Affiliate marketing is an incredibly competitive environment. Affiliates search for even the smallest advantage they can gain over their competition. While some tiny optimizations are things that only pros know and use, there are bigger ones that everyone should use. One of the biggest and most effective ones are pre-landers. These pages get a lot of credit, to be honest. It is widely accepted that they can be incredible places to turn your random visitors into buyers.
Clean, good-looking, fast, and functional landing pages should be the backbone of any campaign. The pre-landers should be straight to the point and show your visitors what to buy and how to buy it. Sadly, creating the ultimate landing page or pre-lander isn’t as easy as it might seem. The pros use techniques that they rarely share with beginners. If you want it to be effective, you will have to put in some insane hours and find the right tricks. That is where articles like this come in handy.
We decided to help you learn how to create incredible pre landers and optimize them. Hopefully, with that knowledge, you can create killer pre-landers that will make you heaps of cash.
What Are Pre-Landers?
The simplest answer is usually the best one. Pre-Landers are pages that appear before the landing page. Ok, now let’s get a bit into detail!
Pre-landers usually pop up after the user clicks on the advert. They are designed to “warm-up” the customer and prepare them to continue on the conversion funnel. The goal of every pre-lander is to make the landing page more effective.
These pages usually consist of the following:
- An appealing look. Good looking and trust-inducing design that helps pull the user in. Professional and clean looks usually fair the best.
- Quick loading times and optimizations. The better your pre-lander is optimized the more likely someone will wait for it to open and use it. Don’t skimp on this part. Whatever you do, don’t forget to optimize for mobile as well. That’s where the money is nowadays.
- Clear and easy to follow structure. The page that the user interacts with should be easy to follow and understand. Don’t overcomplicate things. Keep it clean and minimalistic. Remember, these pages are here to warm up your customers.
- Call-to-Action. CTAs are everywhere, and they should be on your pre-landers as well! Every step of your funnel should have CTAs. This increases the likelihood you will make a sale.
How Are Pre-Landers So Great at Boosting Conversions?
The main function of pre landers is to get people to better understand the product. This can be done by adding new details or engaging stories that the reader gets invested in. These pages should smooth the transition between the ad the user clicked on and the landing page.
If done properly, pre landers should get your visitors interested in the products. They can also weave out those visitors who aren’t interested. So, after going through the pre-landers, potential customers are likely to engage with your offer. This can be signup, providing an email, other information, or a simple purchase.
Undoubtedly, pre landers can significantly improve the performance of your campaigns. You just need to implement it properly. This is where some experience can come in incredibly handy.
Creating A Pre-Lander
Creating a page like this is no different than creating any webpage or landing page. You either know how to do so, or you don’t. If you are in the first group, skip the next sentence. If you have no idea how to do it, start learning or pay someone else to do it for you!
The first thing you will need to decide when creating your pre-lander is the angle. Approach this decision like you would any big decision in affiliate marketing. Do some research, look at the data, and try guessing what will work best. Your angle and style should cater to your audience.
You need to decide what your unique selling point is. What problem you can solve that your audience has. What people need to do for you to help them. Why they should pick your product instead of others. What the biggest benefits of your products are.
All of this needs to be written in a style that will fit your audience. This means you need to decide what kind of tone you will use. Maybe you should be formal, or maybe informal and funny, or more informative. This decides on your audience and what kind of message you want to convey.
Writing the copy
After doing all of this exhausting work, you can finally start writing. You can write the copy yourself or outsource it. But let’s say you want to do it yourself. What would you need to do?
First of all, decide on a good headline. It should strike the viewers and intrigue them to read more. You should split test your headlines to see which one works the best.
After doing the headlines it is time to focus on the body. The body should continue where the headline stopped. Each sentence should feed into the next one. Make it interesting and engaging so people read it. Between breaks in the text add CTAs to make your conversion rate higher. You should elaborate your headline and even expand it. Finish it off so that the customer either converts there and then, or moves on to the landing page.
How Can You Optimize Your Pre-Landers?
Pre Landers need to have a couple of things to work properly. When you have the basics down, you will need to further optimize these things to get the maximum out of your pre-lander. Here are a few tips that you can try to improve your pages and get more out of them.
- Create variations and test them out
Affiliate marketing is all about testing and trying out new things. You can never stay still and hope for the best. Constant testing and improvement is the only way you will move forward. This same logic applies here. You should create multiple versions of your pre-landers and test each of them individually. Use the knowledge you gain through testing to optimize each page to be better. After you squeeze out everything you can from your variations, create new ones. Repeat this until you found an incredible variation that makes a lot of cash. But don’t stop creating new ones even then. Stale pre-landers don’t work, always be fresh! - Focus on your creatives
There is an old saying “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Luckily we live in the digital age, and sending each others images is easy. Use this logic in your pre-landers. Instead of explaining everything, show it to your audience! Create quality creatives that pull the user in or explain certain things visually. Show off your product, or show the lifestyle people can achieve with it. Depending on your audience and the tone you are going for, adjust your creatives. - Keep it simple and relevant
A mistake beginners make is to overcomplicate everything. Their simple pre-lander turns into a monstrous mixture of all kinds of landers, sale pages, ads, and else. This is inefficient, people will hate it, and you will do a lot of work for nothing. Keep your content relevant, don’t stay away from the thing you are trying to sell. And keep it simple. No overcomplicating of things. Straight to the point! - Work on your UI
User inferences are an important part of any website. This also means that you should invest some time and hours into creating a readable and easily navigable pre lander. Your goal should be to push the user to buy something. Not get confused and leave. - Loading Speed and CTAs
Your pre-landers need to load up fast. The longer users have to wait for them, the less they will care about it. Also, optimize everything for mobile. It’s what people mostly use nowadays. Not optimizing for it is dumb and will lower your rank by search engines. Lastly, your CTAs. They should be prevalent and easily clickable. If your user buys your product before hitting the LP, even better! Just make sure you test out the variations and see what your audience responds best too!
So, I Should Use Pre-Landers, Right?
Have you read this article at all? Of course, you should use them!
Pre-landers are incredible ways to improve your click-through and conversion rates. They can have an incredible impact on your campaigns and you should utilize them whenever you can. If you a complete beginner you might struggle at first. But give it your best and try and try again till you make it!
Pros
- Improved Click-Through Rates
- Better Engagement
- Higher Conversion Rates
- Easily Scalable
- Decreases The Bounce Rate
- Warms Up The Audience
- Bridges The Gap Between The Ads And Landing Pages
- Easily Applicable
Cons
- Not always allowed by merchants
- Not easy to pull off successfully
- Hard for beginners
- Needs a lot of knowledge and testing
- Adds an extra step in the buying process
Have you ever used pre landers in your campaigns? What did you learn from them? Did they have a noticeable impact on your campaigns? Share your experience with us in the comments below!
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