Tip 1. KPI is all head
Before getting down to the affiliate marketing guide, we need to give a definition of the term. Affiliate marketing is a business model based on getting a percentage of a partner’s sales, made when a customer follows a referral link to the brand’s page.
An affiliate marketer can place a generated referral link on any platform: on your own website, in a personal blog, on a page in social media, and so on. A unique identifier will show your partner on which platform the buyer clicked the link to go to, for example, the online store page.
One would think that the more clicks the better. This is not quite correct, since not every click results in sales. Therefore, it’s KPIs, or key performance indicators, that an affiliate marketer should analyze. When evaluating the work effectiveness, you should pay special attention to these three KPI components:
CTR. Here we are talking about click-through ratio. This ratio compares the number of views to the number of clicks on the affiliate link. If a visitor doesn’t go to the page after seeing the ad, the link's effectiveness is doubtful.
CR. The next important element of the analysis is the conversion rate. It’s not clicks that earnings from affiliate programs depend on, but the target audience’s actual actions: buying a product, downloading a file, registering on a website. The higher the conversion rate, the more the marketer will get for the work.
Traffic sources. It makes sense to post ads on those websites that generate the highest revenue. Therefore, to make more money with affiliate marketing, you should choose knowingly successful platforms.
Thus, one of the main affiliate marketing success tips for those who are interested in our affiliate marketing strategy is to analyze KPI regularly.
Tip 2. Target pages
Any ad must be well-placed. You should keep in mind that the main goal when placing an advertising post is conversion. It’s only the sale volume made after following a referral link that influences your online revenue level.
For example, a user is reading an article about care cosmetics for oily skin. Your partner is a company that produces a line of face and body cosmetics. The marketer who’s responsible for the task adds a hyperlink to the main page of this brand’s online store to the article. The visitor who clicks on the link doesn’t get to the landing page but has to puzzle out the platform navigation and filter the products to find the right one. This approach reduces the purchase probability.
Tip 3. Talk about the product quality
Anyone knowledgeable about marketing will give a simple tip regarding affiliate marketing: try the product yourself before advertising it. Affiliate marketers should protect their reputation so that the audience trusts them. Thus, offer products only when you can be sure of their quality.
With the spread of the Internet, the sales strategy has changed – nowadays, about 93% of users read reviews before making a purchase. So, to make the audience more loyal to the partner product, you should make a video review .
An expert review and feedback should cover all the questions that the audience may have:
What the product is for
What it's made of
Why the price really reflects the quality
What functions the product has, and so on
NB! Your affiliate marketing strategy should be based on an unbiased approach. It’s better to point out detected drawbacks and retain the audience’s trust than to keep silent and lose the entire conversion.
Tip 4. Compile TOPs
In search engines, Internet users often look for articles about, for example, the Top 10 Best Affiliate Programs, Top Affiliate Programs with the Highest Online Earnings, Top Safe Cosmetics for Children, and so on. So, the best affiliate marketing tip to increase sales efficiency will be to work with TOPs and ratings.
By comparing products and providing links to them, including an affiliate link, you can make potential buyers interested and boost sales, which influence the total revenue of affiliate marketers.
Tip 5. Build an effective strategy
A lot depends on how you promote the affiliate program you’ll choose. Some marketers prefer to place ad banners on websites, others decide on images with hyperlinks, and some post articles with a direct call to the audience to order a service or purchase a product.
Each of the tips for affiliate marketing has its advantages: it’s difficult to guess which method will work in a particular situation. Thus, a marketer should do A/B testing. It involves developing two methods of affiliate program promotion and testing them: the KPI assessment will show which tool works, and which doesn’t.
Tip 6. Making money on affiliate programs: history repeats itself
Every content specialist knows how hard it is to develop a new content plan. Daily posts with new material may come to a dead end: you might run out of affiliate marketing ideas. In such situations, repositioning comes to the rescue:
A text article in a blog was turned into a vlog on a video hosting platform.
A post once published in social media can become a basis for infographics, and so on.
Tip 7. SEO optimization
For the affiliate program to function, the website where the link is posted needs steady traffic. How can you ensure that in an extremely competitive environment? Work on the website’s SEO aspect, which is mandatory for getting to the top search results.
The higher the website is in Google search results, the more likely it is that a user will open the page with the referral link.
So, spare no time to write alt text under each image, find a semantic core for writing an article, and fill in the Title and Description. All of these are important inpromoting the page, which will directly affect the conversion rate growth.
Tip 8. Add new links to old content
The search engines’ algorithm is extremely complex. Even if the content is 100% high-quality, SEO-optimized, and has real practical use for readers, it might not be indexed high. The reason for this is trivial – the content doesn’t have any weight.
Thus, the index of an old article published 2,3, or 5 years ago is high, so such content will be an excellent option for posting a new affiliate link. Add up-to-date data to the article: life is rapidly changing, so the website credibility will only benefit from updating the article.
Tip 9. Call to action — an important longread tool
Longread is a special article format that provides a reader with a comprehensive overview of the topic of interest. This format’s main advantage is that it’s really appreciated by the audience: they remain on the website for a long time, which also has a positive effect on its ranking.
But this in itself isn’t important for affiliate marketing. What is important is that a longread is a great opportunity to call a person to act. For example, if the article is dedicated to earning online, then the best way to increase conversion to the partner’s website will be to add a referral link to a copywriting exchange.
Tip 10. Work in social media
Internet users spend most of their free time on social media. So, posting a referral link on a personal page in social media is a great opportunity to get additional clicks.
Affiliate marketing requires a lot of effort, free time, and ambition. You can hardly achieve success after a couple of days of work – so, it will take some time to succeed. Only by being patient can you really boost earnings from affiliate marketing.
