6 Affiliate Marketing Pro Tips That Experts Swore By
At present, more than 80% of brands have affiliate programs, according to Mediakix. For the unacquainted, affiliate marketing is one of the most up-and-coming marketing strategies that brands are leveraging to reach their niche audience. So much so, that affiliate marketing has experienced a 52% increase in the last 5 years.
What’s affiliate marketing, you may ask? Well, when you hire someone to promote your brand and pay them a part of your sales price as a commission (reward), that’s affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy in which you share an affiliate link with the affiliates who then promote your product via that link. On every sale they make or task they complete, you pay them a commission which is like a small percentage of the product sold.
It doesn’t matter if you have the best product, best service, or best staff in the world if there is no one out there to draw your audience’s attention towards your brand. That’s what affiliates do for your business. While we’ve already covered the what, why, and how of affiliate marketing and different types of affiliate marketing in our previous articles, the question to be addressed now is – what different you can do to speed up affiliate marketing for your business?
No doubt, there are plenty of strategies people use to hit success in affiliate marketing but there are some proven tricks that can speed up the work for you. That’s why we are here with some awesome and super-helpful affiliate marketing pro tips.
Read on for Affiliate Marketing Pro Tips
Source: Visualistan
Tip 1: Choose the Right Affiliates
Answer this, would you buy a mattress from a company that doesn’t have a physical showroom? Most of you will go for NO as an answer. Now, do you know Leesa Mattress is one brand that had 1,00,000 clicks on its website and sold thousands of mattresses without any showroom? The credit goes to affiliate marketing, of course.
Leesa Mattress was able to count on increasing sales because it reached out to the two best blogs in the same industry – Mattress Clarity and Sleepopolis. Now, there is a secret behind the success of this mattress company. That is choosing the right affiliates for their business and not going for the ordinary Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok influencer.
Do you get the point here? You don’t just Google the best influencer for affiliate marketing to find the perfect affiliate marketer for your product. What you can do is take help from an affiliate marketing tool and save both your time and effort.
Having the right affiliate recruitment tool helps you discover and hire valuable affiliates but there are some things you must keep in mind while selecting one.
- They have an audience who trusts them.
- They have knowledge of what your product is all about and are able to promote them like a pro.
- Good following, ranking, engagement scale, and authority matters.
Tip 2: Go for influencer marketing for a high conversion rate
The best part of affiliate marketing is its performance-based marketing. Yup, you only pay the affiliate when they make the sale, with no prior investment on any XYZ campaign. However, it is true, that recruiting an affiliate is a tough job because you can’t just Google someone and make a deal. That’s why companies go for the marketing keyword – influencer marketing.
Most companies go for influencers based on what number of followers they have but that should be the only factor here. When it comes to influencer marketing, you must choose someone who is an expert on the niche in which you are selling products. That’s how you find your target audience in the followers of the influencers.
When people follow an influencer, they often trust their word-of-mouth and have the courage to purchase the product just because it is suggested by the influencer. You know how you can leverage your conversion rates with that.
While recruiting an influencer for your affiliate program, do check out their:
- Engagement rate
- Reachability
- Audience information
- Rate of increase in followers
- Relatability with your brand values and niche
Moreover, once you hire an expert from your niche, you can track their sales using affiliate marketing tools and see how good they are.
Source: FinancesOnline
Tip 3: Offer perks to attract sales
Who doesn’t love to save money? We often look for exciting deals that make every dollar spent count. No wonder why 92% of consumers look for discounts and save more when they are shopping. What if you offer them what they are looking for?
You can attract more sales for your product if you provide a link of discounts, coupons, promotions, and other saving deals to the affiliate. When they advertise this link to their audience, you know people will come in number to check out the product. In fact, many of them wouldn’t mind hitting the ‘Buy Now’ button.
When you offer high-paying and popular offers, there will be potential for affiliate markets to get into business with your niche. Besides, you will have a number of benefits like:
- Be ahead of the competition
- Engage with a high audience
- You can have a wide range of discount coupons.
One thing to note here, when you have coupons and discounts to offer, you can easily reach out to micro-influencers (experts with not many followers) and help them generate impressive revenue.
Source: VectorStock
Tip 4: Create a welcoming affiliate network
There are 11,000+ affiliate programs in the US and most of them are doing really fine. Nonetheless, here is the truth, if you are starting an affiliate network, things can be pretty hard as compared to increasing the web. All you need is a nice platform that reflects clearly and to the point what the affiliate program has for the affiliates.
There are a bunch of things you must keep in mind while building your affiliate network. Whatever that is, don’t miss out on keeping your message straightforward and clear. Answer questions like:
- What are the conditions?
- How will things work out?
- What would be the commission rate?
The bonus comes in if you allow your affiliates to have sub-affiliates and provide them rewards on every sale the sub-affiliates make. Also, how about rewarding your best affiliate’s performance every now and then?
It wasn’t easy for ShareASale to become one of the best affiliate programs with over 7,00,000 affiliates. It took them years of hard work and a refined portfolio that attracts real affiliates.
Tip 5: Optimize Your Product Pages for Conversions
While we are on creating a fine portfolio for your affiliate network, there is one more thing you must keep in mind. Having an affiliate promote your link is not the only job you have. So, don’t just sit back and relax but work on your product page.
What do we mean by that? Well, to put it simply, when a customer clicks on the affiliate link, it shows their interest to come and check out the product. However, if your product page is not clear and doesn’t convince them enough, it will be hard to get a sale. So, it’s better to work on your product page and make it more attractive in the customer’s POV.
To ensure you have a good customer experience, there is a lot to do just write a catchy copy on your page. A few things to consider are:
- Fast loading website
- Provide enough information to help customers make a decision
- Show high-quality images and videos of the product
- Display what your brand is all about
- Have customer reviews on the page
There are ways to check out if your website is perfect or not. One of the best ways is to get a tool like Qualaroo where you can conduct surveys and know visitors’ opinions. Another website is Crazy Egg which shows you a hot map of the website. Try and understand where you need to change things for better results.
Source: ContentDevelopmentPros
Tip 6: Try multiple platforms
Twitter is undoubtedly one of the trendiest platforms on the internet. Not many know this but about 40% of Twitter users once use a product based on a tweet. Strange, right? We all know how social media is loaded with such eCommerce marketing, especially Instagram which is like the main target for any company.
Do you know hitting one platform can kill most conversions? We are not saying you must go for all the platforms there are but definitely try out multiple platforms for starters. Experiment and understand which ones suit the best for your needs.
Now, instead of common social media like Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, or Twitter, you can try out other platforms as well. For instance:
- Blogs: You can reach out to bloggers who will write a thorough review about your products and share the affiliate link. That’s how you can promote your product based on an honest review by a trustable blogger.
- Webinars: professionals of the niche talk about relevant topics on a live session and advertise the affiliate link. Hence, you get the conversion because viewers trust the expert’s recommendation.
- Emails: Usually affiliates have a huge email list and they use it to promote the affiliate link to drive conversions.
Again, this step is all about trying and testing multiple platforms. All you need to do is find out what platform your target audience uses the most. That’s where you find the right platform for you.
To Sum Up
Affiliate marketing is renowned to be the most cost-efficient marketing but if you are unable to make a sale by now, the problem lies in your strategies. Not to worry because there are some affiliate marketing pro tips to fix these. Once you get these things clear, you will notice how things work out just the way you expect them. Rest is up to you what channel to pick, what strategy to use, and who will be the right affiliate to boost your conversion.
