How many leads to you need to generate in order to start earning from affiliate sales? As a beginner affiliate, you learn to generate leads from either your website or landing pages, or both. If you’re using paid marketing, you can see leads coming in quite quickly.
Whereas if your marketing efforts are only organic, you will see leads coming in more slowly and sporadically. For example, if your’e a blogger, you can collect leads from your blog posts. Initially this will be slow because you start with no content at all. As you build up your content, you should see leads coming in more regularly as your content grows over time.
Initially then you should aim to start generating leads regularly every day. Even if your target is only 1 lead per day at first, this is a good target if it motivates you. 10 leads a day is something to aspire towards as a beginner. At 10 leads a day you should start seeing things happen more quickly. As you improve, you can increase it to the hundreds.
But it’s worth getting your targeting right before you increase your ad spend, because it can get expensive. If you are targeting the wrong audience with your ads, and therefore attracting the wrong kind of leads, no amount of money will matter! You’ll simply end up out of pocket!
How Many Leads Do You Need To Generate: Targeting & Touchpoints
You can start making sales with only 10 leads a day as an affiliate marketer; although it may take a month or two for your marketing campaign to take effect. Often people will be on your email list for some time before they make a buying decision. 10 leads a day for two months is around 60 subscribers, which is still a small number. However, the longer someone is on your email list, the more points of contact you will have with them (through regular email messages). This can mean they are more likely to buy from you, if your messages are connecting with them. See also how many touchpoints before a sale.
The more subscribers you can get on a daily basis the better. But the number of subscribers is not the only factor determining how many sales you make. You also need to pay close attention to how you are attracting leads. Knowing your target market is key to attracting the right kinds of subscribers. For example, if you’re attracting freebie seekers with your marketing strategy, more leads only means more freebie seekers. To qualify leads better you need to understand your target audience and know your customer avatar. The customer avatar is your “perfect” customer; the person/s who will love what you offer and want to buy all your products. See customer avatar worksheet pdf.
How Many Leads Do You Need To Generate For Sales?
Of course different business models have different statistics in terms of leads and sales. With affiliate marketing it’s going to be different for every affiliate too; not just because each subscriber is different but also because every affiliate will offer a slightly different marketing message; even with the same business model.
In business, stats show that 10-15% of leads turn into deals. But with affiliate marketing this can be less because you’re not actually speaking to leads on the phone. In most cases affiliates will use email marketing to communicate, which can be automated. While this is convenient and more scalable, it also means that you’ll likely get less leads turning into sales than with businesses who follow up with a sales call. Many subscribers won’t even get your emails either because your emails will slip into their junk folders or promotions tab and they are never opened. Email open rates will therefore effect your email lead effectiveness.
Email open rates for affiliates are good at around 40%! That means a massive 60% of subscribers won’t even get your emails! Of course you can improve on this through communicating the value of your messages and reminding subscribers to check spam filters and promotions tabs etc.
Targeting; Making More From Less
You can make more out of leads by being very targeted with your marketing. For example, if you’re a content creator, create only content which attracts buying customers. Avoid creating content which will attract freebie seekers, but will attract buyer traffic. Before writing content, think about the keywords in your blog title. Ask yourself “what’s the intention of someone looking for this phrase?”. Are they going to be a buyer, or only a browser?
With paid marketing too, you can be super targeted with the kinds of people you attract to a website or landing page, and therefore get on your email list. Advertising platforms allow you to focus your advertising targeted towards people by their age, location, interests, hobbies, connections and a number of other demographics and criteria. If you get to know your customer avatar well, you can get laser focused on the kinds of people who would make the best customers. This will save you money and time, and get the right people on your email list who are more likely to buy.
Summary
Affiliates generate leads from a website or landing page to send people into their sales funnel. The more leads, the more sales you get, in general. But it’s not just quantity of leads which matters, it’s quality too. Cheaper leads are often from countries where people can’t afford what you’re selling, for example. So getting more of them just means more people who don’t buy from you.
To attract quality leads it’s worth getting very clear on who you are serving and who your best performing customers will be. When you find your customer avatar, you can focus your marketing on the right people, and save a lot of money in the process.
The number of contact points is also a factor. Generally speaking, a customer will need between 6-7 contact points with your marketing messages before they become a buying customer. Of course some will need more and others less. But as people pass through your marketing funnel, you should keep this in mind. The longer they remain on your email list, the more possibilities you have of selling them your product/service. See also the power of email marketing.
