If you’re wondering who to target with your affiliate product, you’re in the right place. It can be easy to get your affiliate link and start randomly “shoving” it out “there”, any way you can. But it’s a mistake. Most people aren’t interested in your product, even if you are! There’s only a tiny slice of the online marketplace who actually is likely to buy your product, and some of those people will require a little persuasion.
But what if you could attract only those people who were ready to buy? Those with their wallets out and credit card in hand? Wouldn’t that save a lot of wasted time and effort? While we can’t always find those exact people, we can certainly “zone” in on those people who are most likely to buy from us, when we show them our affiliate product.
When you know who to target with your affiliate product, you’ll shave a lot of wasted time and effort off your online journey.
Who To Target With Your Affiliate Product – Your Customer Avatar
The first thing you should do once you’ve selected an affiliate product to promote is to define who your customer is. Your “customer avatar” is the type of person who is most likely to buy your product. They are your target audience and focusing your marketing campaign/s towards people like that, is going to give you more sales than not doing so.
So, who is your customer avatar? When you’re a beginner affiliate, you probably haven’t given this much thought. If you haven’t run any advertising campaigns yet, you won’t have any data to know who they are. So where do you start? When I began in affiliate marketing, I was in a rush! I rushed through basics like this and wasted a lot of time and effort, throwing my affiliate links hither and thither in the hope one would land on a buyer! It’s a reciepe for disappointment let me tell you!
When you don’t know who to target with your content or your ads, start with your product. Ask yourself who it will serve the most, and why they will not hesitate in buying it.
Who To Target With Your Affiliate Product
If you’re selling a piano course, you want to target people looking for such a course. That’s pretty obvious right? But what if your product is more obscure, like a training course for entrepreneurs? In this case, you would look for people who need a solution to their problem.
If someone hates their work, and wants more time with their family, an online business course might offer a solution for them. Here’s a few tips on how to find your target audience through your affiliate product. Start by asking yourself:
- What problem/s does your product solve, and who might have that problem?
- What kind of people are most likely to buy your product and why?
- Where do they live? Is your product location specific?
- How old are they? Is there a specific age range of the people who will buy from you?
- What interests might tie your customers together?
- What do your customers have in common?
How To Target With Your Marketing
Once you know a little about your customer avatar, such as their likely age, interests, location and circumstances, you can begin to set up a campaign which will target them, and them specifically. You can also communicate a single congruent idea/message towards your customer avatar, knowing their circumstances and speaking to their pains/problems.
So, for example, if you’re creating a video advert, you can communicate to someone about how your product can solve their main problem. If they are struggling with a challenging work situation, and want more control over their life for example, you might suggest your business course as a solution.
If you don’t know who you’re talking to, it’s much harder to reach your customer avatar and communicate in a way which connects with them. But if you understand their main problem, you can speak to this in your marketing, and lead them to your solution.
Marketing platforms are very high tech these days and you can focus your marketing demographics at a very specific “slice” of the online marketplace. Target people by age, location, interests, income and all sorts of other criteria to get focused on your customer avatar.
As you start making sales, build a database around your customer avatar, getting more and more focused on who your “perfect” customer is, what drives them, and where they hang out online.
Facebook, Adwords, Microsoft, YouTube?
So, which advertising platform should you use to attract your target audience? Well that depends on where your customer avatar hangs out. Which platforms are they using to solve their problems? Google Adwords is a useful platform to find people who are actively seeking a solution to their problem.
They are solution aware perhaps. Solution aware people are actively looking for a product to help solve their problem. So a search on Google could be used to show your advert, for example. You could research keywords which are being used on Google (use Google’s keyword planner tool) for your particular product.
Reviews are a good example of this. When someone is looking for a review of a product, they are solution aware and may be ready to buy. They simply want to know whether that particular product will help them. So your could create a review for your product and run some advertising to it, targeting people looking for that particular review.
If someone knows they have a problem, but doesn’t know what the solution is, their are problem aware. They might be looking elsewhere for a solution online.
Summary
Knowing who is likely to buy from you is super important. If you don’t know, you’re likely to waste a lot of time and marketing budget scattering your marketing efforts about randomly.
When you know who is most likely to buy from you, you’re much better armed as an affiliate to succeed at making a sale. Not only will you know where your customer avatar is and what they want, but you should also get to know their pains and problems, so you can communicate a message which speaks to them directly.
Speaking to a specific person who you’ve identified through their pains and needs, is much more powerful that trying to communicate a message to “all and sundry”. A vague message doesn’t hit home like a specific one aimed at the right target demographic. Once you get to know your customer avatar, and how to communicate with them directly and in a meaningful way, you will get better at making online sales as an affiliate.