subject: Affiliate Marketing - Understand Your Visitors' Mindset [print this page] Your strategies and actions as an affiliate marketer directly affect your Conversion Rate (CR). In this entry, we'll talk about how to PREsell effectively.
Let's look at examples of how "low-CR affiliates" create negative mindsets by making how-youreach, what-you-say, or how-you-refer boo-boos. We'll begin at the top...
How To Reach Your Visitor
Free-For-All Sites (FFAs) are a great example of how not to reach people. For the most part, FFAs have become so seamy and useless that no matter what you say, you're doomed from the start.
Compare this with how smart and open-minded your visitor feels when he/she finds you via a Search Engine!
What To Say to Your Visitor
Don't write a site purely devoted to "hard-selling" your merchants' products. Imagine a visitor who hits your site and reads an immediate sales pitch. That person will resist because she does not know you. Then, if she clicks through to your merchant, she gets another sales pitch on the merchant's site -- Negative x 2!
Never devote your affiliate marketing site to a single company's product line. No matter what you do, no matter how sincere you are, this kind of approach always ends up "smelling" like a sales pitch. It simply makes no difference that you honestly love the products -- your visitor will mistake your devotion for selling. Remember, she doesn't know you!
It's far better to build an information packed website that relates to that company's products, and to complimentary products from other companies. Give your visitor what she was looking for... high-quality information. Then lead her gently to your merchant's site through "in-context" links.
Take This Critical Action Step
Review your site or whatever channels you use to reach, talk to, and refer visitors to your merchants. Put yourself in your customer's brain. What will she think, how will she feel, at each of the steps above?
If you're doing everything perfectly, congratulations! You must have a high CR. If you don't have a high CR, or if you see some big mindset mistakes, consider how much higher your CR would be if a visitor...
> found you in a bona fide manner (i.e., as a result of doing a search on a Search Engine),
> became "your friend" (or your "trusting admirer" if you do a truly awesome job!) because you provided excellent content,
> and finally was led to a context-appropriate recommendation.
Key Learning Points
Always consider how these actions affect your visitor's mindset...
> HOW YOU REACH your visitor, and...
> WHAT YOU SAY to her, and...
> HOW YOU REFER her to your merchant.
Get inside your visitor's head. Realize how she will feel each step of the way. Whatever you do, consider the impact on your visitor -- if it does not make her more "open to buy," don't do it.
PREselling is really all about selling yourself (i.e., your credibility) to your customer, every step of the way. You reach your targeted traffic in a proper fashion, you deliver valuable, appropriate, editorial content, and you recommend merchants to your visitor after she has come to respect and like you. Your Conversion Rate will soar.
Affiliate Marketing - Understand Your Visitors' Mindset
