Dream of kicking your job to the curb and becoming the boss? You’re not alone! Enter the realm of affiliate marketing, the go-to playground for everyone from marketing newbies to seasoned pros looking to carve out their slice of independence pie. And what’s on the menu? The Ambassador Program with its own affiliate stacking ecosystem. Your personal chef in the kitchen of affiliate success, equipped with every tool you’ll need—from spatulas to blenders (metaphorically speaking).
So, why do we call it an affiliate stacking ecosystem? Because just like in a lush rainforest, everything is interconnected, working together to rain down that sweet, sweet revenue. It’s not just about slapping a few links on social media or firing off a sporadic blog post. It’s about creating a symphony of strategies and products that make the cash register ring. It brings together different marketing elements and channels that together can have a profound effect on the success of your business and the amount of income that you earn.
The Affiliate Stacking Ecosystem: Not Just a One-Trick Pony
One rookie mistake? Putting all your eggs in one basket—or in this case, one or two different channels rather than a holistic approach. They push links through their social media channels or create a blog or two and then wonder why they aren’t getting any conversions. Imagine trying to bake a cake with just flour and water. Bland, right?
The affiliate stacking ecosystem is your all-in-one kitchen gadget, blending social, video, email, paid methods, and more into a gourmet marketing mix that really cooks. The ecosystem depends on these being implemented wisely. Not only that, the critical focus is the connection between each different element and how they support each other.
Build Trust In Your Affiliate Ecosystem: No Scammers or Spammers Allowed!
Here’s a timeless nugget of wisdom: people buy from people. That’s true, even today in the online world. That means before you ask someone to hand over their hard-earned cash, you better make sure they trust your digital handshake, particularly if you are asking them to part with a substantial amount of money.
Before you start, prepare to:
-
- Engage and build trust with your customers.
-
- Choose affiliate products that you believe in.
-
- Offer value to your customers. Always.
These should be your mantras when you enter the world of the affiliate stacking ecosystem. Don’t be a scammer or a spammer, be someone who offers value, something that changes your customer’s life.
Key Ingredients of the Affiliate Stacking Ecosystem
Dip your toes in or dive deep— you may use all of the affiliate stacking ecosystem or selected parts. It’s like choosing between a sprinkle or a heap of parmesan on your pasta. It all depends on different factors – the time you have, the experience, the amount of marketing budget you want to invest, even the type of affiliate product. Regardless, when you bring all elements together, they mingle to create a marketing feast fit for a king.
If you can use it all and bring each strand together to work synergistically, you’ll have access to a powerful marketing system that you can use again and again for virtually any product.
Underlying the affiliate stacking ecosystem are some important concepts that you need to understand.
The Sales Funnel: Your Marketing Food Processor
Think of the sales funnel like a kitchen funnel. At the top, you’ve got a mix of potential buyers—some ready to buy, some just browsing. Your job? Guide the ready-to-spend folks down to the narrow end where they can’t help but hit that buy button. Tailor your content like you’re seasoning to taste: just right for each stage of the buyer’s journey.
If you are selling online, the sales funnel is an integral part of the process. This is, as you might expect, the shape of a funnel with a wider top and a narrower bottom.
At the widest point of the funnel, you have a mixed bag of potential customers. Some of these may be your ideal person who is 100% interested in your product. There will also be people who have a problem that you can solve but who don’t know about your product. They can be coerced further down the funnel if you use the right persuasive techniques.
There will also be people who are there by chance, who may become customers but probably won’t.
Your job is to take the warmer leads further down your funnel. It’s narrower here because there are fewer of them.
You do this by creating targeted pieces of content that are relevant to individuals at any particular stage. The narrower the funnel gets, the more likely you are to end up with strong leads who are likely to buy. Your content here needs to be highly specific here, pitching exactly what the potential customer needs to know to make a decision and press that affiliate link.
Understanding the affiliate sales funnel isn’t difficult. What is challenging is tailoring your content for each stage so that it has maximum impact.
Read our post Building an Effective Affiliate Sales Funnel here.
Launch Jacking: The Early Bird Gets the Worm
Ever tried getting a table at a hot new restaurant? Launch jacking is like that, but you’re getting in before the restaurant even opens! Snap up the opportunity to be the first to promote new products, and watch as your content gets the top spot on Google’s menu.
Look at any well-established affiliate marketing offer and you’ll find a lot of people trying to make money off clicks and conversions. Imagine being in a crowded market, trying to push past a bunch of other people to get to some customers.
One of the rules of affiliate marketing is that it is much easier to get noticed by potential customers if there are fewer marketers around. This means getting in on the ground floor of any product or service launch so that you have a better chance of success, getting your content noticed on the first page of search engines.
This is the basis of launch jacking. It’s where you contact a vendor and sign up to advertise their product before the hordes get involved. The closer to the launch of a particular product, the better. It gives you the chance to make the buzz. Done well, it can bring in significant revenue.
Read our post Why Include Launch Jacking in Your Affiliate Stacking Ecosystem here.
The Stacking Ecosystem Value Ladder: More Than Just a Climbing Frame
Start at the bottom with small, tasty treats (freebies or low-cost products) and let your customers climb up to the more exquisite, pricier delights. It’s about building trust one rung at a time, turning first-time visitors into loyal patrons who come back to feast again and again.
In many sales campaigns, marketers will offer a range of different products from low prices or even free to the more expensive, luxury items. This is seen as a ladder with the top value product at the top.
People buy from people, even when they are online and trust plays a big part in this. A customer is unlikely to fork out for a very expensive item from you until they get to know you better. You can build trust by offering lower value items in your affiliate marketing.
Giving them something for free is perfect to start that trust building.
This is the essence of the value ladder. You’re giving customers smaller, less expensive options hoping that they will keep on ascending the ladder, spending more with every rung.
Read our post The Value of a Value Ladder here.
Creating Your Affiliate Stacking Ecosystem :Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get Cooking!
Ready to be a master chef in the kitchen of affiliate marketing?
There are many different ways to create your affiliate stacking ecosystem. You may start with a few of these channels, find some success and decide to expand into different areas. It’s important to master each approach as you build your ecosystem.
Concentrate on leveraging each one to your full capacity and, in particular, learn how they interact with and depend on each other. Start with these top strategies:
1. Grow Your Following on YouTube
The place where many are feasting their eyes. Capture their attention with killer content and watch your subscriber count—and affiliate sales—soar.
More and more of us nowadays are watching videos on our smartphones and tablets. This has been driven by greater connectivity and convenience. More than 5 billion videos are viewed on the site each day so it’s no wonder that affiliate marketers focus a lot of their attention on this particular channel.
Now, you don’t have to be a big personality or have amazing speaking skills to succeed on YouTube and there are lots of different approaches you can try. With a small amount of equipment, however, you can easily set up your channel and start attracting potential customers to your affiliate product.
As with any part of marketing, of course, it comes down to having a clear strategy. Get it right and you can build a following and superpower you affiliate marketing in a relatively short time. What’s the key? Creating great content that people want to watch and building a useful channel they are eager to subscribe to.
Find out How to Grow a Following on YouTube here.
2. The Affiliate-Focused Website:
Think of this as your restaurant. Make it inviting, make it exciting, and pack it with delicious content that keeps them coming back.
This is a sales orientated tool that is designed to market your affiliate product and all its potential. It gives you the option to create long and short-form content, landing pages, add video and images and really sell what you have to offer.
The key here is to learn the basics of features and benefits. Your affiliate site should be focused on the benefits. In other words, what your product is going to do for your potential customer and what problem it is going to solve.
Your website also gives you the chance to use some of the tools that your affiliate may provide to help you sell their product such as explainer videos and other content.
Find out about Creating an Affiliate Focused Website here.
3. Social Media and Affiliate Marketing
It’s not just about posting; it’s about engaging. Be the party everyone wants to be at, and they’ll stick around for the sales pitch.
On the surface, social media seems like a sure bet when it comes to affiliate marketing and it’s often where newcomers start. It’s also where many fail and lose heart. It’s a lot more nuanced and difficult than many people think and takes time and effort to leverage well.
Professional marketers took a long time to understand social media when it first came out, particularly how to make the most of it. You’ll need to do the same.
First of all, you won’t get away with simply pushing marketing messages and including a link to your affiliate. You’ll quickly be seen as a spammer and you probably won’t get many click-throughs anyway.
Social media is all about engagement and unless you get this right, you are going to fail. The good news is that, if you take your time and put in the hard yards it can soon turn into a gift that just keeps giving.
There are plenty of different platforms that you can engage with. The most used by affiliate marketers are sites like Facebook and X which have millions of users. It’s important not to overstretch your resources here – it’s better to do one or two social media platforms well rather than many badly.
Find out How to Leverage Social Media for Affiliate Marketing here.
4. Blogging in Affiliate Marketing
More than just a diary; it’s a way to serve up hearty, helpful content that satisfies your audience’s hunger for information.
Another popular approach in the affiliate stacking ecosystem is blogging, something anyone can do with a bit of hard work and perseverance. Blogging gives you a lot more scope for creating content than a simple affiliate website, allowing you to attract a broad array of customers.
Blogging is not about selling. It’s about providing your audience with the information they are looking for. You might want to include a review of a certain product or tips on how to get the best out of it, for example. You could even add in your own experience and what you have got out of a particular product.
You may want to explore issues that surround or complement your affiliate product. For example, if you are an affiliate for fitness equipment, you can include tips on nutrition and other health-related issues. If you sell software, you could talk about things such as productivity and sales approaches or marketing.
A good blog with plenty of great content can attract a lot of visitors and you can use this to feed into your affiliate link as well as grow an email list. You can also link it to your social media accounts for some added power. It’s important to find the right niche, however, that reflects the affiliate product or products you are trying to sell.
Discover the Power of Blogging in Affiliate Marketing here.
5. Email Marketing for Affiliates
Far from being the old hat, it’s the secret sauce to personalized, direct-to-diner marketing that can fill seats and boost sales.
One of the most misunderstood and poorly used approaches in affiliate marketing is email. Often seen as traditional or old-school, it is still a pretty powerful tool that can deliver amazing results, if you get the strategy right.
Email marketing allows you to get tailored messages right in front of your audience. These can be personalised and focused which makes them more effective. Opening rates can be much higher than people expect.
Get it right and you’ll quickly develop a two-way conversation with your audience that allows you to gently encourage them to buy your affiliate product.
Of course, no email marketing campaign works without a strong email database. There are several ways to cultivate this, including making signup or subscription easy on your website and blog. It takes work but the results are often worth it.
Read Email Marketing: The Forgotten Tool in Affiliate Marketing here.
Mic Drop: Your Ticket to Freedom with Ambassador Program
Ambassador Program isn’t just another course; it’s your all-access pass to the theme park of affiliate marketing. Want to turn your marketing into a main attraction? Visit the The Ambassador Program website and get your pass today.
It is the complete affiliate stacking ecosystem course that teaches how to leverage the various tools available online and helps you to bring these together in a coherent and powerful strategy.
Let the fun begin!
