7 simple tips for becoming a successful affiliate marketer
In our previous articles in the affiliate marketing blog series, we delved into the different aspects of affiliate marketing, which ranged from why affiliate marketing is great for WFH to the benefits of registering for a SaaS affiliate marketing program, and also various affiliate marketing strategies that you can use to help companies find customers.
In this blog, we have compiled a list of fail-proof affiliate marketing tips that you can swear by if you want to become a successful affiliate marketer.
- Plan your content
Creating great content will always be the most recurring tip or advice for an aspiring affiliate marketer. A regular audience doesn’t grow from one excellent content piece but from publishing consistently good quality content at regular intervals. Building an audience for your content requires a lot of planning and its timely execution. Creating a content calendar will help you with the planning process. Your calendar must contain every step that is required to create and distribute content. A content calendar’s design can depend on you, but you must include the following required elements to increase efficiency.- Due dates: Motivates and ensures that you complete tasks on time.
- Respective owners (DRI): Increases the visibility of the workflow.
- Category: Helps in planning a diverse content strategy and avoiding repetitions.
Here’s an example of a content calendar.
You can make use of Google Sheets or Excel to create a simple and easily manageable content calendar. There are several calendar templates available online. Plan your calendar with deadlines for each task—from writing an article outline to publication—and finish your tasks within the stipulated time.As an affiliate marketer, you can develop different types of content, such as product reviews, competitor comparisons, case studies, tutorial videos, etcetera. Ensure that you don’t create content that is repetitive. Create a variety of content for publishing to keep your audiences engaged. Coming up with quality content regularly is a good SEO practice. It can also boost your visibility and rankings in SERPs, and help in developing a lasting relationship with your audience. Deploy a content distribution strategy to increase your traffic and awareness.
- Track your performance
Tracking your website using Google Analytics is a healthy practice. You can set up a GA account in no time. If you are a WordPress user, you can integrate your account with Google Analytics. Navigate to Behaviour > Site content > All Pages report to analyze your top-performing pages. By adding your affiliate links to these pages, you can generate a considerable amount of clicks and signups. Tracking your performance as an affiliate is also equally important. Most of the affiliate programs are transparent and provide their affiliates with personalized dashboards. Freshworks Affiliate Program has partnered with Partnerstack to provide its affiliates with their own dashboards where affiliates can track leads, customers, signups, commissions, among a host of other options. The dashboard contains all the resources and assets that you may need to get the word out. You can also set up goals in GA to track the number of visitors who have clicked on your referral link. This data can help you corroborate the reports from your partner’s affiliate dashboards. Tracking and managing your performance is significant because it helps you plan your future content better based on the articles that perform well. It gives you the ability to gauge your efficiency properly and channel your efforts in the right direction. - Shorten your affiliate links
We have all come across affiliates sharing referral links that are obnoxiously lengthy. Not a sight for sore eyes, right? While a few affiliate programs, including ours, allow customers to personalize their referral links within the dashboard, there are many programs where you have to do it yourself.
This is where an URL shortener can help you. An URL shortener is a tool that replaces the lengthy URL with a shorter and simpler version that directs the user to the intended webpage. A study shows a 39% increase in CTR for custom branded links as opposed to a generic short URL. While there are several paid shorteners like Bitly and ClickMeter, Rebrandly allows you to shorten your URL for free. Shortening your URL makes your links look clean, recognizable, and professional. You can embed your links in the anchor text as hyperlinks too. Apart from the CTR boost, link shorteners can also create a more robust engagement with your audience since they are easier to remember and share. - Retarget your audience
Did you know that there was a 50-60% increase in conversion rates for customers who were retargeted? Retargeting is an advertising model that allows you to target prospective customers who had previously visited your site using display ads.
Facebook and Google Ads are the most popular channels for retargeting. However, if you are starting out as an affiliate, Facebook retargeting will work better for you. It is highly cost-efficient and allows you to target people who have visited specific articles on your website. The lookalike feature on Facebook lets you target a similar set of audiences than the ones who had previously been converted. Here is an ebook that talks about the Dos and Don’ts of Facebook ads.
Since retargeting focuses on creating awareness with prospects who are already interested in your website or product, it delivers excellent RoI on ad spends. There is also an increase in ad CTRs and brand awareness after retargeting campaigns.
- Remove 404 error codes
A 404 is one of the most common HTTP error status codes. It is generally caused when a page is deleted, when an incorrect URL is entered, or if a page has been migrated to a different URL without a proper redirect.
A broken link can increase your bounce rate and tamper with your site’s SEO rankings. When a visitor leaves your website without staying, Google infers that your content does not match the user’s intent, thereby decreasing your rankings. You can repair a 404 by redirecting it to a different page or correcting the link in case of typographical error.
A regular site audit is required to monitor and remove such links. Free tools like Broken Link Checker or Dead Link Checker can help you find broken links to maintain your website hygiene. You can also add a LinkMiner extension to spot the exact location of 404s at a page level. You can identify broken links faster with this tool because it highlights them in red.
- Generate more video content
Videos help you reach a wider audience because it has the ability to offer relatability. In fact, studies say that videos can increase your sales by 80% and lead generation by 83%. Creating video content also requires careful planning. You have to prepare scripts for your videos that will sound more natural. You must always remember that the tone of a video will differ from writing. Create conversational videos without jargon to connect better with your audience.
You can embed YouTube videos in your blogs easily. Since YouTube is the second-largest traffic generator after Google, you can target a larger market. Video content is proved to provide higher audience engagement, trust, and credibility. - Attend events
As a marketer, you must realize the importance of networking. It is essential to attend events and conferences where you get to meet other affiliates, and share ideas. The Affiliate Summit is one of the most popular events in the affiliate marketing space that brings together individuals with similar interests. You can expand your horizons by scheduling meetings with fellow attendees of the summit, which might lead to possible collaborations in the near future.
Now that you are fully equipped with the simple tips that can make your affiliate marketing a success, it is time to implement these into your marketing strategies. Get your hands on these simple yet effective tips to be a successful affiliate marketer and bag your rewards.
