Tag: affiliate

  • Recruiting The Right Affiliate – Not All Are Created Equal

    Recruiting The Right Affiliate – Not All Are Created Equal

    The world of affiliate marketing can seem a bit like the Wild West, complete with its own laws, customs, and characters. One of the ways that many affiliate marketers make sense of this hard-to- tame world is to never really try to understand it at all. They simply create a program, try to entice as many affiliates as possible to join, and then hope for the best. It goes without saying that this is not the best approach. Instead, the manager of an affiliate marketing program should carefully select the right people to get the job done; they should recruit the right affiliates. Here we will look at some tips for recruiting the right affiliates for your program.

    • Make Your Program Exclusive – In the world of affiliate marketing many managers take the “more is more” approach. They try to get as many affiliates as possible to join and promote the product or service, more or less throwing them all against the wall to see who will stick. This kind of approach can be successful, but carries great risks. Any affiliate marketer looking to build a brand would never let unscreened strangers represent their companies. As a business person who cares deeply about the image of your brand, it is essential that you take time to reject those potential affiliates which do not seem like they would represent your brand in the way you desire.
    • Ask to see previous earnings statements – The primary reason to become an affiliate marketer is to make net profits. This should be kept in mind when selecting affiliates for your program. Their needs to make a profit should match yours. They should be profit motivated as well as ethical, which is another important aspect of a good affiliate which we will see in the next bullet point. One of the best ways to judge the future production of a new affiliate is to take a look at their background. Do not be afraid to ask for a copy of previous earnings statements in order to validate their potential production.
    • Ask for Industry References and Check them – Another way you can judge the suitability of a potential affiliate is to ask him or her for references in the affiliate marketing or sales industries, and really follow up with a call. When doing this it is important to do some research in order to investigate if there is any connection between the reference and the potential marketer. In other words, check for the validity of the reference as well as for what they have to say about your potential affiliate.

    Seek Affiliates in Out-of-the-Usual Places – When looking for affiliates it is always best to target people who understand your product and care about how they represent your brand. But many times different affiliate marketers look for affiliates in the same places. This is like fishing in the same fishing hole as everyone else. Sure, you may want to concentrate efforts in the places you are most likely to encounter prospective affiliates, but you may strike gold by going outside the box. Check webpages and groups which cater to women, minorities, and seniors. Do some offline recruiting. The more you concentrate out of the box, the more likely you are to find a great recruiting avenue which you may have all to yourself.

  • A Quick Guide To The Sales Funnel – For Affiliate Marketers

    sales-funnelA sales funnel is a process which can represent your entire sales process in one image. As a funnel is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, so your sales funnel is meant to call the attention of a wide swath of potential clients in the beginning, and continue to whittle that group down until you reach those who will become paying clients. There are a lot of individual theories related to the sales funnel concept, and there are even tools to help you track your funnel. Here we will take a look at some basics of the sales funnel for an affiliate marketer.

    1. The first step in the sales funnel is broadcasting your marketing message to as many prospects as possible. This does not mean broadcasting to as many people as possible, as all people are not potential customers. For example, if you are advertising to seniors who may want a new walk-in bathtub, you would broadcast your message on seniors’ webpages, in AARP magazine, etc. For affiliate marketers, people usually enter the sales funnel when they enter their information on a landing page, or call in for more information about a product or service.
    2. The second step in the sales funnel will generally differ from business to business, and product to product, but usually includes some kind of customer contact. Here is it important to note that all the steps in the sales funnel are call and response. Now that the customer has given you their information or called your company (step 1), you may respond by replying with an auto responder series, sending them a newsletter, or giving them a free trial. In other words, step 2 is all about responding to the customer’s request for more information.
    3. The third step involves handling the customer’s response to step 2. Depending on the length of the sales funnel this may be the point where the actual sale is made. Other sales funnels will be longer, and may include the customer watching a video, then taking a webinar, then talking to a coach to ask any questions they have, and then finally making the purchase. So, step three and those after really just represent a series of steps the customer will take up to the point of making a purchase. Sometimes the sales funnel will even have a small purchase in earlier steps, leading to a larger purchase in later steps.

    As can be seen, the sales funnel can be as short as 2 steps, or as many steps as the affiliate feels is necessary to convince the prospect that the offer is worth purchasing. In 2013 there were some marketers who disputed the practicality of the sales funnel altogether, saying that prospects are not so readily predictable as to follow the well laid out steps. Considering that a sales funnel is meant to do 2 things: generate sales, and accurately track conversion rates of each step in the process, it is true that any disruption in either of these two metrics could cause the sales funnel concept to falter, but not necessarily fall apart. These would simply be signs that additional tracking metrics are needed, or that some steps of the process need to be improved or eliminated.