trafficmansionAs you probably know, affiliate marketing works on the principles of product marketing. You strike up a deal with sellers and product creators to sell their units for a certain commission. These product creators and sellers can be found on big affiliate networks or through a simple Google search.
Almost every major brand today is doing at least some affiliate marketing. They either chase social media influencers online and try to get them to support their marketing efforts, or they have dedicated pages on their website that explain how interested affiliates can become a partner.
We at Traffic Mansion have seen it all.
Affiliate marketing still has a reputation for being one of the best and easiest ways to generate some sweet revenue online. However, there are several pros and cons that you need to go through before you decide to jump into the world of affiliate marketing with both feet.
Once you acquaint yourself with all the details and decide to follow through with affiliate marketing, you need to prepare yourself for some heavy learning. Even though the idea of revenue sharing sounds simple and straightforward, the steps that come before are the most complicated.
The promotion part is often quite tricky. To move their partner’s products, affiliates need to get creative with their content marketing efforts.
A New Perspective
Investing in ads alone is not going to cut it anymore. We live in a day and age of ad-blockers. According to GlobalWebIndex, 47 percent of all Internet users today use ad-blockers to help them make their browsing experiences ad-free. Considering 2 billion people use the Internet in 2019, 47 percent is a very significant amount. It is clear as day that ads don’t really work anymore.
To advertise to people in a day and age when people despise advertisements, affiliate marketers need to add more firepower in their marketing arsenal and start investing in modern practices that follow inbound marketing methodologies.
Unlike traditional ads, modern inbound marketing methodologies don’t really “stalk” people online and force them to interact with the material they don’t want to see. The goal here is to let the users come to you on their own terms and offer them material that slowly, subtly, and patiently builds trust.
Through a steady stream of quality content, affiliate marketers can build trust and credibility in specific niches and markets, which drastically improves their chances of making more sales. It’s definitely much more demanding than simply placing ads on pages, but it’s also very effective.
As an affiliate marketer, there are more than a couple of types of content you can create to stimulate sales and help your target audience view you as an influential figure. Here are some of the best ones that most successful affiliates produce.
1. Use Cases
Modern shoppers are not impulsive, especially when it comes to B2C products and services that cost more than Starbucks coffee.
Before they commit to a certain sale, modern shoppers first do a bit of research. They look for all available options online and try to figure out which one works best for them. The opinions they develop are usually based on the content that’s available to them through a simple Google search. They open up company blogs, but they also look at third-party websites that impartially talk about products and services.
The goal here is to find a piece that shares honest information about how specific products and services work, and how good and trustworthy the company is who stands behind it. People want to see real-life examples and experiences from people who have already purchased things that they’re currently thinking of buying.
This is where use cases come to shine.
By creating specific content that showcases the product and service you are promoting is actually used by real people who are satisfied with it; you can get ahead. That assurance builds up your partner’s business and turns you into a valuable affiliate.
Browse through your partner’s website and think about their target customers and their pain points. Then you can create detailed, descriptive content on how you solved those exact problems with your affiliate partner’s products and services.
2. Ultimate Guides
Creating ultimate guides is a great way for affiliates to generate relevant traffic, build trust, gain organic links, and get some decent exposure on social media. Even though there are a lot of ultimate guides out there, this format still has its value, especially if you’re creating ultimate guides on topics that haven’t already been covered thousands of times online.
To create an ultimate guide that surely has a unique value for a specific audience, affiliates first need to master the topic they’re thinking about writing. Apart from that, affiliates should also look at:
- Different ways to explain the same information that’s being displayed in these existing guides.
- Things that have changed since others have written about the topic.
- Small (or even large) details about your topic that others left out.
Once affiliates identify what’s missing, all they have to do is update the dated information in these posts, write their unique views and opinions, and combine them with the basics.
Easy as pie.
3. Coupons
Coupons still rock. Affiliate marketers can rely on coupons to help them connect with desired audiences. As long as affiliates keep giving discounts and a great deal on a particular product, people will continue to pay attention.
There’s not a lot of wisdom behind coupon promoting. All you basically have to do is share the best deals you have at your disposal and invest a bit of brainpower into developing great content that supports your game. Even though you don’t make a lot of money by offering crazy discounts, you are going to earn the trust of your audience, which will eventually pay you back.
You should always look to add some extra value in the form of information about a product and work on user interaction. Make sure to add some options that allow your users to get involved—comment on your offer, rate your product, join the community forum, etc. And there are specific tools of which you can take advantage.
People who found something great on your website are going to keep coming back in order to see if you have something new to offer at a ridiculous price.
4. Reviews
Reviews work extremely well for affiliate marketers. By reviewing products and services that fall within their niche, affiliates are steadily building trust with their audience and taking a stance as experts on a specific topic.
By carefully explaining to their followers why they would benefit from purchasing the product or service they are promoting, affiliates add a whole new dimension to the sales process. It is a far less aggressive way of making someone understand what certain deals bring to the table.
Anything sold online can be reviewed and sold this way. Affiliates can review physical products, digital software, or even services booked online—like ride-sharing or travel resort booking. It is especially effective to compare products that fall under the same category.
Over to You
Thank you for taking the time to read this article in its entirety. As you can read from everything written above, affiliate marketing is changing. To stay vigilant, affiliates need to think beyond blasting ads all over the Internet and bombarding everyone who comes into contact with one of their promotions. We live in a day and age where people need a bit more persuading before they decide to pull out their credit cards. That’s why content marketing works and why all affiliates need to figure out how to level up their game and add more context and value to their offerings.
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