It is critical to understand your customer’ wants and needs in affiliate marketing. Particularly when you’re trying to sell a range of products within a specific category. You need to understand what they want so that you can target them with the right information and develop the content that they are looking for to avoid them going off track.
When selling any line of products, it’s essential to understand the concept of the value ladder. If you want to encourage your customers to spend more and link to your high-value affiliate products, then it helps to hook them first and then gradually reel them in.
What is a Value Ladder?
A value ladder is essentially a list of products ascending in value with your most expensive at the top. In most cases, this starts with an initial low-cost option or one for free. The reason for this is that the customer may have a limited budget and isn’t looking to spend big but might later. They might not trust your site because you’re new to them and want to try something lower in value first.
When they have bought this bottom rung product from you, the next step for the affiliate marketer is to take them up the ladder and offer them slightly more expensive items. You do this over and over again until you reach your luxury, top of the line product and main affiliate.
Of course, people may just take your low-cost option and disappear. Others may cut out after two or three buys. Some may jump levels of your value ladder and go straight for the luxury product because it meets their needs exactly, they now trust you and can afford it.
The Benefits of a Value Ladder for Affiliate Marketers
The big advantage of a value ladder is that it helps you to bring a potential customer into your loop without them having to make a big investment in time or effort.
If you’re sending out an affiliate link to an online course that costs them a few hundred pounds, they are less likely to connect than if you send out a link to a free lesson.
In essence, value ladders build trust. They tell your potential customer that you are reliable and that you can be relied on to deliver. That’s why your initial low-cost or free offering needs to have real value – it should ideally be something they would have to pay for. It certainly should be something they need.
The value ladder also gives you the chance of a quick win. You could be waiting months to get that vital click on your top affiliate link and that can be deflating, to say the least. Small wins not only give you an ‘in’ to your prospective customer but they also boost your morale.
Values ladders give your audience a lot more options which mean they are likely to engage rather than not.
Value Ladder and Multiple Affiliate Products
A value ladder in the affiliate stacking ecosystem works best when you have more than one product in place for your marketing activity. As long as these are related, they can create a pathway for many more customers to find their way to your premium product.
Example of a Value Ladder
Let’s say your affiliate is a gym. The value ladder may well work this way:
- A free session with a personal trainer for an hour at their exclusive gym. Who can resist?
- Next up is the first paid offer – a personal training plan developed to meet your customer’s exact needs.
- You can follow this up by offering a low-cost nutritional advice plan that is again tailored to the individual’s needs.
- Next, you might give the customer the chance to dip in and out of the gym with individual training sessions.
- This can be followed by a monthly subscription or a yearly one.
- The top line may be exclusive intensive courses at a local retreat.
The customer may not want to part with several thousand pounds of their hard-earned cash right now but they certainly wouldn’t mind a free hour with a personal trainer. Again, it’s all about building trust and creating a rapport with the individual.
One of the key aspects of the value ladder is that you need to add intrinsic value at each stage, even on the lowest rung. It’s counterproductive to throw in products that either don’t relate to your end goal or that your potential customer could just as easily get cheaper somewhere else.
If you can create a ‘wow’ factor, you’ll have your customer hooked. They may not all end up buying your luxury product in the end but a higher percentage will.
How to Create a Value Ladder for Affiliate Marketing
The value ladder you have doesn’t have to have many rungs. If you are only pushing one affiliate product, you may well have little scope anyway.
But offering something free, first up, such as an ebook that contains vital information can give people the confidence to take that final step and click the main affiliate link.
In general, the higher the value of your top product, the more detailed your value ladder needs to be. As with the sales funnel, it’s all about guiding your potential customer towards that desired outcome.
Let’s say that your affiliate is a premier grade mattress company such as Tempur. This is an expensive buy for anyone and one that people consider carefully before parting with their money. So what do you do?
- Maybe you produce a free ebook about the benefits of sleep and how to get a good night’s rest with a tonne of evidence to back it up. It’s easy to download and your customer loves free things.
- You might have on top of that, other affiliate products (either from Tempur or other sources) that are relatively cheap and offer these at a competitive price – things like duvets or pillows.
- You can gradually build towards the benefits of a luxury mattress, knowing that your customer already trusts you because they have bought your product before.
Learn More About Value Ladders
Leveraging the power of value ladders and using them to dictate your marketing activity is essential to successful affiliate marketing. If you want to learn how to make the most of all the tools at your disposal, the Funnel Freedom affiliate stacking ecosystem course shows you how.
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