Affiliate Marketing Customer Journey

The affiliate marketing customer journey is the journey for a customer from their first “touch point” of marketing to the end product; from an affiliate’s perspective. Before making a purchase, a customer will often look for a particular piece of information. A review, for example, is something someone might look for if they intend to make a purchase. The “customer journey” leads the prospective buyer from the review directly to the sales page of the product they want. This, as an example would be a pretty short customer journey: A Google search (for a product review), they find the review article, this leads them to the product, they make the purchase.

affiliate marketing customer journey

However, it often will take multiple points of interaction before someone actually buys something (from an affiliate). See also how many touch points before a sale. Research shows that it will often take between 6 and 8 touch points before a purchase is made. These points of interaction are what affiliate marketers use to help customers make a buying decision. If a customer journey isn’t smooth and congruent, there’s much more chance of a potential customer going elsewhere. But if your marketing structure leads customers on a congruent path, they are more likely to remain on that path. This is particularly true if your marketing messages are aligned with the customer’s needs, and leads them to a product/service which is useful to them.

Affiliate Marketing Customer Journey: The Customer’s Needs

To help affiliates align their marketing messages with the needs of their potential customers, they need to understand their customers! In particular, they need to understand that sub-section of the online marketplace who will value and invest in their products. The “perfect customer” is one who will buy from you again and again and become a life-long supporter of your products. Getting clear on who your products serve is a good way to define your perfect customer avatar, and ultimately define your target audience for affiliate marketing.

These are just a few things you should get to know about your customer avatar:

  • How old they are
  • Where they live
  • Where they hand out online
  • What kind of information they look for

The more you know about your customer avatar, the better you can find them online and communicate your message to them in a language they can relate to and understand. See customer avatar worksheet pdf for more on learning about your perfect customer. Once you have carefully defined your customer avatar, you can create content or run ads which will speak directly to them, based on their needs, pains and/or desires. This will ultimately be the first contact point where your marketing efforts find prospective customers.

Affiliate Marketing Customer Journey: Flow

The “flow” from one piece of marketing to another is pretty important on the customer journey. For example, if you saw a YouTube advert and decided to click through to learn more about the offer, you would expect similar messaging on the landing page you were sent to. Even a small deviation from the theme of the original advert might put a customer off taking further action. Here’s an example on one of my YouTube videos which leads visitors to a similar looking landing page.

affiliate marketing customer journey
Watch this video here

The landing page below confirms the message of the video the visitor has just been watching. If the landing page wasn’t congruent with the earlier video/marketing message there’s a large chance that someone might think there was an error and click away. Or they might click away because the next step involves them handing over some information – their email and name!

affiliate marketing customer journey
Visit the landing page here

To create flow in your marketing messages from one platform to another, it’s important to understand the needs of the customer and the most important details in the previous message. If the next webpage, or landing page, or video doesn’t connect the customer with the previous message, they are likely to click away, and be gone forever! A good customer journey is congruent all the way through.

Affiliate Marketing Customer Journey: Email Marketing

Keeping in mind that many customers will require between 6 and 8 touch points before they make a purchase, each interaction in your marketing strategy should carry on the theme from the last, to keep engaging with your audience and meet their needs. Many affiliates will use email marketing and retargeting to maintain this connection through their marketing strategies.

An email marketing follow up series is particularly useful to build trust and deliver value to your potential customers. It gives the affiliate the potential of connecting with their audience multiple times over a longer period of time. You simply could not you could achieve this just from a website.

target market

Likewise with retargeting. With retargeting you are putting advertising messages in front of people who have already interacted with your marketing somewhere before. You can also choose to show advertising according to the actions they have taken previously on a website, for example. So for example, if someone nearly bought something from your website, and left the cart before paying, you can choose a congruent advert to relay that message to them and remind them of their purchase!

Retargeting is very effective for affiliates because you are placing advertising messages in front of people who are warm or hot buyers. They have already taken some action on your website or your marketing materials. So they are more likely than most general website traffic to want your products/service.

Summary

The affiliate marketing customer journey is an important thing for affiliates to understand. If you attract the wrong audience, you will struggle to sell anything as an affiliate. You can also break rapport with potential customers by sending out disconnected messages, which disrupts the smooth journey you ideally want to create for them.

Ultimately the affiliate marketing customer journey should be one which leads people to products they actually want and value, and that you actually want and value too! So if you don’t believe in the products yourself, there’s already a disconnect in your authenticity. This will likely show up in your marketing messages too!

With the right products and once you have learned about your perfect customer avatar, you are definitely a lot further along than many other affiliates. To access a free video series and learn more about affiliate marketing click here.

Affiliate Marketing Journey

The affiliate marketing journey is full of twists! My affiliate marketing journey took many turns. Since discovering affiliate marketing in the early 2000’s I took several different routes. One course I took taught blogging and use of Google Adsense. I would make tiny amounts after months and months of work! Then I took another course which taught paid advertising, use of email marketing and selling a digital affiliate product. My Adwords account got shut down shortly afterwards much to my dismay and I couldn’t get it back. Back then, Google Adwords was pretty harsh and losing your account meant you had lost it for good!

I tried another course called the Keyword Academy which taught blogging on your own website. Months in to this strategy and I still hadn’t made any money! Again this was using Google Adsense! On and on it went. My affiliate marketing journey wasn’t fun. But I knew if I cracked it, it would mean I wouldn’t have to work another crappy dead-end job! So I didn’t ever quit!

My Affiliate Marketing Journey

Long after my affiliate marketing journey started I found another course which is the one I promote now. The SFM Mentors taught me a few strategies for selling affiliate products and within a few months I had made my first even high ticket sale. High ticket affiliate marketing was something I was completely unaware of for most of my early days as an affiliate marketer. Recurring income affiliate programs were also new to me. By using both high ticket and recurring commissions I was able to achieve far more far more quickly than I had done in the past.

beginners

But the success didn’t last forever. I was soon wondering why I wasn’t getting anywhere. The answer was of course my lack of understanding. While the top affiliates knew to reinvest their commissions into their marketing budget, I spent mine and had assumed (wrongly) that I’d cracked it and wouldn’t need to work again! How naive I was!

It was some time before I picked up the training again and admitted to myself that I needed to keep learning. You can’t outrun bad thinking when it comes to running a business. I wasn’t well versed in business and simply expected affiliate marketing to be easy. How difficult is affiliate marketing? I found it to be pretty difficult. The hard part is sticking at it when nothing is happening. But if you do, eventually it blooms and you can start making sales in your sleep! How long this takes will depend on the route you take.

Affiliate Marketing Customer Journey

The affiliate marketing customer journey is something I was unaware of as a beginner in affiliate marketing. The customer journey is the “journey” your customer takes from your advert to your landing or sales page to your email list and finally to the affiliate product you are promoting. This journey is of major importance because to a large degree it will determine whether someone purchases an affiliate product from you or not.

As a short explanation, lets look at the path a (potential) customer takes from hitting your advert to clicking through to your website landing page. Lets assume your advert is a video advert which they see on YouTube. You explain the product in your video and the benefits of what it can do for them. Perhaps you are promoting a free video series or downloadable book.

Once they click on your link and go through to the landing page, they are confronted with a choice. Do they sign up and give you their email address, or leave? A good customer journey will connect the advert and the landing page by connecting them in some way. Perhaps use a picture on the landing page which is similar to the video, or which shows up in the video. Any disconnect from your advert to the landing page will have the effect of putting off a number of potential subscribers. To increase conversion rate on a website or landing page, you need to create a well connected customer journey between the two. Good use of colours, text, and a clear benefit driven call to action are important factors to consider.

Once someone takes the action of following up on a landing page and opting in, you should give them what they expect from your email messages. If your emails aren’t aligned with the subject matter in your earlier video advert, they are likely to react to this disconnect and unsubscribe quite quickly.

If this happens you’re not going to be able to even get them to your affiliate products. Hence why customer journey in affiliate marketing is so important. Without a clear and concise connection through all of your marketing materials, (advert, landing page, website, emails and affiliate products), the disconnect will likely drive away customers.

affiliate marketing journey

Shortening Your Affiliate Marketing Journey

My affiliate marketing journey took years before I was able to make a consistent income. Yours can be much shorter. Much of my struggle was mental before it became physical. I doubted each course I took, and in the back of my mind wondered if they were all scams! This doubt doesn’t lead to fruitful activity! I stalled, procrastinated and threw in the towel many times! But I always came back because I needed it to work for me, such was my situation.

Affiliate marketing is tough and there’s no guarantees. You’re effectively in business for yourself. There’s no shortcuts, but there are better ways of doing things than the many ways I failed with. High ticket products and subscription products are just a couple of the things which made my journey shorter. Use them if you want to avoid many of the problems which I faced.

Get help! For years I struggled alone and only found a mentorship program in 2014. You can access it here through these free videos. Or dive straight in and get started here.