Attracting the right audience for affiliate marketing is definitely something to understand. As a beginner, I thought everyone was going to want my products, whoever they were! But just because you see the value in an affiliate product doesn’t mean that’s what everyone sees. In fact your own prejudice can distract you from learning what’s most important with online selling; knowing your customer.
There’s a saying in sales – try and sell everyone and you sell (to) no-one. When I first discovered affiliate marketing I assumed I could simply post my affiliate link on my social media platforms and make sales. But that only happens if you’re also attracting the right audience and relaying information to them which they actually want. Most people online don’t give a hoot about your product. When you get really, really clear on who does want your product, things will massively change.
Attracting The Right Audience For Affiliate Marketing – What Happens Next?
Two things happen when you understand your audience. One is that you can target them more specifically with your advertising and content. When you can get your messaging in front of the right people things change massively. The second thing is when you understand them better you can communicate to them better. So you can relay marketing messaging which is useful to them.
If you understand your audience’s pain points, for example, you can use this to convey the value of your product in solving them. If you don’t understand your customer avatar (target audience), you’ll throw endless content and advertising at the wrong people and waste a lot of time and money.
The key is to get pin point accurate about who you target with your marketing. Focus on the tiny slither of the online marketplace who is most likely to want what you have – not the endless critics who don’t care about your product!
The problem with the online space is there’s millions of people in it! When you can zone in and communicate with a specific person who has specific problems which your products can solve, you’re going to sell more for less! It’s a “sniper” approach rather than a scatter gun approach!
Attracting The Right Audience For Affiliate Marketing – Define Your Target Audience
So before you do any marketing, it’s worth spending some serious time thinking about who your products serve the best. If you already have customers, can you identify what they have in common? If not, what kind of person are you looking for? How old are they? Do they have a family? If you’re selling a business course, it might be you’re looking for people over 30, for example. If you’re selling dating advice for men, you’ll want to target only men in your advertising.
It’s also worth looking at the issues your target audience might be facing. Those are the things to talk about in your advertising. So for example if you’re selling an online business course to someone who wants to escape their job, you could talk about the pain point of working 60 hours a week in a job and how your course is a solution.
The more advertising you run, the more you should learn about your target audience. Those people who buy from you are a strong indicator as to the target demographics of your perfect customer avatar. Look at the things which tie your customers together such as age, sex, location, interests and so on. When you understand your target audience you’ll spend your advertising much more prudently and you’re more likely to become profitable.
Why Affiliates Quit
It’s a fact that affiliate marketing has a super high drop out rate of something like 95%. That means only 5% carry on long enough to make affiliate marketing pay long term. But one of the reasons for this is the lack of understanding of the target audience or customer avatar.
As a beginner you’re throwing a lot of “mud” at the wall in terms of your marketing efforts. But much of this is wasted. As you gain some experience, and learn more about your “perfect” customer, you’ll spend less to acquire more customers.
This is a major tipping point and the result of a lot of hard work. But ultimately once you reach this point, it’s going to get easier. You’ve learned from all the testing and measuring of the work you’ve done previously. The trouble is many new affiliates consider this work to be fruitless because they haven’t turned a profit yet. But if they only stick it out and learn from the data, they can fine tune their marketing efforts and focus on the right audience.
This means they’ll spend less and earn more.
Communicating
Communicating to your “customer avatar” is just as important, if not more, than knowing who they are in the first place. If you throw out beige marketing material that doesn’t speak to their pain points or needs, it will have no effect. That’s because you’re not talking to your customer directly. You’re trying to talk to everyone. A specific marketing message is meant for a specific person with their own individual pains and needs.
When you talk to the pains and needs of your customer avatar, they recognise the value in what you’re saying because it relates to them specifically.
So, for example, if someone wants to escape their corporate career and you talk about sales funnels, in your advert, they can’t relate to it! They don’t know what a sales funnel is! They click away from your advert!
If you explain how an online business allowed you to escape your corporate career, you have their attention! They can relate because their pain is their career is sucking all their time away and they feel trapped. When you speak to the pain points of your potential customer, you become relatable and build trust.