Optimizing Affiliate Funnels for Mid-Funnel Intent

Optimizing Affiliate Funnels for Mid-Funnel Intent

As affiliates, you are probably familiar with funnels and how they work. Most marketers focus on either the top or the bottom parts of it. 

Top-of-funnel clicks are affordable, and they generate a lot of traffic, but conversions are generally lacking for the most part. Nobody seems to be buying anything! The bottom-of-funnel is the complete opposite. You target “buy now” keywords, the competition is brutal, and your costs are sky-high. 

Bouncing between those two is what most people do, but what many marketers miss is the golden middle! Here, you have already identified the problem of your audience, and you are searching for a solution. While they likely aren't ready to pull out their credit card just yet, they have high intent. If you manage to capture them, you can ensure sustainable profit! In this article, we will try to show you how to do just that!

What Is Mid-Funnel Intent (And Why Is It So Profitable?)

To understand the mid-funnel, you have to see the whole customer journey. It’s usually broken into three simple stages:

• Top-Funnel (TOFU)

Here, the user is problem-aware. They are asking “what is” and “why” questions. For example, someone searching for something like “Why am I so tired all the time?”. The clicks are cheap, but the intent is very low. 

• Mid-Funnel (MOFU)

This is the sweet spot. The user is solution-aware, and they are now comparing their options. “Why ..” questions are gone, and now they search for things like “Best energy supplements” or “[Brand X] vs [Brand Y]

• Bottom-Funnel (BOFU)

The user is ready to buy. They are searching for specific brands or “buy now” terms. For example, “Buy [Brand X] supplement discount”. As you might conclude, the intent here is definitely there, but the competition is also there, and they are driving up the costs a lot!

So, as you can see, the mid-funnel could be a potential goldmine for affiliates! You get the best of both worlds with this approach. Your traffic is a lot cheaper, there is far less competition, and the users still have high intent. All you need to do is step in, provide some value, build trust, and guide the users to your offer!

Guide To The Mid-Funnel

You should know that direct-linking an ad straight to the page rarely works for mid-funnel users. They are still in research mode and need to be warmed up first. Here are some of the strategies you should implement:

• Use Prelanders

The prelanders are something we see less of nowadays, but they still have their use and should be used more! This is basically a bridge page between your ad and the affiliate offer. 

Instead of sending your user who is still comparing their options straight to the hard sell page, you send them to the prelander, where they will soften up and convert more likely. 

Why are they so effective?

Prelanders are effective, but what makes them so?

• They Build Trust

Your prelander can be an article, product review, quiz, personal story, or anything else. The main goal of it is to provide the user with some value so that it increases their chance of converting. 

• Pre Qualification

A user who reads through your prelander and then clicks through to the offer is likely highly qualified. These users are much more likely to convert and not ghost you right away. This also makes your traffic look better to the affiliate network because you are sending higher-quality leads. 

• Pixel Placement

This is the critical part. Since you control the prelander, you can place your Meta, Google, or whatever pixel on it. This will allow you to build your own custom audience for remarketing later on. 

• Smart Remarketing

So what if someone clicks on your ad, reads through your prelander, but leaves without going through the offer? Well, they are clearly interested, but something distracted them. So, it's time to motivate these people a bit harder with some retargeting campaigns!

Here is how you can set it up:

• Make sure your ad platform’s pixel is firing on your prelander page.
• Create a custom audience of everyone who has visited your prelander in the last 7-14 days.
  
• Create a second audience of people who have visited the actual offer page (if the network allows you to place a pixel there) and exclude them from your remarketing campaign.
  
• Launch a new campaign specifically targeting your “prelander visitors” audience. 

Your remarketing ads shouldn't be the same as your initial ads. The user already knows the basics, so now it's time to target them with more specific ads, something that would push them down the funnel. This could be something like strong testimonials, highlights of features, or a different angle!

• Lead Magnet

Most people who visit your prelander will not click through and buy on their first visit. They are still researching more, so while they can be interested, they will likely get distracted by other offers. 

This is where the lead magnet funnel comes in. Instead of only trying to get them to click on the page, give them an option to get some valuable information for free, in exchange for their email address. 

• Create a High-Value Lead Magnet

Keep it simple. Offer a simple and specific solution to a small problem, or a part of the problem that your audience has. Some examples could be things like a one-page checklist, a short “how-to” video, or a PDF guide. 

• Add an Opt-In Form

Your prelander should have two goals. The main CTA to visit the offer and the second, if someone is leaving to capture their information. This could be a pop-up saying, “Before you leave, grab your free [Lead magnet] to get started!”

• Build a Simple 3-Day Email Sequence

Once they sign up, you can add them to an automated email sequence that tries to sell your offer to them.


Email 1: The email delivers the lead magnet you promised. Don’t try to pitch anything too hard here.

Email 2: On the next day, you can send them a relatable story about the main problem your product or service solves. Try connecting with them on an emotional level.

Email 3: On the third day, introduce your affiliate product as the perfect solution to the problem from email #2. You can explain the benefits and try pushing a bit harder for the conversion here. 

• Dynamic Ad Sequencing

Instead of just showing people random ads, you can show them ads in a specific order that helps tell a story and guide them to your offer. 

Here is what that could look like:

• Ad 1 (Problem)

Your target is a broad interest-based audience with an ad that highlights the user’s problem. Your ad then links the user to a prelander that explains the problem in detail. 

• Ad 2 (Solution)

You retarget everyone who saw the prelander with an ad that shows the potential solution to the problem. It provides some insight into how the user can solve their problem. 

• Ad 3 (Call to Action)

Then you retarget those users again and try going for the final push. Your ad links directly to the offer page, and you use strong CTAs to get them to convert. 

This approach feels natural to the users, but the problem is that it's often convoluted and takes a lot of time and effort to set up properly. The good thing about this method is that you are slowly building trust with the audience, and you should get better results than you do when you do regular ads. 

What to Watch Out For

These strategies are great, but they aren't foolproof! Keep these things in mind:

• It's more work: This isn’t direct linking; you need to build, write, and host your own prelanders. You often need to launch and manage multiple campaigns for it to work properly, and you will need to analyze more data and put in more effort.
  
  
• Compliance: Your prelander is part of your ad funnel. It must comply with the ad platform’s policies (no crazy claims or forbidden words) and the rules of your affiliate network and advertising platform.
  
  
• Cost: You are paying for clicks to your prelander, and not every user will click to the final offer. You need to factor this into your calculations and make sure your funnel is efficient enough to remain profitable. 
  
  

Conclusion

If you want to get away from cheap, useless traffic and hyper-expensive competitive traffic, you need to focus on the mid-funnel! This is where skilled affiliates can really make a difference and show off their skills and knowledge. 

By using some of the strategies and optimizing your funnels for intent, you can get engaged traffic at a fraction of the cost without that much competition. It's not as easy as it might seem in the beginning, but mastering this can make a huge difference in your stats!

How do you optimize for mid-funnel? Share your experience with us in the comments below!

Please log in to Facebook to access the comments section