — whether it’s filling out a contact form, signing up for a trial of a product, subscribing to a newsletter, or downloading software or files.
3. Pay per click.
This program focuses on incentivizing the affiliate to redirect consumers from their marketing platform to the merchant’s website. This means the affiliate must engage the consumer to the extent that they will move from the affiliate’s site to the merchant’s site. The affiliate is paid based on the increase in web traffic.
Why Be an Affiliate Marketer?
1. Passive income.
While any “regular” job requires you to be at work to make money, affiliate marketing offers you the ability to make money while you sleep. By investing an initial amount of time into a campaign, you will see continuous returns on that time as consumers purchase the product over the following days and weeks. You receive money for your work long after you’ve finished it. Even when you’re not in front of your computer, your marketing skills will be earning you a steady flow of income.
2. No customer support.
Individual sellers and companies offering products or services have to deal with their consumers and ensure they are satisfied with what they have purchased.
Thanks to the affiliate marketing structure, you’ll never have to be concerned with customer support or customer satisfaction. The entire job of the affiliate marketer is to link the seller with the consumer. The seller deals with any consumer complaints after you receive your commission from the sale.
3. Work from home.
If you’re someone who hates going to the office, affiliate marketing is the perfect solution. You’ll be able to launch campaigns and receive revenue from the products that sellers create while working from the comfort of your own home. This is a job you can do without ever getting out of your pajamas.
4. Cost-effective.
Most businesses require startup fees as well as a cash flow to finance the products being sold. However, affiliate marketing can be done at a low cost, meaning you can get started quickly and without much hassle. There are no affiliate program fees to worry about and no need to create a product. Beginning this line of work is relatively straightforward.
5. Convenient and flexible.
Since you’re essentially becoming a freelancer, you get ultimate independence in setting your own goals, redirecting your path when you feel so inclined, choosing the products that interest you, and even determining your own hours. This convenience means you can diversify your portfolio if you like or focus solely on simple and straightforward campaigns. You’ll also be free from company restrictions and regulations as well as ill-performing teams.
6. Performance-Based rewards.
With other jobs, you could work an 80-hour week and still earn the same salary. Affiliate marketing is purely based on your performance. You’ll get from it what you put into it. Honing your reviewing skills and writing engaging campaigns will translate to direct improvements in your revenue. You’ll finally get paid for the outstanding work you do!
7. Do Not Underestimate the Power of SEO.
There’s a ton of organic traffic you can get from search engines if you do SEO properly. The days when Search Engine Optimization was about cheating Google are gone. Today, it is about making your website better for visitors. People naturally look for information online. That’s why you should learn the basics of on-page SEO, keyword research, and link building to be the information source they find first. Who wouldn’t want to rank #1 for terms such as “best product” or “product review” in Google?
Common Types of Affiliate Marketing Channels
Most affiliates share common practices to ensure that their audience is engaged and receptive to purchasing promoted products. But not all affiliates advertise the products in the same way. In fact, there are several different marketing channels they may leverage.
1. Influencers.
An influencer is an individual who holds the power to impact the purchasing decisions of a large segment of the population. This person is in a great position to benefit from affiliate marketing. They already boast an impressive following, so it’s easy for them to direct consumers to the seller’s products through social media posts, blogs, and other interactions with their followers. The influencers then receive a share of the profits they helped to create.
Influencer marketing campaigns are particularly popular on Instagram where brands partner with influencers who are seen as experts or authorities in their specific niches. Depending on the deal, a campaign could consist of a series of product reviews with photos, account takeovers, or live videos. While an influencer might have their own branding and aesthetic, it’s important to add elements that tie-up with your brand to ensure brand recall and recognition. This can be achieved by using apps like Instasize where you can quickly edit and customize your campaign’s creatives in a tap.
2. Bloggers.
With the ability to rank organically in search engine queries, bloggers excel at increasing a seller’s conversions. The blogger samples the product or service and then writes a comprehensive review that promotes the brand in a compelling way, driving traffic back to the seller’s site.
The blogger is awarded for his or her influence in spreading the word about the value of the product, helping to improve the seller’s sales. For example, my article on the best email marketing software includes product reviews and affiliate links throughout.
3. Paid search focused microsites
Developing and monetizing microsites can also garner a serious amount of sales. These sites are advertised within a partner site or on the sponsored listings of a search engine. They are distinct and separate from the organization’s main site. By offering more focused, relevant content to a specific audience, microsites lead to increased conversions due to their simple and straightforward call to action.
4. Email lists.
Despite its older origins, email marketing is still a viable source of affiliate marketing income. Some affiliates have email lists they can use to promote the seller’s products. Others may leverage email newsletters that include hyperlinks to products, earning a commission after the consumer purchases the product.
Another method is for the affiliate to build an email list over time. They use their various campaigns to collect emails en masse, then send out emails regarding the products they are promoting.
5. Large media websites.
Designed to create a huge amount of traffic at all times, these sites focus on building an audience of millions. These websites promote products to their massive audience through the use of banners and contextual affiliate links. This method offers superior exposure and improves conversion rates, resulting in top-notch revenue for both the seller and the affiliate.
Tips to Help You Become A Successful Affiliate Marketer
1. Develop a rapport.
When beginning your affiliate marketing career, you’ll want to cultivate an audience that has very specific interests. This allows you to tailor your affiliate campaigns to that niche, increasing the likelihood that you’ll convert. By establishing yourself as an expert in one area instead of promoting a large array of products, you’ll be able to market to the people most likely to buy the product.
2. Make it personal.
There is no shortage of products you’ll be able to promote. You’ll have the ability to pick and choose products that you personally believe in, so make sure that your campaigns center around truly valuable products that consumers will enjoy. You’ll achieve an impressive conversion rate while simultaneously establishing the reliability of your personal brand.
You’ll also want to get really good at email outreach to work with other bloggers and influencers. Use a tool like ContactOut or Voila Norbert to gather people’s contact information and send personalized emails to garner guest blogging and affiliate opportunities.
3. Start reviewing products and services.
Focus on reviewing products and services that fall within your niche. Then, leveraging the rapport you have created with your audience and your stance as an expert, tell your readers why they would benefit from purchasing the product or service you are promoting. Almost anything sold online can be reviewed if there is an affiliate program – you can review physical products, digital software, or even services booked online, like ride-sharing or travel resort booking. It is especially effective to compare this product to others in the same category. Most importantly, make sure you are generating detailed, articulate content to improve conversions.
4. Use several sources.
Instead of focusing on just an email campaign, also spend time making money with a blog, reaching out to your audience on social media, and even looking into cross-channel promotions.
Test a variety of marketing strategies to see which one your audience responds to the most. Make frequent use of this technique.
For more information, you can check out this article on how to start a successful blog this year.
5. Choose campaigns with care.
No matter how good your marketing skills are, you’ll make less money on a bad product than you will on a valuable one. Take the time to study the demand for a product before promoting it. Make sure to research the seller with care before teaming up. Your time is worth a lot, and you want to be sure you’re spending it on a product that is profitable and a seller you can believe in.
6. Stay current with trends.
There is serious competition in the affiliate marketing sphere. You’ll want to make sure you stay on top of any new trends to ensure you remain competitive. Additionally, you’ll likely be able to benefit from at least a few of the new marketing techniques that are constantly being created. Be sure you’re keeping up to date on all these new strategies to guarantee that your conversion rates, and therefore revenue, will be as high as possible.
What are the Top Affiliate Marketing Trends of 2020?
1. Improved affiliate reporting and attribution.
Many affiliate programs run with last-click attribution, where the affiliate receiving the last click before the sale gets 100% credit for the conversion. This is changing. With affiliate platforms providing new attribution models and reporting features, you are able to see a full-funnel, cross-channel view of how individual marketing tactics are working together.
For example, you might see that a paid social campaign generated the first click, Affiliate X got click 2, and Affiliate Y got the last click. With this full picture, you can structure your affiliate commissions so that Affiliate X gets a percentage of the credit for the sale, even though they didn’t get the last click.
2. Influencer niches are becoming hyper-targeted.
In the past, large affiliates were the mainstay, as catch-all coupons and media sites gave traffic to hundreds or thousands of advertisers. This is not so much the case anymore. With consumers using long-tail keywords and searching for very specific products and services, influencers can leverage their hyper-focused niche for affiliate marketing success. Influencers may not send advertisers huge amounts of traffic, but the audience they do send is credible, targeted, and has higher conversion rates.
3. GDPR is changing how personal data is collected.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which took effect on May 25, 2018, is a set of regulations governing the use of personal data across the EU. This is forcing some affiliates to obtain user data through opt-in consent (updated privacy policies and cookie notices), even if they are not located in the European Union. This new regulation should also remind you to follow FTC guidelines and clearly disclose that you receive affiliate commissions from your recommendations.
4. Affiliate marketers are getting smarter.
Merchants receiving a large percentage of their revenue from the affiliate channel can become reliant on their affiliate partners. This can lead to affiliate marketers leveraging their important status to receive higher commissions and better deals with their advertisers. Whether it’s CPA, CPL, or CPC commission structures, there are a lot of high-paying affiliate programs and affiliate marketers are in the driver’s seat.
What Affiliate Marketing Strategies Should You Employ in 2021?
1. Only recommend products you are extremely familiar with.
Building trust with your audience is paramount in affiliate marketing, and the quickest way to lose trust is to recommend products either you haven’t used before or that aren’t a good fit for your audience. Also make sure you never tell anyone to directly buy a product, you are simply recommending the product. The more helpful you are and the more you make quality recommendations, the more likely your web visitors will come back for your expertise.
2. Promote products from many different merchants.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. If you only promote one merchant’s products, you are stuck with their commissions, their landing pages, and ultimately, their conversion rates. It is important to work with many different merchants in your niche and promote a wide range of products.
This affiliate marketing strategy will diversify the number of commissions you make and create a steady stream of revenue when building an affiliate website. Some examples of affiliate merchants include brands like BigCommerce, Bluehost, and SimplyBook.me.
3. Constantly test and optimize your conversion rates.
Let’s say you have a promotions page where you’re promoting a product via affiliate links. If you currently get 5,000 visits/month at a 2% conversion rate, you have 100 referrals. To get to 200 referrals, you can either focus on getting 5,000 more visitors or simply increasing the conversion rate to 4%.
Which sounds easier? Instead of spending months building Domain Authority with blogging and guest posts to get more organic traffic, you just have to increase the conversion rate by 2%. This can include landing page optimization, testing your calls-to-action, and having a conversion rate optimization strategy in place. By testing and optimizing your site, you’ll get far better results with much less effort.
4. Focus on your affiliate traffic sources.
It’s important to know where your traffic is coming from and the demographics of your audience. This will allow you to customize your messaging so that you can provide the best affiliate product recommendations. You shouldn’t just focus on the vertical you’re in, but on the traffic sources and audience that’s visiting your site. Traffic sources may include organic, paid, social media, referral, display, email, or direct traffic.
You can view traffic source data in Google Analytics to view things such as time on page, bounce rate, geo location, age, gender, time of day, devices (mobile vs. desktop), and more so that you can focus your effort on the highest converting traffic. This analytics data is crucial to making informed decisions, increasing your conversion rates, and making more affiliate sales.
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