The Affiliate Stacking Ecosystem is a proven method of finding and attracting the right people who are ready to not only buy a particular product but are near certainties to do so.
The key lies in bringing together various elements such as email, social media, blogging, traditional websites and video sites such as YouTube, creating a full-throated and joined-up marketing approach that cultivates strong leads.
At the heart of this marketing ecosystem is the affiliate sales funnel.
It is a critical part of affiliate marketing success and forms the rock-solid foundation on which all sales activity is built. Without the sales funnel your marketing is likely to be ineffective, resulting in few if any conversions. With it, your affiliate marketing is almost always guaranteed to succeed.
The Mistake Most Beginner Affiliate Marketers Make
It’s a common issue with beginners – they get their affiliate link, put it on their website maybe once and twice in strategic places, publish the page and hope for the best. On the surface, it seems the quickest and most sensible route to get a visitor to an affiliate site.
Unfortunately, this is not much of a plan.
For a start, you are depending too much on chance. You’re betting that someone will notice your affiliate link and take an interest in it. You’re also gambling on this being the sort of person who is likely to love your affiliate product.
The purpose of an affiliate sales funnel is to cultivate those visitors or the connections you have on social media who also have a higher probability of becoming solid customers of your affiliate product.
A funnel is wider at the top than at the bottom. Put simply, you have a more diverse demographic pool at the top, everyone ranging from moderately interested to those who are extremely motivated to buy.
The purpose of the funnel for affiliate marketing is to gradually filter this large lead pool until you get to those individuals who are, right this minute, ready to purchase the product your affiliate is offering.
One of the key components of the Affiliate Stacking Ecosystem is how you develop your plan and implement it, bringing together different channels to deliver results.
The funnel itself is a trade-off between time and efficacy. You want it to be as short as possible, but you also want it to deliver effective results. Getting the balance right is the main challenge for affiliate marketers.
The first thing that your funnel needs is a way of capturing leads. Without them, you can’t influence those who may be interested at a much deeper level. Typically, this is about collecting emails and building a database of leads which you can then work from. One way to do this is to offer something for free.
Let’s say your affiliate is a mattress manufacturer. You develop a website about sleep research and you create an ebook guide to getting a good night’s rest. You offer this for free on your website if visitors subscribe to your newsletters and give you their email.
Once you have that email, you can start to create tailored marketing that is focused on leading your leads deeper into the sales funnel until they are ready to buy.
One vital part of the affiliate sales funnel is the bridge page. This is essentially a page whose sole purpose is to drive traffic to a specific site.
This is particularly important if you are developing social media marketing. You have limited space on Twitter or Instagram to get your message across and you can’t be over sales orientated.
The link you provide could send a potential lead to your bridge page which is designed to pique the individual’s interest and motivate them to visit the affiliate. The page could include, for example, a demo or sample of the product, the answer to important questions that the person needs to find out or it can be used to tell a story about the product.
What it’s all about is creating a strong emotional connection with the potential buyer and developing authority – I have the answer to your problem, here is the solution and the reasons why it works.
Features vs Benefits and Your Affiliate Sales Funnel
It’s probably important to note here that, when you’re designing your sales funnel, you need to focus on the benefits for your lead and how you are going to present these.
In short, features are what makes up the product or service your affiliate is selling. A mobile phone may have 5G connectivity, for example, which is a feature. The benefit of this is that the user can download videos and have uninterrupted streaming wherever they are in the world and connect to the Internet of Things.
With any affiliate sales funnel you want to focus on the benefits as these are the solutions to the problems your leads may have. As you move towards the narrow end of the funnel, the benefits become more specific and tailored to the lead’s needs.
Boosting Sales by Adding Supporting Offers
Your sales funnel may be simple and clearly defined if you have just one product you’re trying to sell. Many products, however, have other sub-products and services associated with them.
For example, if you are selling a computer brand, customers might also want a printer, specific software, office supplies or a gaming console. Adding supporting offers can help you boost sales and move beyond just one simple product but also build a stronger relationship with the lead.
Of course, the supporting offers can often take your sales funnel off in different directions and this can make things more complicated. Asking whether a particular affiliate product or service fits with what you are trying to do is critical as is ensuring you are clear about your plan at every stage.
Getting it All to Work Together
There are a lot of different strands here and it can be complicated to keep track of it all. Most beginner affiliate markets suffer from being one dimensional – they focus on one or maybe two different channels and put little or no work into understanding the process. It’s important to take a holistic view of affiliate marketing and use the current technology and landscape to make the most of your activity.
That’s where an online course such as the Affiliate Stacking Ecosystem comes in.
It teaches you not only how to leverage all the different strands that make up a strong selling campaign but, more importantly, shows you how to bring elements such as your sales funnel and different channels together to form a coherent and effective strategy that works.
Join our MAP Affiliate Stacking Ecosystem.
