Affiliate marketing is competitive and requires your constant attention.
Even with numerous areas for potential, you have to put in a lot of work. You have to constantly see what works best after trying several versions of the same thing, look for keywords in your niche, and study analytics to know where your highest quality traffic comes from.
Because of the required time and attention, affiliate marketing can get overwhelming for new affiliates. As a result, you may find it hard to make as many conversions as you feel like you should.
Below are 8 tips that can help you boost your affiliate marketing strategy.
1. Write comprehensive case studies about products
Just about every affiliate marketer knows the importance of a product review. Many affiliates are drawn to the fact that there is a high chance of landing affiliate sales. Therefore, this is what almost everyone is doing.
You want to do it differently, make it more personal. Case studies are very useful for this.
Case studies share personal experiences with the product. Meaning, it will be different from a review given by someone who read about the product online.
You have used the product, seen the upsides and the downsides, and have evaluated it.
For instance, if you have a blog in the software niche, you would have used the software, known how helpful it is to your work, seen how user-friendly the interface is, and how it compares to others in its category.
You may get a high ranking on Google when you just write a product review (due to keywords and optimization), but your conversion rate may end up being low.
If you see car reviews online, the best are the ones with videos. You are able to see the car in motion, see how the system works, have a realistic view of its interior, and hear the shortcomings from the reviewer. This is not only providing the information that is being sought, but also a better understanding - from a personal perspective.
2. Let your product promotions flow
Many affiliates make the mistake of recommending too many products. Having too many recommendations can mess with the substance of the content.
First, you shouldn’t recommend more than 3 products in a post.
Second, make sure that the objective of the post is educational and not promotional. The recommendations should always be done fluidly.
The case should be that you are talking about some helpful tips; and the products that you are recommending will help them get the job done faster and easier. You can structure your posts into lists where each new product can be integrated into a new point. You should also recommend it to a person who has gathered some experience using the product.
3. Target keywords with purchase intent
People still keep an open mind, even after deciding to go for a product. Oftentimes, they are looking for that last review that either motivates them for the sale, or discourages them from going for the product.
You should make yourself fit here.
Target keywords that have purchase intents. These are keywords people who want to buy a product will enter into the search engine.
Of course, if it is a product that Amazon sells, you may not rank for number one on Google SERP. Amazon may contain reviews, however, yours is viewed as more professional.
You may need to get a keyword research tool to help you with this. You’ll need one that can tell you the average search volume and the cost per click of a particular keyword.
4. Automate your email marketing
When you run an affiliate marketing blog, email marketing is very essential.
This is how you’ll keep in touch with people who’ve become interested in your content and would like to receive updates and informational emails from you.
However, if you’re doing email marketing the same old way - it may bring you worse results.
What’s the best way to do email marketing? Automate it.
You want to have emails that are triggered by specific actions or even inactions.
For instance, when someone new joins your email list, you want to send a welcome email that contains the lead magnet you promised or links to posts containing your affiliate links.
You can even send affiliate links to products with their coupon and discount codes.
It could also be that you sent out a link to a webinar, but the user didn’t take action. You can target those people in this group and send them the replay of the webinar.
This boosts engagement and increases your conversions.
To start, you should segment your subscribers based on specific criteria. This criteria should be based on what will make them act on your personalized emails.
You can segment by
❖ Location
❖ Industry
❖ Product purchased / or not
❖ How they found out about you.
You must personalize your emails. Don’t just throw them into everyone’s inboxes, go by peculiarities. Studies show that users are much more likely to open an email addressed to them than to the masses.
Drip, Customer.io, and Intercom are very popular automation services.
5. Guest blog on popular sites in your niche
This is an area where many new affiliates underestimate the potential. Guest-blogging for a popular website in your niche can work more magic than you think!
First, before your pages can rank high on Google algorithm, you would have to have contributed helpful content on your website for about a year.
Second, if you are new, you would hardly get backlinks back to your pages. This is simply because people don’t know you.
For this reason, you cannot rely on search engine traffic. You have to invest in traffic sources.
One of the things that increase your ranking on Google, however, is the number of pages linking back to you as a source. Therefore, when you guest-blog, you can add backlinks to your blog.
Imagine adding backlinks to your pages from about 10 popular blogs in your niche.
You would not only gain ranking faster than normal, but because the site is a known authority in the niche - your blog will get traffic from them.
As much as these popular blogs screen your content to ascertain quality, you will establish yourself in that niche by writing insightful posts.
6. Use heat maps
Source: Crazy Egg
Heat maps are very useful in understanding visitor-behavior on your website. Heat maps are programmed to show areas with higher engagement than others. With them, you can know:
➔ Which part of your website are visitors engaging with the most?
➔ If users are drawn to the part where your call-to-action is.
➔ If visitors read the full-length of your posts before bouncing off.
➔ Whether your post should be smaller than what you currently do.
The heat map is very beneficial. If you are running a split-test on your website, you can easily tell which version is doing much better with the heat map.
Heat maps can help you analyze your website as well as point out issues you may not have considered.
Check out this deeply insightful article Crazy Egg wrote on heat maps.
7. Be smart with your pop-ups
Many new affiliates don’t know when to use pop-ups.
Pop-ups should be used in a way that will not only offer value, but also increase the chances of conversion.
A good strategy is to set your pop-up to appear when the user gets to a particular part of your content. Choose a place where you know that your content will be appreciated and your intended action is likely to be taken.
You could also have a pop-up that comes up when the pointer of the mouse is moving towards the top of the page. This mostly means that the view is about to exit the page. Try to save your conversion by placing a pop-up with an offer that is hard to resist.
You should always include your call-to-action in your pop-up. To increase your chances of your pop-up converting well, design your call-to-action to draw attention.
Last but not least, don’t forget to include encouraging words outlining what benefit they stand to gain by completing the required action in the pop-up.
8. Influencer Marketing
Niches are important in affiliate marketing. You don’t want to have a blog that talks about just anything. You want to specialize. This will help you build a brand that will be reckoned with in that niche.
Now, when you own a niche blog, you can get an influential person in that niche to endorse your blog.
By sharing a link to very insightful content of yours on social media, you gain popularity as well as you become better established in that blog.
Micro-influencers are particularly useful for this.
They have a sizable audience who follow them for their expertise and experience in a particular line. They have influence and their followers tend to follow their recommendations.
For this reason, you should be targeting influencers. Their backing can make a huge impact on your conversion rates.
To make this work, your content is super important. No influencer will want to put their reputation at risk. Therefore, you must have a well-researched and comprehensive post.
Generally, your blog must be a resource center. This will help you gain the trust and commitment of influencers.
Final Statement…
Affiliate marketing can be intimidating and requires hard work. You need to keep constant tabs on everything to know what is working and what isn’t.
While it may take some time and a few tries before you get it right, by applying the tips we’ve reviewed above - you can increase the exposure needed to boost the conversion rates on your affiliate offers.
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