Best Affiliate Marketing Strategies for Beginners

Disclosure: Some of the links you’ll encounter are affiliate links. If you click and buy something, I’ll get a commission. If you’re reading a review of some precious metals company, please understand that some of the links are affiliate links that help me pay my bills and write about what I love with no extra cost to you. Thank you!

 

If you are looking for the best affiliate marketing strategies, you are landed at the right place.

There is no doubt that affiliate marketing can generate significant revenue and drive sales. In addition, it is a cost-effective way of generating leads, since you pay only when people click your links.

This is the reason why most brands use it to grow their business.

Marketing your products through affiliate programs is equally valuable when you are targeting a new demographic or promoting a new product. Affiliate marketing, though, has been abused by a lot of brands and marketers since it entered the spotlight.

If you want to make it a sustainable business, you must leverage the best affiliate marketing strategies. Before you can make a sales pitch, you have to build your audience and gain their trust. You can take sales management training to improve your sales pitch.

In this guide, I’ll show you powerful affiliate marketing strategies to boost your affiliate sales.

What is Affiliate Marketing & How it Works?

An affiliate marketer is someone who sells someone else’s product and he earns a commission on each successful sale.

He doesn’t need to create and ship the product, rather only promote it to the right audience.

Affiliate marketing programs consist of 4 major components:

1. Vendor – A vendor is a company that provides a product or service or channel partner of a company that sets up an affiliate marketing program and partners with marketers to generate sales and revenue.

2. Affiliate Marketer – A person who needs to promote the product or service and generate sales.

3. Deal Qualifier – There are a number of different criteria that qualify for a successful sale. The vendor and marketer negotiate what these criteria are.

4. Revenue Sharing – Typically, the pay percentage may range between 3% to 50% of the product price.

Here are some types of affiliate programs:

1. CPC – Cost per click is referred to as CPC. By joining an affiliate program with commissions based on CPC, you earn money whenever someone clicks on your affiliate links.

2. Recurring – A recurring commission is when you refer a customer only once and then you get paid a commission each time they renew or extend their subscription.

3. CPA/CPS – CPA stands for cost per click and CPS stands for cost per click. In this affiliate marketing model, when someone clicks on your affiliate link and purchases the product then you will get a fixed commission.

Now, let’s know about effective affiliate marketing strategies to boost sales.

1. Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective and super effective ways to generate affiliate sales and build a leads database.

Email is the channel that targets the right audience with a personalized and well-tailored pitch the best out of all other marketing channels.

It’s no wonder that affiliates think of email marketing as their first approach when they start, and for good reason. According to statistics, if you spend $1 on email marketing, your return on investment (ROI) will be $42.24.

Make sure you follow the following steps if you are interested in earning affiliate income through email marketing. (Note: the link you just saw links to Email Octopus and their awesome resources on proper marketing to your list.

It was THE resource that got me started with email marketing, and still remains the one I often return to).

Build Your Targeted Email Lists

In order to grow a high-quality email list, it is essential to understand the product and the intent of the website visitors.

Additionally, you should be careful when asking visitors for information. Your questions should relate to the products you’re planning to sell. You should only have 2 to 3 fields on your lead generation form. Consider using an email verification tool to verify email addresses before doing an email blast.

The next step is to provide value to your visitors. Do not allow them to return without gaining something from you, since they are providing you with their personal information.

Send as many resources or freebies as you can. A good example is an ebook guide, a case study, or an excellent blog post resource.

Don’t sell too hard

In emails, most people are not interested in receiving sales pitches. If you bombard your prospects with promotions and pressure them to buy the product, you won’t succeed.

To begin with, instead of focusing on the product itself, highlight the benefits your prospects will receive.

Emails shouldn’t boast about the company or the product. A decent pitch should be made in a conversational tone. If you send emails, try writing them with ‘you’ rather than ‘we’.

2. Content Marketing

Daniel Ndukwu, the CoFounder of GetSolitaire says: 

“Many people want fast cash when they start affiliate marketing so they try ads without realizing it takes an entirely new skill set and it’s easy to lose more money than you make. IF you stop using the ads then the money stops coming in. Conversely, content marketing needs a modification of a skillset we already have – writing. It takes longer to kick in but once you start to reap the rewards, it only requires a bit of maintenance to keep it going. It’s also ideal if you’re strapped for cash. 

Affiliate marketers can use content marketing to construct an online following that trusts their opinions. As a result, they may increase sales of the products they promote.

Your affiliate niche has already been determined, but now it’s time to determine your target audience. A good way to get clarity on your target audience is by researching and defining it, as well as creating buyer personas.

Target Audience

A target audience is a group of people who are most similar to the demographic of your products or services. A typical target audience has characteristics such as:

  • Gender.
  • Age.
  • Income.
  • Interests.

The next step is to start planning content based on the target audience. Diversifying your content can help you to stay engaged and cater to your audience’s preferences.

You should create in-depth articles because they help you to rank higher. But before creating content you should do perfect keyword research. You should target commercial intent keywords like HostGator Black Friday deals, GreeGeeks Black Friday deals, and best earphones under $100.

Here are some more high converting content ideas:

  • Actionable Guides
  • Product Reviews
  • Ebooks
  • Videos

Now let’s move forward.

3. Sales Funnel –

A sales funnel is basically a marketing strategy used by affiliates to promote their products.

There is a defined path that consumers take before buying a product within an affiliate marketing sales funnel. It consists of a sequence of steps that potential users can follow to get to your core product, generating sales.

Choosing Affiliate Products

One of the most neglected aspects of affiliate marketing is choosing the right affiliate product to promote.

There are a lot of affiliates who complain that they don’t get sales even if they work hard to promote the products.

It is caused by choosing the wrong products. You will not achieve success if you make decisions by seeing what others are selling, higher commission rates, or popularity.

Before choosing an affiliate product, you should have your niche clear. Consider a niche that has lots of high-quality products and a high commission rate.

;

There are various types of affiliate marketing funnels such as:

There are various types of funnels you can use to promote your affiliate product:

1. Course Funnel

Course funnels are created to enlist more people into the main affiliate product through a low-priced course you create.. You can use this conversion-boosting hack to persuade customers to buy a cheap, supplementing course in addition to your main product.

2. Webinar Funnel

In a webinar funnel, you attract your target audience, invite them to attend your free webinar, and then guide them towards achieving your goal. Your aim could be to provide training to your audience or to promote the right product.

My answer to the question of which sales funnel is best would be that it totally depends on your business and your product. For different niches, different sales funnels work differently.

Good thing is that the best webinar platforms allow you to create your webinar sales funnels from scratch, without any development skills.

It is best to understand your affiliate product before choosing the right sales to funnel for your next affiliate marketing campaign. Once you’ve mapped out your promotional plan, it’s time to choose the sales funnel. In this way, you’ll be able to decide on which affiliate sales funnel is best for your campaign.

4. Don’t Miss Events –

Engaging customers with seasonal promotions is an easy way to increase sales. During seasons and holidays, people tend to spend more money and time shopping.

If you want to grab a customer’s attention, consider offering a special discount. In addition, you could also send thank you notes or few words of appreciation to your existing business partners and customers – this could be an opportunity to reconnect, keep the business relationship going, and possibly open doors for many more opportunities.

For example, I promote web hosting deals on black Friday.

You can target the biggest events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, & New Year.

There are many affiliate marketers who only do seasonal affiliate marketing and make $20,000 in just a couple of days.

5. Leverage Social Media –

You should let your audience know as soon as you publish a review. You should use multiple marketing channels to promote your new review post.

Make sure to share your latest post with your social media audience with your affiliate link.

Globally, there are approximately 2.8 billion social media users. Your target audience is likely to include thousands of these individuals. However, they may be unaware of you and your blog.

It is common for social media users to share your content with their own networks if they like your content.

This helps you broaden your reach. Additionally, it lets you connect to an audience that would not be reachable.

7. Scarcity Marketing –

The scarcity principle states that people value scarce things more than plentiful ones. Those who know a product’s availability will be limited or will sell out soon are more likely to buy it.

You can also employ this psychological strategy as an affiliate!

Instead of describing how easy and effective it is to get a particular product, end your pitch by saying there are only a few stocks or units left, hurry up.

The emotion of regret can be immensely painful.

Normally, we regret what we can’t change in life. In that way, regret implies the finality of an event.

Shoppers still want to avoid regret if possible, even when shopping online isn’t as costly as mishaps in real life

8. Social Proof –

A marketing tactic called social proof works by using psychology to improve prospects’ purchasing decisions. A crucial part of the sales process is utilizing this tactic because of how consumers make decisions by looking to others for guidance.

There are various types of social proofs, including testimonials from customers, product reviews, and certifications from the industry. Your brand’s power can be boosted by correctly utilizing these social proof, and leads may even decide to convert after they have been convinced.

A social proof system for your affiliate website may be one of its most essential components.

You can improve your website’s customer perception while simultaneously increasing sales by adding social proof.

9. Use Landing Page –

A landing page is a page on your website where you drive traffic to encourage your visitors to click and convert.

A landing page’s traffic might come from search engine optimization, social media, email newsletters, ppc, and a variety of other sources.

Affiliate landing pages can be built as optimized blog posts (such as review and roundup posts) or as dedicated landing pages created specifically for each campaign. You can easily create a high converting landing page with WordPress or you can also go for landing page builders like ClickFunnels.

Here are some steps to create a landing page that converts:

Write attractive headline

All starts with a headline – interest, attention, and comprehension.

It’s what makes a visitor want to explore your offerings – or not.

As a piece of copywriting advice, spend 50% of your time on the content, and the other 50% on creating a headline.

This is why a great title is so crucial for affiliate landing pages.

Use Visuals

An effective landing page must have visual content.

An image is processed 60,000 times faster by the brain than text. Your landing page images will immediately impact visitors.

Whenever possible, include high-quality, relevant images. Please do not post stock photos here or Photoshop work done just before the deadline.

Clear call to action

It is crucial that you have a strong call to action on your landing page in order to generate a high conversion rate.

Write a compelling copy. On your landing page, the CTA copy is the most important. Rather than using the word “submit,” think of something exciting, compelling, and explosive.

You can use a button. It is assumed that the CTA will be a button. By using anything other than a button, you will not be able to reverse years of expectation. Keep it simple. People will be familiar with it and will use it.

Takeaway

Affiliate marketing is a surefire way to attract customers and encourage them to buy from you.

A recent study found that 38% of marketers consider affiliate marketing to be their best method of attracting new customers.

Although it cannot happen overnight, you must know that it will take time. To boost conversions, you need to choose the right affiliate programs, traffic sources, and affiliate marketing strategies.

Which affiliate marketing strategy are you going to use? Tell us in the comment box.

About Author

Ayush Mishra – Ayush is a passionate Blogger and founder of BloggersDesire who loves to share his knowledge and experience to help people thrive in this online space.

Headshot –

.

Nikola Roza

Nikola Roza is a blogger behind Nikola Roza- SEO for the Poor and Determined. He writes for bloggers who don't have huge marketing budget but still want to succeed. Nikola is passionate about precious metals IRAs and how to invest in gold and silver for a safer financial future. Learn about Nikola here.

Leave a Comment