By Naomi Atwater
As a follow-up from Part One of Affiliate marketing, here is the next phase of growing your business. So, you have joined an affiliate program, found your niche, picked a program, and are working on building your platform.
What happens next as you work towards growing your following, influencing others, and earning a profit? While no program will guarantee success, there are a few things you can do to help gain and engage followers.
1. Think through your audience carefully.
Do you know who you are trying to influence? If the answer is unclear or no, you have your first step. Who is the ideal person you can imagine being interested in your product? For example, suppose you have an Amazon storefront set up with children’s clothing, toys, and games. In that case, your audience may be a young parent who is security-conscious and looking for safe and development-friendly ways to engage their young children.
Try to think of one or two (three maximum) examples of people (called “personas”) who would love to hear what you have to say. HubSpot has a free persona-building tool that helps you think through who you are talking to! Remember, a part of your audience may not fit into your main categories of people, and you do not have to include every person who may be interested (for example, a grandparent). Still, you want to capture who the majority would be.
What about your personas makes them interested in what you have to say? How can you say it even better now that you know who you are talking to? What features can you highlight or provide information that would perk their interest? Something you find personally interesting or aesthetic may differ from what interests your audience. While your interests and voice can affect your choices, your first filter should be your audience.
2. Pick the right platforms.
Knowing your audience well is your first task. Then, you will need to understand where they are talking to each other. That’s where you show up and join the conversation! For example, someone with wedding content might decide that Pinterest is where many couples look for inspiration, ideas, and merchandise for their big day. An affiliate marketer who understands this could spend considerable time building content suited for Pinterest and much less for a platform like Twitter (although that could still be a possibility!).
3. Create very little promotional content.
All the content you share should be about providing value to the audience so that you can be viewed as a credible source. This will build a relationship when it comes to giving product recommendations.
Much of your content does not have to be promotional—instead, think about how it can be funny, educational, or entertaining. According to Stray Media Group, only 20% of your content should actually promote something. No one wants to feel like they are constantly being sold to, but if you have a relationship built through other types of content, your recommendation becomes much stronger when you make a pitch.
4. Steer clear of false recommendations.
Reputations mean something. As you get going, the temptation to accept affiliate offers of things you do not believe in or would not usually use or recommend could come up. Even if this could get you a few immediate sales, accepting them will not be worth the risk to your reputation or relationship with your long-term followers. Always keep them in mind and think how you would want to be marketed in that scenario!
We’d love to hear from you.
What affiliate program did you choose, and what are you passionate about creating and spreading? Who do you want to support with your efforts? Let us know at [email protected]. We wish you success!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Naomi lives in Pittsburgh, PA but her roots are from a little Christmas tree farm in upstate New York. She works in marketing for Greater Europe Mission, an international nonprofit organization. She’s always finding ways to make room in her budget for traveling and reads over 100 books each year.
