You’re sat in front of your computer and you want to make some money promoting affiliate products. If you promote affiliate products via email, there is a good chance you’re going to make one of these affiliate marketing mistakes. In this article, you’ll learn how to make money with every affiliate offer you promote.
Before you dig into this article I want to shout this word as loud as possible. That word is PRE-FRAME.
A pre-frame is a warm-up or an introduction that you give to your cold traffic audience before you send them anywhere. A blog post for example is a perfect way to introduce your audience to you and your brand.
So many marketers have a list of emails and simply write an email with a call to action for an affiliate product. If you want to be successful with affiliate marketing, remember to pre-frame your reviews with explainer videos or well-written blogs that warm up or pre-frame your audience.
Continue reading to learn what to avoid when promoting products as an Affiliate Marketer.
Promoting a product without knowing much about it
If you’re going to promote a product and pre-frame your audience effectively, you need to know what the product is and what it does. If you don’t know what you’re selling, your audience will see that, and you’ll be unlikely to make any sales. You’ll often see people trying to blag things by reading from the sales page.
That’s why you want to either get a review copy from the merchant prior to launch or buy the product yourself. Then spend time actually using the product. Pick out 3 to 5 things you love about it and highlight these things in your promotion.
There are two major benefits to doing this:
- You will learn about the product and you’ll have genuine conviction in your review
- Not all products are great products. If you buy a bad product, tell your audience and recommend a better one. Affiliate marketing is about having a great reputation, and this approach does that.
Using the same swipe copy as everyone else
All product vendors will supply affiliates with done-for-you emails and sales copy to get you started.
I’ve seen it with big launches where you receive several emails with the same headline and copy. Your audience doesn’t want to buy from someone that can press CTRL C & CTRL V. Even if they are interested in the product, they’re going to find someone else to purchase it from. Your audience will find someone who’s already used the product and can give them the insider’s perspective on what to expect.
Consider the psychology of sending a generic copy-and-paste email. Email is all about relationship building, while generic emails have the opposite effect and is damaging to the responsiveness of your list. When you write your own emails, you stand apart from the crowd, believe me, it makes all the difference.
Write your own promotional emails with your own unique personality. Write with sincerity and belief in what you are saying, and you will outperform other affiliates with lists larger than your own.
Not stacking perceived value to your audience
It is critical in marketing to understand the perceived value.
Always think of what you can add to the product to provide more value. Adding your own products as a bonus, perhaps a coaching call for everyone who purchases. You might start a mastermind group to help the buyers implement what they learn in the course, or even create a new product to give them as a bonus (which you can then sell to others.)
Always think about how you can add value. Adding perceived value can be as simple as adding a 10-page report or 5-minute instructional video relating to the product you’re promoting. Remember to add value that is directly related to the product you are promoting. If the product is how to develop email headlines to increase open rates, then a report giving an email writing formula to get more clicks would be perfect, while a video on how to optimise A.I. writing software wouldn’t make a lot of sense.
Sending nothing but affiliate offers
Within marketing, we talk about the male and female approach.
The female approach is about relationship building, nurturing your audience and recommending solutions. The male approach is BUY MY STUFF, BUY MORE OF MY STUFF.
If you want your emails to get opened and read, you’re going to want to mix a good share of relevant content with your promotional emails. No one likes to be sold to over and over again, yet everyone enjoys getting news, how-tos and insider advice from a trusted friend. Be that friend, and make sure at least 2/3rds of your emails contain great info. This will build the relationship between you and your readers and also get your promo emails open and read.
Hard selling instead of pre-selling
Take the female approach… As an affiliate, your job isn’t to sell the product – that’s the sales page’s job. Your job is to pre-frame and warm up your audience to the product and what it can do for them. Here you want to achieve two things:
- They click the link in your email that leads to the sales page. Remember, you’re selling the click, not the product.
- When they click that link they are interested, eager and possibly even excited to discover more.
Not being memorable
When you’re known for delivering value, your emails are much more likely to be opened and read.
However, just having great content isn’t always enough to make you stand apart from the crowd. You also need a hook, and this forms part of your brand. You need something that makes you memorable to your readers so that each time they see an email from you, they remember exactly who are and why they should open the email.
If you’re like most marketers, you probably assume you already stand out because you know how different you are from other marketers – but do your readers know this? From the day they join your list, you should in some way differentiate yourself. It could be by using a nickname, such as Mr. Motivator (people in the UK in the ’80s will know who this is!)
If you have another profession, you can use that as your hook. Some marketers use Dr. and why not. One fellow I know was a school teacher and he still refers to himself that way even though it’s been years since he stepped inside a classroom. These are all hooks or associations that make them stand apart in their subscriber’s minds from all the other marketers sending them emails.
The next time you want to promote a product as an affiliate read this post, avoid the common mistakes and see your results explode.
