ENTREPRENEUR
7 Steps to Affiliate Marketing Success
Looking to achieve affiliate marketing success? Learn the 7 ways to present your offers and connect with your audience.
Are you sure you have what it takes to become successful in affiliate marketing?
Today, affiliate marketing is a global industry worth well over $12 billion. It’s a fast growing industry that’s showing no signs of slowing.
Affiliate marketing is also estimated to grow by 10% over the next few years until at least 2021, according to projections.
What do successful affiliates look like?
If you want to see the success of affiliate marketing, just look at Ebates, a site that recently was acquired by Rakuten for $1 billion or The Wirecutter, a content resource which was recently bought by the New York Times.
What do these brands have in common?
Two things.
- They were able to create something that people found worthwhile enough to seek out.
- They use affiliate marketing to monetize what they offer and they managed to achieve so much success that their companies were acquired by larger brands.
Influencers from Instagramers to bloggers to YouTubers are also jumping on the affiliate marketing trend.
It’s clear that there is no one-size-fits-all solutions to success in affiliate marketing today.
You can also bootstrap your affiliate business.
Affiliate marketing is something that doesn’t necessarily require a large budget to get started with.
There are plenty of affiliate marketers out there (including myself) who started from next to nothing.
For the most part, all you need is the right strategy and it starts by establishing a solid foundation.
Here are the fundamentals that you need to know.
1. Build Trust With Your Audience
This first step to a successful affiliate marketing business is one of the most time-consuming because it not only takes energy for you to build trust, you also have to maintain it.
That’s why you should take this tip as the basis of your affiliate marketing strategy because it’s something that you will have to do continuously.
All of the sales that you will make as an affiliate will depend on the recommendations from your audience and your ability to persuade them to purchase the products that you recommend.
There are two ways to earn trust:
First, give as much value as you can.
Whether it’s free content, free products, and even in some cases, giving away your own time, give back to your audience.
The more you give to your audience, the more they’ll see you as a trusted authority and will be more likely to follow your recommendations when buying products and services.
Second, be recommended by other people.
Get together with influencers in your industry and have them help you promote your brand for you.
Remember that building a successful affiliate marketing business isn’t only about finding products to promote.
It’s about building a brand first so that people can recommend your brand and ultimately refer customers to the products that you promote.
So it’s important for you to connect and build relationships with as many people as possible who are willing to support your brand.
2. Understand the Products You’re Promoting
You might think that it’s not that important for you to be directly connected to a product because the product owner is the one who is actually responsible for making the sale.
However, this is not actually true.
What your customers need to know is why they should engage with the vendor in the first place.
If you don’t provide them with a worthwhile introduction to a product or service, they’re less likely to trust that it can deliver what they’re looking for.
So how do you get to know a product that you want to promote?
You’ll have to do some research. If you’re not directly familiar with the product or service (other than that it has an awesome affiliate program), start by doing online research and read reviews.
If it’s a brand new product, you can also try reaching out to the product owner to ask for a review copy or request a trial or demo of the service.
All of the products that I recommend on my websites are ones that I’ve personally researched and even used to make sure that they are the right fit for my audience.
As a result, the products that I have put the most effort into researching and reviewing for my audience are the ones that have resulted in the highest number of affiliate sales.
3. Is the Product the Right Fit for Your Audience?
Are you sure that the your audience will like the product or service that you’re recommending? It’s one thing to choose a product that you think is a good fit for your audience.
But also…
Pay attention to the feedback that you’re receiving.
Once you find that you’ve made some affiliate sales, see what customers think about the product AND customer service offered by the vendor.
Products and services that you recommend as an affiliate should provide an all around great experience for customers that will make them satisfied.
Your audience will be thankful that you were able to recommend something that is useful in their lives.
Be transparent about bad products or services.
However, occasionally there are instances where you may promote an affiliate product that is not as good as you thought it was.
In that case, if things don’t work out as they should, let your audience know why you’re removing the product and you no longer promoting it.
Just be honest and transparent with them as far as why you decided to withdraw your recommendation to help maintain your trust with your audience.
They’ll appreciate the fact that you’ve taken the time to notify them that whatever you promoting no longer works for your brand and you’re willing to risk affiliate sales to help maintain their trust.
4. Share Proof of Your Own Results
If you’re trying to explain to your audience why an affiliate product is so great, don’t be shy about showing the results that you’ve personally obtained.
This can be done by taking photos or video of you using the product. If it’s a service, you can take screenshots to show the results that you’ve obtained.
By doing so, you can show real use of the product and that you’re not simply recommending it because there is a chance to earn a commission.
In addition, you can also show that the product can be used to help your audience achieve some results.
For example, if the product that you’re promoting is something that could help your audience to build their own businesses, show how it’s helping you to grow your own business.
Demonstrating clear results will push them to buy the affiliate product that you’re promoting.
5. Directly Help Your Audience Learn About the Affiliate Product
While it may seem easier to direct your audience to the sales page for a product that you want to promote, you shouldn’t leave the selling aspect up to the vendor only.
Make sure that you take time to explain to your audience why the product works and what it can do for them.
An easy way to do this is to write a review article or post a video on YouTube to show that you’ve tried the product yourself. You can also provide answers to frequently asked questions that users will have about the product or service.
This method also has the added benefit of allowing your content related to the affiliate products to rank higher in the search engines.
If you look at the search results, some of the highest ranking content pieces for buy keywords related to a product come from affiliates who’ve reviewed the product.
If you follow their formula to review products, you can achieve higher rankings in the search engines.
6. Spread Out Your Opportunities
While it might seem like a good idea to start small when it comes to affiliate promotions by only promoting one or a few products, this doesn’t often work out in reality.
There can be a number of issues that prevent you from making affiliate sales from how you promote the product to pricing or issues with tracking links.
As a result, it’s a good idea to maximize the number of opportunities for making affiliate sales by promoting as many affiliate products as you can handle.
That way you don’t have to worry about not seeing success due to a failed affiliate promotion method or worrying because you’re not earning enough income to keep your business afloat from the commissions.
This is especially true if you’re an influencer on YouTube or Instagram.
Keep your opportunities open and avoid exclusivity agreements that will force you to only promote a single brand or product.
These agreements can put you in a position where you can’t grow your business until you’ve finished working with the brand or met their terms of the agreement.
7. Embrace Change and Know When to Kill a Campaign
Occasionally, you’ll have to just accept the fact that some products are never gonna sell as well as they used to (or at all).
The company’s product may be outdated or they simply have not put in the effort to keep up with how customers want to buy from them (by having an outdated website or not doing anything to address poor customer feedback).
Get rid of older affiliate products, which are no longer selling and look out for new opportunities to replace them.
If you want to stay on top of the latest trends and affiliate marketing in your industry, follow top websites that you know are using affiliate marketing as a monetization strategy.
These sites can provide easy clues to help you figure out where to turn to for new affiliate opportunities.
Conclusion
While developing an affiliate marketing strategy requires a significant amount of effort, it’s all too easy to get bogged down in the technical details rather than focusing on the overall strategy that you need to become successful.
In fact, this very reason is why many affiliates fail.
They tend to focus more on software and setting up campaigns than they do in figuring out how to truly build a brand outside of their affiliate promotions.
So follow these tips to build a successful company and start thinking of affiliate marketing as a monetization strategy rather than the core of your brand if you want to achieve true affiliate success.
All I’m trying to do…
…is write about stuff that other solopreneurs are experiencing that you might relate to. If you love this article, please share it right now on Facebook.
