Across all of the information, or direction / choices that you have when you’re first starting. There is one that shouldn’t be overlooked and that is using sales funnels with affiliate marketing business.
This key element alone is what will separate you from being someone who has a little success with affiliate marketing to someone who has a great amount, and is able to make a healthy, sustainable income online.
A lot of people, including myself, go about building their affiliate marketing business in completely the wrong way when they first start. They find a product that they think will convert or that they’ll be able to make a ton of money off of.
Then go onto social media and start spamming your link everywhere, basically hoping that someone will buy it.. You might get a couple sales and you might be able to make a quick buck but the reality of it is this isn’t in any way going to become a sustainable income that you’re going to be able to recreate every month, giving you the ability to leave your job or actually make a full time income online.
And in my opinion this exact method is what gives affiliate marketing a bad name. Being someone who very passionate about affiliate marketing, I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve had to elaborate to someone or convince them that it isn’t some type of pyramid scheme or scam, I believe that some of the methods that people are using to get affiliate commissions are the exact reasons that the business model gets classified with other not so ethical ways of making money online…
When in reality affiliate marketing actually is one of the most common ways for people to make money online, it just isn’t as spoke about as others..
Why Using Sales Funnels With Affiliate Marketing Can Change Your Entire Business Model…
As an affiliate it is your job to bridge the gap between the consumer and a product or service. In a sense the entire business model can be broken down into this simple metaphor.
You are the bridge and people that you want to buy products that you are promoting are the traffic.
The start of the bridge can either be a simple lead magnet where you’ll offer some type of value in exchange for their contact information, or more information about the product that you plan on directing them to.
The toll or the stop in the middle of the bridge will be the portion where you capture their email address or some type of contact information before redirecting them to your affiliate offer.
Upon receiving their email address or contact information you can either decide to up-sell and down-sell them on another offer before sending them to your original product you were promoting, or you can send them directly to the product or service.
Even though implementing the bridge page method with affiliate marketing is crucial, it happens to be one steps that tends to get overlooked or skipped by people who’re first starting.
One of the only negative parts that I can think of when it comes to strategically using sales funnels within your affiliate marketing business, is depending on which software company that you build you sales funnels or landing pages on, it can be quite costly… Especially for someone just starting out.
3 Reasons Why You Need To Start Using Sales Funnels With Affiliate Marketing
1. Paid Advertising
If you plan on doing any type PPC (Pay per click) method to get traffic to your affiliate offers, it is actually required to use a bridge page or a landing page. It is against most terms of service and policies to run paid advertisements directly to a domain or a website that you do not own.
I see it so often, especially on social media.. Someone first hears about affiliate marketing and it potential and they start running paid advertisements, usually using the generic videos that companies will offer every affiliate that signs up. To make matters even worse, not only are they pooling themselves with the people who are viewed as “scammers” by using the same tactics that everyone else is who is just trying to make a “quick buck.”
Chances are they are running a PPC campaign directly to their affiliate link. Which is all fine and dandy if they don’t care about their AD account, or say their Facebook page. Chances are their campaign will get approved by the platform, but after a few days of running not only their accounts will be shut down but I’ve seen pages get locked or banned for breaking terms of service. Which would be devastating blow if you were someone who had a following and now you no longer had means to connect or put out content to your potential customers because you weren’t aware of this.
The Correct Way To Do Affiliate Marketing With Paid Advertising
This picture above is describing a bridge page used for promoting Clickfunnels products but the concept is the same no matter the industry or product that you do decide to promote..
Can Figure Out What Products To Promote? Check Out This Post!
2. Lead Generation & Email Marketing
The ability to integrate lead generation and email marketing campaigns along side your affiliate promotions will give you the opportunity to grow more, make more profit, and build a loyal customer base that will continue to buy products that you promote to them for months or years to come.
If you look at every successful business world wide they have some form of lead generation or email marketing that they use to promote to people who’ve already purchased something from them, and affiliate marketing isn’t any different.
If someone believes in you, it means that they will believe in what it is you are selling them. Using very targeted email marketing campaigns will give you the ability to build relationships and monetize on your customer more than one time. Allowing you to scale and grow more because you’re able to make more profit off each person.
It is also something that is crucial if you plan to sell high ticket products or be an affiliate for high ticket programs!
There is a very slim chance that people will actually expensive product from you if they don’t know who you are, which is why you’ll need to craft your soap opera sequence and build a relationship but attract people into purchasing at the same time!
Want To Learn Even More About These Advanced Marketing Techniques? Check Out This Blog Post!
3. The Bonus Stack
A question that I get asked all of the time, usually by people who don’t quite grasp what affiliate marketing is or how it works: “Why wouldn’t someone just go to their website and purchase it?”
Now some people will say that a good affiliate is someone who is able to get a customer to make a purchase without even knowing that they’ve purchased through an affiliate link.
But what in my opinion, what separates the people who make a little side income from the ones who make a very healthy income is what I call a “BONUS STACK”
Which is where you package additional things on top of what you are promoting, which will create an irresistible offer because no one else is offering exactly what you are.
If done correctly you can actually create a more enticing offer than the actual company that owns the product that you are an affiliate for and instead of slipping a customer in without noticing they purchased through you, they are fully aware of you, your brand and the type of value that you added on top of what they were looking for. So naturally if they ever are looking to purchase something similar they will actually seek you out and look for deals that you have.
Related Post: Using ClickFunnels For Affiliate Marketing
Your bonus stack doesn’t mean you have to go out a purchase things that you plan to give away a long side of the products that you plan to promote because that will reduce your profit margins and make it that much harder to create a sustainable online business.
Packaging things together that give a perceived value, that make the consumer feel good about purchasing through your affiliate link and ultimately feeling that you actually provided them with value. The better that someone feels about with the experience they had with you, the more likely they are to be a repeat customer or stick with whatever you promoted to them.
Now I know a question I used to always ask myself.. “But What Could I Package Together?” So I wanted to list some things below to kind of get your wheels turning!
- Say I’m Promoting Clickfunnels Landing Page Building Software, instead of promoting it in the traditional sense, I’d build a landing page that talks about the success that I’ve personally had with Clickfunnels and how I think it could help their business too. Instead of just directing them to my offer, I would then prompt them to sign up and upon doing so I would send them over some copies of my own funnels & help them with any additional set up. Making the transition of using their software easier and the easier that I can make it for someone the longer they are likely to stay, which means longer recurring commissions..
- Maybe I’m Promoting GetResponse Or any other Email Marketing Automation Software, my bonus stack would be giving them 180 done for you email marketing templates that can be used to build your personal brand and customer relationships that can be copy and pasted into their own email marketing campaigns. Then I would also offer to help them set up some type of lead magnet where they could start building an email list of their own.
- A bonus stack doesn’t have to be exclusive to a digital product either as I was mentioning above, sometimes you might have to get creative depending on what type of industry that you’re in, but your main focus is to add value to your potential customers and create an enticing offer so they actually feel good about purchasing through you!
Want To Learn Even More About Affiliate Marketing?
Check Out Affiliate Secrets 2.0, Where I learned the exact steps that I personally used to leave my dead end job and start making a full time income online without having a product or service of my own!