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Over the last nine years, weโve worked with hundreds of different clients. Our team has seen every type of affiliate program, from large-scale enterprise setups to smaller start-ups. In this time, weโve noticed that there are a few common mistakes that businesses and marketers frequently make. Success leaves clues, but so does failure. In this article, we share five of the big mistakes that we see affiliate marketers make on a regular basis.
#1 – Selling Instead of Educating
Many affiliate marketers focus on selling instead of educating. Selling is important, but how you go about it is even more crucial. Most people can smell a sales pitch a mile off and it immediately gets their guard up. Simply adding links, banners, and buy-it-now buttons to your site isnโt going to convince people to purchase. But educating them about the benefits often will.
Taking the educational approach means providing genuine guidance to your audience. Walking them through a step-by-step guide to using the product youโre promoting is a much more powerful way to โsoftly sellโ it. People need to be educated about why the product is so good, exactly how it works, and what theyโll get for their money. So, try creating content that answers all the questions a potential customer may have, and youโll be much more likely to convert them.
#2 – Not Walking the Talk
Lots of affiliate marketers promote products and services that theyโve never even tried. But this approach can seriously damage your credibility, as well as limiting your commissions.
If you havenโt walked the talk by using the product for yourself, then itโs difficult to create educational content. Most of the time, these marketers end up copying and pasting blurb from the productโs sales page. Unless youโve actually used the product, then itโs very hard to give your audience insights into how it works.
Worse still, you might end up recommending a product that isnโt very good. Not only will your audience be disappointed, but youโll have lost that credibility you worked so hard to build up. So, try out the affiliate products that you intend to promote. This way you can be sure that theyโre top-notch and also provide an insiderโs guide to using them.
#3 – Signing Up for Everything
When people first sign up to affiliate networks, they often take the โspray and prayโ approach. They apply to every program that offers decent commissions and then try to create content that promotes all of it. The problem is, this scattergun approach doesnโt lead to great results (for the marketer or the merchant). By trying to do too much, thereโs no time to focus on quality content. A more effective method is to select a handful of programs and concentrate on promoting them really well.
#4 – Not Providing Comparisons
Providing product comparisons for your audience is a hugely effective tactic, yet most affiliate marketers donโt do it. They put all of their effort into promoting one product or service, but neglect to mention any alternatives. The logic behind this is that if they donโt mention any competitors, then people will click straight through to buy. But in reality, people like to weigh up their options before making a purchase. Providing comparison charts or pros and cons of each option will make you even more credible and provides opportunities for more affiliate links.
#5 – Not Leveraging Data
Most affiliate networks provide a wealth of tracking data to their users, but itโs massively underused. Very few marketers check their reports on a regular basis despite the goldmine of information they can provide. Analytics reports can tell you which pages are generating the most commissions, allowing you to replicate whatโs working well (and cut whatโs not). Leveraging data can help you to scale your income and take the guesswork out of content creation.
At Advertise Purple, we only work with the best affiliate marketers in each niche. Since 92% of affiliates are fraudulent or non-performers, we seek out the 8% who are top of their game. This is part of the reason that weโre the #1 affiliate management agency in the USA. We help clients across the country to super-charge their affiliate revenue and get the most out of the channel. In fact, our clients see an average of 131% growth in affiliate sales within our first six months of campaign management. ย So, if youโre looking to start an affiliate program or want advice on improving an existing one, our team can help. Simply send us a message using the form below, call us at 424.272.7400 or email [email protected]. Weโd love to hear from you!
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