If you think that being an affiliate marketer is easy and that the only thing you need to do is to send traffic to your partners and wait for commissions incoming… then YOU ARE WRONG!
As an affiliate marketer, we have a role and it’s to convince the visitors that he needs absolutely the product. Before sending the visitors to the landing pages of your partners, it’s mandatory that you have convinced him through your content that he absolutely needs the product.
How to achieve this? Through this sales funnel methodology.
Let me explain to you step-by-step.
Stage 1 & 2 – Discovery & Realization of Need
These 2 stages are the most important and I usually combine them together in my first paragraph. They are really crucial to catch all the attention of the visitors right away! It’s pretty simple, everything is in the first paragraph of your content, if you are promoting a car loan service, you have to understand the needs of the consumers first.
What could make people search for a car loan? A new car! So a great example of a catchy phrase could be something like;
” Tired of your old car because it costs you a fortune in reparation? You have checked many car loan services and they all want to steal your money with ridiculous interest rates? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered… We have created a list of the best car loan services that come with the lowest interest rates in the industry, and they are easy to get approved! “
In a short sentence, I have;
- Give a reason to change his car (ie: Current car is old and costs a fortune to maintain)
- Boosted the interest for our list of car loan services, as we have the best providers with the lowest rates (The consumer always want to save money)
- Removed the fear to be not accepted in a new car loan (Many peoples are afraid to request a loan because they think they could not be accepted. The fact that I’ve mentioned that the loans were easy to get approved, has increased the trust instantly of the visitor)
As you see, with only 66 words, I have all the interest of my visitors and added them to my sale funnel… so now, we have to convince them to buy! Let’s move to Stage 3.
Stage 3 – Consideration
Now that the visitor has confirmed his need to change his car… It’s time to convince him to make the big jump and start the process of the car loan application (We want our commission right?)
Now you have to understand your audience… The average person will simply call their bank to get a new loan… The peoples that look for a car loan on the internet are most people with bad credit… So it’s important that you take this into consideration in your presentation! For this, I absolutely love the ribbons… They do an excellent job!
In my presentation, I always use ribbons to target my audience, this way, I can make the best recommendation per audience type easily and increase my conversion rate!
Example:
As you can see, I’m targeting 3 audiences in the example above:
- Students
- People with a bankruptcy
- People that have no job
From my analysis, this is likely, the audience I should have on my page and that’s why, I’m proposing the “best fit” for each audience. If you are unemployed, you will consider much more Car Loan #3 as my ribbon says it’s the best provider for unemployed peoples.
Now that your suggestions are perfectly optimized, it will be easy for the consumer to make a decision and select a car loan provider.
Stage 4 – Conversion
Now that all the hard work is almost done… It’s time to convert the visitor. For that, you can use different tactics, do A/B testing and see what works the best for your audience. Unfortunately, there’s no unique formula… Every audience is different but here are some suggestions you can try:
- Testimonials – For increasing the trust
- CRO Widget (like the one you see in my sidebar) – To help to convert a specific product/service. I usually promote the one that gives me the biggest commission.
- Limited Time Offer With Evergreen Counter – Those are great to create the FOMO and increase the conversion rates.
As you can see, I’m targeting 3 audiences in the example above:
Conclusion
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) is definitely needed if you want to scale your affiliate marketing business to the next level! Since I do CRO on my projects, I have seen an increase of 300-500% in earnings (Yes it’s a huge difference!!).
If you want to learn more about CRO, I suggest you visit the Convertica blog, they have a few great articles.
And there is just some motivation, to show you how CRO can help you to increase your earnings.
I will never say it enough… CRO is the most important skill you can learn after SEO if you want to succeed and make money as an affiliate marketer!