The easiest way to promote affiliate links effectively is through an email list. With an email list, you can automatically follow up with your subscribers, sending them regular messages after they have signed up to your list. This is one of the best ways to promote your links for a number of reasons:
- You can build a longer term relationship with people through a list, whereas on a website you only have a small time “window” to sell and one touch point.
- A list can be built in multiple ways: with content marketing and paid strategies
- You can connect with your subscribers multiple times. Data shows customers need multiple “touch points” before they will buy something.
- People can buy from you long after they signed up, months or even years later.
Easiest Way To Promote Affiliate Links – Get An Autoresponder
You can access an autoresponder for free through the banner below:
Once inside the software you can start creating opt in forms which you can use with a website or landing page. Opt in forms allows you to offer something of value to your website visitors in exchange for their email details.
You can also use a landing page software to create specific landing pages which give your visitors less choice than a website. This forces them to make a decision: sign up or leave the page. On a website, they can browse around and look at your content. But on a landing page, you have a more specific intention for your visitors: to encourage them to sign up to your email list.
Here’s an example of a landing page (see below). As you can see, there’s only a small amount of information on the page, and only two options: sign up or leave. (Click image to view landing page).
Easiest Way To Promote Affiliate Links
Once you have set up a landing page, you can use it forever. You can also set up a number of automated follow up emails which offer your subscribers information and link to your affiliate products.
Once you have done this step, it’s time to choose a promotion method where you can drive traffic to your landing page. This blog, for example, is used to drive traffic to my various landing pages and put more and more subscribers on my email list. You can use content marketing (e.g. blogging or v’logging), or you can drive traffic with paid marketing.
Paid marketing is far quicker and easier to do than content marketing. Depending on your particular topic, content marketing can be time consuming and it’s a slow process. It can take many months before you have constant traffic flowing through your landing pages. But with paid marketing, you can get traffic much more quickly.
Paid marketing platforms such as Google Ads (Adwords), Facebook and YouTube offer some of the best targeting options – see target audience for affiliate marketing. Getting good at targeting means you are finding the right kind of audience who are the most suitable for your product/service.
Easiest Way To Promote Affiliate Links: Paid Ads
With paid ads, you’ll also need to set up a compliant landing page which is in agreement with the terms and conditions of your particular advertising platform. This might mean using disclaimers on your landing page and being in compliance with GDPR (general data protection regulation), as well as having things like privacy policy on your site.
Check with your individual marketing platform for compliance before launching any campaign.
Paid ads are the best form of marketing when sending traffic to your landing pages for a number of reasons:
- You can easily set up a campaign and learn from it very quickly
- If it works, you can keep it going, if not, you can easily shut it down and try another strategy
- You can target a specific group of people who are most likely to show an interest in your giveaway product and affiliate products/service.
- It’s very scalable – if a campaign works well, you can scale up to an ever larger audience.
With content marketing, it’s very slow. You need to create multiple pieces of content and market them. Over time, your content will gain some traction, but it’s much slower initially and much more difficult to scale than paid advertising. It also takes a lot more effort than running a paid ad.
Landing Page Software
You can access landing page software with products such as Convertree and LeadPages. These softwares make it easy to build custom made landing pages according to your needs. You can also use the software to compare landing pages with each other – this is called cross testing. Cross testing is used by affiliate marketers to compare different pages and see which ones convert into leads and sales the best.
If you’re going down this route it’s well worth doing this, and comparing large volumes of traffic across two different pages to see which performs the best. Once you have done this across a number of visitors, you’ll get a picture of which pages are best according to your target audience.
You can also access landing page software through this all in one business system and online training resource.
The Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is something which you can offer to your landing page visitors in exchange for their email address. This should be something of value which ties in with your affiliate products.
For example, one of my lead magnets is an ebook on affiliate marketing. I follow up in my emails with affiliate tools and resources which have helped me as an affiliate. If my subscribers buy something through my affiliate link, I earn commissions based on what they purchase.
See also lead magnet examples and ebook lead magnet.
Multiple Sources Of Traffic
The good thing about creating landing pages is that once you have created them, you can use them forever. Simply direct traffic to them from a blog, or a vide you have uploaded. You can also place ebook pictures throughout your text which lead people back to your landing pages.
Over time, you content (and paid ads if you choose to use them) will compound and you should see more and more traffic finding their way to your lead capture pages.
This can happen very quickly with a large marketing budget, or over a longer period of time with free marketing strategies. Or, use a combination of both depending on your individual situation to suit.