To those who have never tried affiliate marketing before, the idea of spending your time at home earning money from your computer or laptop often seems easy. However, those who then go on to try it find that that really isn’t the case.
When starting out in affiliate marketing, there are a lot of mistakes you can make if you don’t do your research. That’s why we have decided to give you our list of the top 5 most common mistakes in affiliate marketing, in the hopes that you can avoid them.
#1 Expecting Instant Success
So you’ve seen YouTube videos of 21-year-olds in snapback caps driving Lamborghinis around LA, and you’re thinking to yourself ‘if this kid can do it, why can’t I?’ Well, why can’t you?
Here’s the problem! Don’t underestimate the 21-year-old kid in the snapback. What you see isn’t always what you get, and the guy producing those videos has probably done a lot of research into how to tap into his key demographic. The problem is that many marketers are very good at making what they do appear seamless and easy, after all, that’s how they tap into the psyche of their audience, gain trust and build upon it to generate more followers and a higher income.
Online campaigns take a lot of trial and error testing, and you shouldn’t expect to get it right the first, second, third or even fourth time. Instead, you should aim to make your campaigns better each time. If you can steadily and consistently improve then success will come to you. Just don’t expect it to happen overnight.
#2 Targeting Too Generally
Here are two famous sayings to keep in mind when you’re planning any campaign.
‘Go niche or go home.’
‘You can’t please all of the people all of the time.’
When you first start out in affiliate marketing, you’re probably going to be thinking more about what it is you are going to sell rather than who you are going to be selling it too. However, the latter, in many respects, is more important than the former.
It’s possible to sell ice to an Inuit if you understand the Inuit’s needs well enough and that is why you should be focussing on who your key demographics are. Once you know exactly who it is you are selling to, you can begin to build a picture of your ideal customer persona. Remember, while people may wish to be unique, they are not, and for every one person you target directly, there will be a million others just like them.
One of the easiest ways to begin targeting a demographic is to create a profile of the perfect customer. You should try to consider almost every aspect of their lives including, age, hobbies, marital status, likes and dislikes, work-life, other interests etc. By doing this, you can get a real sense of who your customers are and what they need.
Imagine the persona you have chosen has a busy lifestyle in central London. Now imagine that you are marketing pot plants. Does your persona really have the time and energy to be doing gardening? No, of course not. But maybe he does want to bring the outdoors in, to escape from the busy city and have his own little corner of the countryside to bring some refreshing relief from the monotony of the concrete jungle.
Knowing your key demographic will enable you to identify which aspects of your products to focus on and which to leave out.
#3 Going It Alone
Affiliate marketing requires you to connect with the world to find products to sell, establish successful campaigns and gain steady streams of traffic, followers and customers. This is way too much work for any affiliate to do by themselves. Therefore, you ought to join an affiliate network. If you don’t, you’ll very soon find yourself swamped and unable to keep up.
The truth is, affiliate marketing is a business, and you should treat it as such. How many large companies do you know that have a workforce of one? You should bear this in mind when you’re starting out. Don’t be a jack of all trades and a master of none. Find out the area of your business that you want to invest your time in and then find people to do the other parts for you.
Joining an affiliate network is the easiest way to start getting jobs done. They can offer you a lot of things to help your campaigns, from prelanders and landing pages in multiple languages to banners, pop-ups, email swipes and much much more. They will also source and create offers for you to sell!
Becoming part of an affiliate network will ensure that you are kept up-to-date with market trends and always have new products to promote to your customers. It will also give you the opportunity to speak regularly to professionals who can help you get your campaigns on the right track. For more information about joining an affiliate network go to https://convertingteam.com/.
#4 Blending In
One of the critical aspects that many affiliates forget about is added value. If you are selling the same product as thousands of other people on the internet then why should people buy from you? If you are successful enough, then you will gain loyalty, however, regardless of how loyal your customers are, if they see a better deal elsewhere, then what’s stopping them from buying from someone else?
Added value can come in all shapes and sizes, but if a customer feels like they are getting more for their money, then you will have a higher chance of success than your competitors who aren’t offering any extras.
Extra’s can include anything from E-books to promotions on bulk buying. However, make sure to check with the company whose products you are promoting that customers actually get the deal at the final stage of the transaction. Never offer things that you can’t deliver! Doing this will lose you loyalty fast and will bring with it a surge of bad reviews.
One more thing to bear in mind is that, if you can’t offer any added value above what the product offers itself, then use the product’s own qualities to promote it. You can do this by really considering and understanding your product and brainstorming all of the potential uses and benefits that it offers. If you can think of a problem it solves that your competitors haven’t thought of, then you have given the product added value, and it won’t cost you a penny.
#5 Promoting Programs That Only Capture Email Addresses
If you are trying to build a business model for the future, then you are going to want to build a profile of your leads and learn how to convert those into sales which benefit you. If you choose an affiliate network which only chases email addresses to make second sales, then you are basically doing all of the hard work without any hope of reaping the future rewards when customers spend.
To avoid this pitfall, you need to join a trusted network which will pay you commission on every unit sold via your affiliate links. To join an amazing affiliate network that do all this and much, much more, go to https://convertingteam.com/
