Affiliate Marketing Specialist

Preselling

One of the biggest mistakes new affiliate marketers make is trying to make the sale themselves when really, that is the job of the merchant. Your job is to get targeted traffic and put them in a “buying state” so that when they do arrive at the merchant’s site (through your affiliate link, of course), they are receptive to the merchant’s offer.

This is one reason why it is so important to select affiliate programs that convert well. There is no point in getting your prospects ready to buy only to send them to a merchant that doesn’t know how to sell.

As a side note, this is one of the main advantages of Commission Junction as their EPC and Network Earnings statistics give you a pretty good idea as to which merchants in the network are converting the best.

So, how do you presell?

Well, first you must know who your prospects are and what their problems are. You then need to establish some sort of connection with them, either by providing them with useful information related to solving their problems or developing credibility by “speaking” to them in a way that shows you understand them and can help them, and they believe you.

When you can do this, you are in a position to direct them to the merchant confident that they will be receptive to the offer as long as it fits with what you have been saying to your prospects.

Let’s go into a little more detail.

To establish credibility, you need to speak the “language” of your target market. For example, golfers have their own vocabulary and if you don’t use their words, you will not be able to develop any kind of relationship with them.

This is one reason most “gurus” will tell you to focus on a market that you know well and are passionate about. While I don’t necessarily agree with that, I do believe that if you go into a market you know nothing about, you must do research and learn about your prospects or you are likely to fail. Find out what troubles them, what keeps them awake at night, what excites them, etc. and you stand a great chance of being successful in that market.

This is true even if you are simply using Pay-Per-Click and driving traffic to a landing page or even directly to the merchant’s site. Your ad or landing page need to get your prospect believing that you have a solution to their problem and also give them a reason to take a look at that solution right now. One of the best ways to do this is with “emotional” language and/or “action” words”. And every target market has language that will appeal to them and immediately establish you as someone to listen to.

The second way to presell is through valuable information. Whether through your website content, articles, an email newsletter or whatever, you need to give your prospect something that makes their life better in regards to what their particular interest is. That leads me to another big mistake made by newbies – getting off topic. If you have a golf website, and you start talking about credit cards your prospects are going to run away. Stay focused and your prospects will appreciate it and ultimately you will make more money.

Getting back to providing information, you don’t even need to create the information nor do you have to be constantly providing it. You don’t need to write a daily email to keep people happy. If you don’t want to write it yourself, you can use a ghostwriter from Elance or somewhere similar. You can find info. products related to your niche with resell rights and use those. You can even place someone else’s RSS feed on your site for fresh updated content.

Once you become a valuable resource to your prospects, either through providing valuable information or through or by becoming a “credible source” that they trust, you are then very close to writing your own check as an affiliate marketer.
 

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