Why Is Content Marketing Essential to Your Business?
For many decades, mixed trends have been witnessed in the growth and development of businesses and corporations.
‘Mixed trend’ in the following sense: Some have overgrown and remained at the top for decades.Some have remained the same, and their impact is almost not felt. Some declined and have become the example of failed systems. Yet others’ very existence has been forgotten.
What attributes should these entities possess to keep their grades on the positive side of their operations?
Perhaps offering great quality products or services. Or having effective and efficient factors of production.
Building a strong customer base needs much more than just the product you offer to the market. The solution being implied here has existed for more than 3,000 years and has evolved as time goes by.
Neil Patel says he was proved wrong when he estimated it was around maybe 50, 70, or 90 years. The more technical know-how advances, the more options for its advancement crop up. A decade can’t pass when we are just using one option.
What is the answer?
A clear strategy for implementing this technique opens goodies for your business by first building customer loyalty. Consumers undergo three main stages for you to earn their loyalty. And mark you, the proportionality reduces as you move from step 1 to 3.
This key component can make your business popular to a target group, or even globally. It’s what makes people know how valuable your products are.
Let’s say it’s beyond the financial capability of the company. Or even the routine product promotion that’s always implemented by the sales and marketing departments.
When done correctly, the technique is a hub of enormous treasures that makes other companies appear right above others. Even though they don’t enjoy economies of scale.
Just in this discussion, you’ll discover it. It goes beyond the basic foundation for establishing a business or legal obligation in any business environment. Are you still trying to figure out exactly what I’m implying?
Try to ask yourself. What makes you consume the product or service of a given business more than offers from other businesses?
All right, you know it. If you’re not sure, here is the answer. You tend to be loyal to certain products or services since you have valuable facts about them.
For instance, you’ve developed an interest in online marketing or shopping, because cybermarketspace.com has provided valuable content about the same.
Creating valuable content for marketing plus a perfect content marketing strategy is the elephant in the room. Content marketing is the driving force for the success and popularity of many businesses. This is the source of all the benefits enjoyed by businesses in terms of scope, sales, profits, and a large loyal customer base.
But hold on. Do you ever ask yourself what content marketing is?
Content marketing is the process of planning, generating, dispensing, sharing, and publishing valuable content on media channels–social media, print media, blog posts, websites, and press statements, among other viable hybrid channels. It involves sharing valuable content that is essential, engaging, and captivating to the target audience.
To gain actions from profitable customers. Take note, content marketing is specific and targets certain people. It’s pretty easy to differentiate it from advertising and marketing promotions. And the information being presented must be valuable to you.
Long-term strategies must be set out since the engagement and building of strong bonds with the target audience is not an overnight activity.
Furthermore, developing high-quality relevant content needs resources as well as consistency. The care and promotion strategy builds trust, which later will be transformed into loyalty and sales.
The target audience responds in cycles to actions in content marketing–evidence that valuable content you provide doesn’t just automatically receive a positive response to your business.
Explore the discussion below.
The 4 Steps Of The Buying Cycle
When the target audience receives your content, it initiates important things as follows:
1. Awareness: The target customers may have needs. Yet, they don’t have a clear way to solve it. Upon receiving your content, they now become aware of your services or products and associated benefits.
But that is not enough for them to make a decision. Hence, they have to explore deeply.
2. Research: Being aware creates curiosity. The customer starts seeking authentic solutions. This is mainly through research to educate themselves extensively. For instance, if an online marketer is informed about affiliate marketing, he/she tends to explore further, to try and find out more about the terms and conditions. And to access its viability.
3. Consideration: After in-depth research on key components, the target audience starts making comparisons. Just to see which of the different options is preferable cost-wise. This influences the step to be taken which goes either way.
4. Purchase: After careful evaluation of satisfaction, the target audience now makes an informed decision. A transaction is made, thus the service or product is bought.
Content marketers should note that the proportion of customers who reach the fourth stage is quite lower compared to the preceding steps in the cycle.
So, Why is Content Marketing Important?
The benefits of content marketing are very great. It’s estimated that companies that have implemented it effectively have realized over 1000% in growth over the past decades. Content marketing does massive responsibilities such as:
It makes your leads aware of the services and products you offer in the market
Inspires, informs, captivates, and converts due to its value and relevance
Good publicity since there is a good relationship between the business and the target audience
Demonstration of how the services offered, address target group challenges faces
Target groups develop strong connections with your brands
Certainty in returns of investment when executed appropriately
It supplements social media marketing by providing additional content. SEO is much realized from such contents
Other digital promotional channels depend on content marketing for relevance
Considering the numerous benefits, content marketing opens many other profitable avenues to individuals or businesses. If exploited properly, the benefits are just enormous.
Why? The consumers trust every step you take, as the content marketer, including all your affiliates, and term it as authentic.
What does this imply?
Your associate brands are given priority as opposed to others. Just because all your deals satisfy their interests. Hence, a perfect opportunity to take your business to the next level, by becoming an affiliate marketer.
Affiliate marketing is a strategy to promote your brand and sales growth. Since it’s simple, easy, and cost-effective operation-wise.
Affiliate marketing is promoting other people’s or business’s products, and in return, you get a commission when sales are made. This is the concept of affiliate marketing. It works perfectly when you associate with networks that interest your target customers and you too.
3 major parties are involved in this setup. That is the user (customers), the affiliate (you), and the merchant (owner of the products or services). The affiliate, therefore, links the user and the merchant.
The affiliate is paid on performance or per sale and vice versa. Affiliate marketers with great viewership and trust from their customers are likely to earn more as their followers will easily consume brands they associate with.
And this is how content marketing interlinks many business promotions.
Importance of Content Marketing to Affiliate Marketers
Content marketing is the best strategy for affiliate marketing currently. For a very simple reason.
Content marketing is a well-thought process and will always be on point. It’s easy to make decisions on a niche of your interest and the proper channels of conveying content to target groups. An affiliate marketer who capitalizes on the strength of content marketing is likely to enjoy a range of benefits as below.
Benefits of Content Marketing to Affiliate Marketers.
Contents strengthen the asset base, as it ensures a steady flow of income in the years to come. Even when the content was posted a long time ago. This is a real asset and can last beyond the affiliate’s lifetime.
Content promoted by an affiliate attracts huge traffic on the site. Thus giving a high ranking page on the Google search engine. It’s also easy for the affiliate marketer to determine the interests of the target groups and better their sales.
The offering solution is simplified since site analytics can give all the insights.
Existence of audience who are ready to buy the products as long as they assisted in making the final decision.
Wider viewing since affiliates can be shared in platforms such as blogs, social media (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn): depending on the preferred promotional channel by the affiliate marketer.
Last of all, content marketing builds trust. The success of business activities is anchored on trust. An affiliate marketer enjoys this milestone cultivated by effective content marketing strategy.
Well, you’ve discovered the power of content marketing and its influence on affiliate marketing.
But,
Are you still wondering how you can turn this to reality? It sounds complicated to some extent. And you are in deep thoughts on how to kick start the whole process?
Keep reading this article to excavate the essentials needed in this process. Just to understand the underlying epic principles for effective and sustainable affiliate marketing. Plus the 7 strategies of content marketing that affiliate marketers have to look into the successful running of an affiliate program.
In the discussion below, are comprehensive guide strategies to implement in any content marketing.
Well, you’ve discovered the power of content marketing and its influence on affiliate marketing.
But,
Are you still wondering how you can turn this to reality?
It sounds complicated to some extent. And you are in deep thoughts on how to kick-start the whole process?
Keep reading this article to excavate the essentials needed in this process, to understand the underlying epic principles for effective and sustainable affiliate marketing. Plus the 7 strategies of content marketing that affiliate marketers have to look into for an affiliate program to run successfully.
In the discussion below, are comprehensive guide strategies to implement in any content marketing.
How To Do Content Marketing As An Affiliate Marketer:
7 Top Content Marketing Strategies for Affiliate Marketing
1. Establish Sound Goals.
Content marketing is a program delivered effectively when objectives and goals are set and is monitored by targets and indicators.
The foremost strategy in affiliate marketing is the goal you want to realize. Fail to set that out, and all efforts are just a waste of resources.
But, it’s not about setting any kind of goal. The goal has to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound). This is actually what drives and motivates the whole process.
As much as you are sensitive about your services, ensure that they lead to revenue generation, more audience conversion, product loyalty, and improvement in your engagement with target groups.
2. Determine and Document Your Pointers.
Targets and indicators were mentioned as goal drivers, right? The pointers are sometimes termed key performance indicators and should suit the SMART goals. Pointers can either be quantifiable (target) or qualifiable (indicators).
Generally, they gauge the actual performance of your SMART goals.
For instance:
Income can be measured may be on daily, weekly, or monthly sales. Along with other factors like site traffic, requests for certain services, and more.
The level of awareness is determined by traffic on the site, followers, and subscribers on-site, and social media.
Loyalty can be in terms of referrals, customers returning, and shares on other channels.
Connection with customers is indicated by the number of likes, backlinks, shares.
Collaborations can be seen by the number of new partners.
You can also determine other pointers you’d include in measuring your progress.
The relevance of your marketing strategy lies in the niche you’ve chosen.
Remember, when deciding on a niche, you need to think of your audience. Why? They are the key subject here who determine your positive performance. It’s their interest that you serve.
The kind of content you deliver, in most cases, may not be your passion. It’s what the market needs. As a content or affiliate marketer, you need to ask yourself a number of questions. The checklist of questions below is essential when deciding on the right niche.
What is their need?
Are there challenges they would like to address?
Do they need my service or products, and why?
How can I achieve it?
What’s the convenient way to reach them?
4. Choosing the Channel For Your Content.
Upon deciding the marketing niche, reaching out to your target audience follows.
Choosing the right and specific channel for your content is crucial. The niche approach can easily give the best channel to use.
For example, gaming content is passion-oriented. Social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Tiktok among others can be effective.
Content on addressing a problem is specific hence channels such as blogs and websites can be suitable. The channel you choose needs to reach as a large proportion of your target audience as possible.
5. Create a Budget.
Content marketing needs money to finance the SMART goals of the content marketing strategy. For instance, some channels of marketing need membership premiums while others are subscribed.
Presenting some of your content needs special software for like Adobe, canvas, Acrobat, and many more. All these need subscriptions for different business plans.
You also need to know whether you’ll require a camera for video and other decoding and devices.
Do you also need to outsource skills? And how much are they likely to cost? These and other questions are important to ask when budgeting. Thus, ensures you do not have deficits in your budgeting plan.
6. Generate and Distribute Content.
This is the heart of any content marketing strategy. The content you create connects you with your target audience, builds relationships, and creates conversions. There has to be a certain level of consistency in your content creation activities. For instance, daily, weekly, monthly and preferred intervals.
Do you remember the preferred channel you chose? That’s where you can post your content. The content can be of different types and forms: Ebooks, video and images, podcasts, voiceovers, newsletters, and many more that suit your audience.
Content can also be optimized using keywords, keyword research, and other SEO strategies.
7. Monitor and Evaluate Your Outcomes
The only way to determine that you’re realizing your SMART goals is by assessing them using the key performance indicators checklist you outlined from the start.
It is possible to execute this on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly basis among other methods of monitoring you’ve preferred. Possibly you’ll determine whether you’re achieving the content marketing goals you outlined in the beginning. And therefore make necessary adjustments.
After 3 months or your preferred duration, it’s good to evaluate the long-term impact of your content and determine its influence on the target audience. For instance:
How many audiences have I reached?
Were there conversations?
What about referrals?
How many audiences come back for the service?
Which do I need to improve in the next phase for me to generate impact?
These and many other questions as per your results can help you improve your marketing strategy and positively impact your affiliate marketing plans.
It sounds fantastic, right? You have the ball; it’s now in your court. With all these strategies, you can start something new. A step that will improve your current marketing operation. Take the initiative to rise to greater levels.
StoryChief is a complete content marketing solution for all marketing channels. It’s for content planning, social media, SEO copywriting, insights, and more — Double your website traffic, nurture leads and increase sales. Easy collaboration for your team.
Quuu helps you save time and grow your social media following by sharing relevant curated content entirely on auto-pilot–hand-curated content powered by AI.
LowPost helps you engage with your audience, boost your search engine rankings, and increase your traffic by creating engaging content and stories that are customized for your brand.
PostAffiliatePro goes hand in hand with what you’ve learned in this post on content marketing strategies for affiliate marketing. It’s a complete affiliate marketing platform that lets you track your links, measure your results, set up an affiliate program, manage affiliates, pay commissions, boost your lead generation, and more.
They even have a guide on how to craft a content marketing strategy for affiliate marketing.
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If you are one of the 2.7 billion+ Facebook users, isn’t it time you started cashing in the time you spend there?
In this ultimate guide, you’ll learn how to make money online using Facebook for affiliate marketing. Why miss out on the business opportunities available to you on social media?
Read on if you want to learn how to do affiliate marketing on Facebook, discover what methods are available to you, and learn how to take advantage of them.
We’ll look at the 7 ways to promote your affiliate links on Facebook, including the mistakes to avoid, and how to do it the right way.
A. Why Use Facebook For Affiliate Marketing?
For one thing, Facebook is THE biggest social network in the world, with the number of active monthly users comprising nearly a third of the world’s population. You are likely one of those people.
For another, affiliate marketing can be a lucrative way of making money online by earning a commission for promoting other’s products.
To be successful at affiliate marketing, you need to promote your links to a wide audience, and on a variety of platforms. You need to go where the people are to make any money.
Hence, affiliate marketing and Facebook go hand in hand. Even if you don’t promote your affiliate links on Facebook directly, you can use it to increase traffic to your website or blog. Then, promote your links there, and get people to subscribe to your blog to increase your income through email marketing.
Social media is also one of the top ways to do affiliate marketing without a website. (Though, affiliate marketing with a website is highly recommended.)
If you aren’t using Facebook and other social media sites to build or grow your business and income, your business will be stunted, and you’ll get shortchanged on financial opportunities that you can start taking advantage of today.
Just find an affiliate program you want to promote, sign up or apply to it, and when (or if) accepted, you’ll be given a special URL to promote, and often other promotional materials too.
Then, if people buy the product using your affiliate link, (which will redirect to the merchant’s website,) you’ll be credited for the sale and paid a commission for it.
Affiliate marketing works best in conjunction with a website or blog, but at the very least you need a Facebook Business Page (or group.)
To create an engaged audience, don’t just promote random stuff, but choose a particular niche or topic you are interested, and promote products related to that niche.
Below we’ll get into specifically how to promote your affiliate links on Facebook.
C. The Two Strategy Types For Promoting Your Affiliate Links On Facebook
Available to choose from are two general strategic options for promoting your affiliate links on Facebook, and social media in general. Both may be necessary.
1. The Direct Method.
You can promote your affiliate links by sharing them directly on Facebook. However, certain restrictions apply to when you can do this that don’t apply to the second method.
2. The Indirect Method.
This is where, instead of sharing your affiliate links, you link to a blog post or other landing page that contains your affiliate links.
This is useful, not only for when you aren’t allowed to directly promote your affiliate links, but because it can be used as a non-overt way of selling products. At the same time, you can provide value to your audience, and potentially build your email list at the same time.
Now let’s look at:
D. The 7 Ways to Promote Your Affiliate Links On Facebook
Several options for promoting your affiliate links are available to you. Some do better than others.
Facebook Page vs. Facebook Group: What’s the difference?
First, I want you to be aware of the differences between a Facebook Page and Group.
While there is a lot of overlap, the key difference is in the level of interaction.
In a Page, you’ll basically just post things, and people will comment their reply, and you can respond if you wish. You can also enable a messaging feature.
But in a group, the level of interaction is much greater. Other people too will post and comment, etc.
Generally, the higher the engagement level, the better. But a large group can be more than you can handle alone, so you’ll have to hire moderators.
Another difference is the level of reach. Groups generally don’t suffer from organic reach issues, but pages do, so you may be forced to pay for ads to get followers for your page.
A third difference is that you can’t create a private community with a Facebook Page as you can with a group.
1. Promoting on Your Personal Profile
Everyone on Facebook has a personal profile, and you can’t do affiliate marketing on Facebook without one. So if you already have lots of followers, doesn’t it make sense to start promoting your affiliate links on your personal profile, right?
Well…it’s certainly the easiest way, but the least productive.
Your personal profile is meant to be personal, not a business. Your “friends” will probably not be happy to have their feed filled with your endless advertisements.
If you do promote affiliate products on your personal page, keep them few and far between. Also, sharing them indirectly through sharing blog posts may be more effective, since you’ll be providing them with useful or interesting content, not just promotionals.
But marketing on a Facebook Page or in a Group is preferable to using your profile.
Apart from your website (if you have one), your Facebook Page is the most important and prominent online profile representing your business or brand.
A Page gives you an official and authentic presence online.
If you want to build a business brand online, including an affiliate marketing business, then you need a Facebook page. It helps greatly with credibility, creates interest in your brand, and brings free traffic to your website.
Facebook Page FAQ
a. How should I use my Facebook Page?
Facebook pages are great for sharing updates, especially in conjunction with your website or blog, and sharing relevant articles, posts, videos, contests, quizzes, polls, or other content that is engaging and keeps your audience interested.
You can also share (and this is what you are more interested in) your related affiliate products.
But I just want to caution you against posting your affiliate products there too often. Facebook Pages already have issues with getting people’s attention. You need to regularly post engaging content, and keep affiliate posts secondary. (See the Pareto section below.)
But don’t worry, even your “engaging content” can be promotional in nature if you use the indirect method. For instance, sharing posts from your blog, or videos that contain your affiliate links in the description.
b. How often should I post on my Facebook Business Page?
There are no rules about how often you should post, and even the ‘experts’ don’t all have the same opinion.
I would say it largely depends on the level of interest in your Page, and how interesting content you share is.
Some people recommend posting once a day on average (up to 3x per day for a big business), others have success posting only 1-3 times per week. Whatever works for you.
But since the average lifetime of a Facebook Page post is just slightly under 24 hours, the once-per-day suggestion makes the best sense to me. It keeps you consistently in the audience’s attention (so you’re not forgotten), but not so often that it overwhelms them.
c. How do I start a Facebook Page?
NOTE: This is not a real Facebook Page. I’m just using it for illustration purposes.
Login to your Facebook account and go to the homepage.
Click the “Pages” tab from the menu on the left.
Then, click the “Create New Page +” button on the left.
Enter the required details, including (1) giving it a name, (2) choosing the relevant category, (3) writing a short description.
After that, click the blue “Create Page” button.
Add a profile photo and cover photo to your Facebook Business page.
Save your changes.
If you choose, you can then add other details about your business, including contact details, address, website, etc.
You can also change other settings, and add a CTA (Call To Action) button.
d. How can I build an audience for my Facebook Page?
1. Ask your friends to like your page.
You can send them an invite to like your page (via “Invite Friends” feature), or send a message to those you know would likely be interested in your page (based on their relevant interests) inviting them to like and share your page.
However, you won’t get a ton of followers that way. But if you’re just starting out and in need of an audience, any new followers help.
2. Expand your audience with paid ads.
Since organic reach is not high for Pages (thanks to Facebook changes a few years ago), one may need to pay for ads to get more exposure and engagement for your page and attract new followers. (One is inclined to suspect that this is intentional.)
Facebook Ad Center for promoting your Facebook Page.
You can promote your Facebook Page using Paid ads in the Ad Center. Enter it by clicking the “Promote” button on your Page.
3. Start a Facebook Group.
You can use both a Facebook Page and Facebook Group in tandem with one another. There’s no reason why you should be restricted to one or the other.
(More on creating and using Facebook Group below.)
4. Build from the success of other groups.
This doesn’t mean simply spam other groups with your page.
Rather seek to build credibility with the people in other groups, so when they see you are a valuable and helpful member they’ll be more likely to allow you to share an occasional link to your page or group.
Also, when you first join a group, Facebook allows you to join as either a Facebook Page or use your personal profile, so you can represent your business in a group.
5. Engage with your audience.
Providing great content and building a fanbase is also a wonderful way to grow that base, since your current followers will like and share your content, and invite others to join them in your page or group.
6. Email your list.
Invite the people on your email list to like your Facebook Page (and join the group, if you have one) to recieve updates and posts from you in their feed, and letting them know the benefits of following.
Additionally, you can include links to your social channels at the bottom of your emails.
As a sidenote, you can use your Facebook Page to build your email list. If you use Aweber’s autoresponder, you can integrate their service with your Facebook page. (I recommend this.)
7. Place Links elsewhere.
Includes links to your Facebook business profile on your website or blog, and your other social profiles. Even in your website’s menu.
8.Be mindful of SEO.
Make your posts search engine-friendly.
Put a long tail keyword at the beginning of your post title, and use keywords in your posts that other people are looking for.
Some Facebook groups allow promotion of your affiliate links, so that’s a way to do affiliate marketing on Facebook.
However, many groups will delete it as spam and may block you. So check the rules beforehand, and consider using indirect methods instead.
Also, it’s highly unlikely you will be very successful promoting in spaces that allow affiliate link promotion since the members are already inundated with other offers. There’s no reason to pay special attention to yours.
Rather than depending on other groups, it’s better in the long run to build your own group, and hence have complete control, and be able to dominate it.
A group can be used to increase interest in your brand and products, and other things you offer.
How to start a Facebook Group:
[Note: This is not a real Facebook Group. It’s just for illustration.]
Choose a niche for your Group: the topic your group is to be centered around.
When logged into your Facebook account, select “Groups” on the left of your Facebook homepage.
Click on “Create New Group +”.
Set the required details, including (1) your group name, and (2) whether your group is private or public, (3) visible to others or hidden.
You then have the option of inviting your friends.
Create a unique url, that includes your group name (if possible), so you don’t have boring numbers as your url.
Add a group picture and cover image. (This can include your logo.)
How to Grow Your Group
Most of the tips for building an audience for a Facebook Page also apply or can be adapted to a growing a Facebook Group. Reread that section if necessary. We will briefly recap some tips.
Invite your friends and email list.
Use SEO tactics.
Share your Facebook Group on your other social profiles and on your website.
Create engaging content for your audience.
Reshare posts from your group in another. (But don’t share the same thing in a bunch of groups at the same time! It could get treated as spam and get you in big trouble with Facebook.)
4. Affiliate Marketing With Facebook Ads.
a. Advantages of Facebook Ads
Facebook ads have the benefit of allowing you to be extremely specific in the demographics you target, including things like age, gender, location, and interests. They also have the advantage in that you don’t need to build an audience before promoting.
On the other hand, Facebook has very strict guidelines about what kind of ads can be displayed, what your images need to look like, and what kind of landing pages are allowed.
If you don’t want to be barred from using ads, or banned from Facebook, you’ll need to follow all the rules–to the letter.
Those rules prohibit, among other things, promoting Amazon and Clickbank products in ads. Nor can you boost posts that contain affiliate links.
It may be safer and more productive to use Facebook ads to promote affiliate links indirectly or use it to build your email list (which you can then use for marketing.)
c. How to Advertise on Facebook
To run an ad campaign on Facebook, you’ll need a Facebook Business Page, and an Ad account.
Once you have that, enter your Facebook Ads Manager by clicking “Advertising on Facebook” and then on “Create an Ad.”
Select the most relevant goal for your ad campaign under one of the three tabs labeled “Awareness,” “Consideration,” and “Conversion.
Answer the questions on “Audience,” “Placement,” and “Budget and Schedule.”
Add your ad material (ad copy, images,etc).
d. Be honest and realistic in your ads
Don’t make big, specific claims about things that depend on various factors. For example, promising guaranteed profits. Such ads may be deemed misleading and rejected.
5. Messaging Your Marketing
Using Facebook Messenger for marketing is not recommended in most cases, and randomly messaging people with your affiliate links can get you banned pretty fast.
It may be okay, however, in the context of a conversation where the product you are promoting is genuinely helpful to the other person or they have expressed interest in it.
Try also using the indirect method, but don’t spam with your website links either.
6. Sharing Through Commenting
Similarly, don’t spam with your affiliate links in Facebook comments. That will likely get you into trouble with moderation.
But affiliate links may be shared in certain contexts, like when a poster asks for help with something, and your product can truly help him, or when he is looking for that kind of product.
Just be sure to check the Group’s rules (if you’re commenting in one) to make sure they’re okay with that. (Some are; some aren’t.)
7. Boost Your Posts
The seventh and last way in which it’s possible to do affiliate marketing on Facebook is through boosting your posts to reach a wider audience.
But you can only do this using the indirect method. Boosting posts with affiliate links is not allowed. Instead, direct traffic to your blog post or another landing page.
Or take an even more indirect method and send them to a page that’s intended to create email leads (such as a squeeze page) so you can capitalize on it later through email marketing.
D. Rules, Tips, and Best Practices for Affiliate Marketing on Facebook
1. Disclose your affiliation.
Both Facebook and the FTC require that you add a disclosure to your affiliate promotionals. This is true also for Twitter and Instagram, and even your own website.
But don’t worry about having to write a lengthy disclosure that takes up too much room. You can simply use a hashtag such as one of the following: #affiliate, #affiliatelink, #afflink, #ad, #CommissionEarned, etc.
2. Include Relevant Hashtags.
While hashtags aren’t as widely used or popular on Facebook as on Twitter, they can still work to improve your post reach, engagement rate, and click-through rate.
Just don’t go overboard and load your post with as many hashtags as you can think of. That would have the opposite effect intended. 3 to 5 hashtags should be sufficient.
Moreover, the hashtags should be relevant to, and preferably worked into, the post itself.
3. Employ the Pareto Principle.
In order to keep interest in your Facebook posts, apply the 80/20 rule. Let 2 out of 8 posts be promotional in nature, and the other six focused on providing interesting content.
If all you do is promote products, you’ll bore your audience. Instead, focus on providing them with a variety of content, including videos (and video reviews), images, articles, quizzes, contests, polls, giveaways, or wherever your creativity leads you.
Adding photos to your posts is clearly one of the best ways to increase your engagement rate.
Tip: Create an image gallery containing attractive photos of the product your promoting, followed by an effective review of the product, and link to that product using your affiliate link.
5. Never spam.
Never post your links where they are not allowed.
Nor should you randomly post your links without context. Do you think people are likely to trust whatever random links they see on social media? Especially if it’s a long confusing URL with random numbers and digits?
That’s clearly not an effective promotional method.
6. Clean up your links.
Along the lines of the latter note, consider using a link shortener or Cloaker to clean up your affiliate links.
Some link shortners also provide you with tracking software and other features.
Alternatively, “cloak” your link using a custom URL starting with your domain name. It looks more professional and trustworthy that way.
As a WordPress user, I use PrettyLinks for cloaking affiliate links, one of the most popular and easy to use plugins of the kind.
Just remember to check the affiliate program terms to make sure they allow it. Some don’t. Notably, Amazon forbids using link cloakers or shorteners.
7. Use Tracking Software.
Consider using tracking software to measure the success (or not) of your campaign and use that data to strategize for more efficient campaigns.
There are a number of good affiliate link tracking software available to you, including ClickMeter, Voluum, and PostAffiliatePro.
8. Pin Popular Posts.
The nice thing about having a Facebook Page or Group of your own is that you get to control which posts get the most attention.
E. Start a Website and Set Up a Blog.
I think by this time you realize the necessity of having a website, and a blog in particular, in order to take full advantage of affiliate marketing opportunities on Facebook.
It’s even more important because you have full control over it, unlike Facebook, which can change its rules at any time and crush your business if you rely entirely on it.
Fortunately, it’s quite easy to create your own website and blog.
Install WordPress in one click (using the above domain/hosting services).
Choose a theme for your website, and customize it. If you don’t like the free themes, get a professionally designed WordPress theme from EnvatoElements.
Having read this post, you have now learned all the methods open to you for promoting your affiliate links on Facebook.
Be responsible, build relationships with your audience, and get posting!
You can succeed, but the important thing now is to get started.
So let’s get moving!
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(If you’re new to affiliate marketing and looking to get started, or are trying to understand the key terms and concepts, see our previous post here.)
I. What are “Affiliate Links”?
Since we’re going to spend the rest of this time learning looking at ways to promote affiliate links, let’s make sure we know what we’re referring to and how to acquire them.
When you sign up for an affiliate program, you are given a unique URL (exclusive to you) that contains your referral ID or username.
When people click on an affiliate link, they are redirected to the sales page (usually containing promotional material) on the merchant’s website.
Here’s a couple of examples from my affiliate links:
[Clicking on the affiliate link redirects to VidScribe’s website.]
Affiliate links also install a cookie in the visitor’s browser (when clicked) which enables the merchant to give credit to the affiliate for the sale. Unfortunately for the affiliate, if the customer blocks or rejects the cookies, he likely won’t get credit for the sale.
II. Ways to promote your affiliate links on your website
Do you need a website to do affiliate marketing? No, but you’ll be missing out on a lot if you don’t have one, as you’ll see when reading this guide.
Here are the top ways to do affiliate marketing on your website.
1. Writing blog posts or informative articles
This is one of the best methods overall. It gets you plenty of search engine traffic, provides readers with a lot of value, helps build your credibility, and gains the trust of your readers. So they are more likely to follow your recommendations and buy the products you are promoting (AKA, a higher conversion rate.)
What to do: Share your affiliate links in your blog posts by recommending products in your posts or integrating your links with your content.
This is a subtle, but popular and effective subtle promotion method. Many people look for product reviews when interested in buying a product because they want to learn more about it and hear other people’s experiences with it. Often this will influence their decision on whether to buy it.
What to do: Write a review of your product sharing your experience with it, giving your honest views on it, what you liked about it (or didn’t, but be careful with the latter). Give an overview of the product’s outstanding features, and direct the user to where and how they can buy it, or learn more about it on the merchant’s website.
[Speechello: Example of a product review page for affiliate marketing.]
3. Product Tutorials/How-To Guides
What to do: Write an in-depth guide on how to use a product or some feature of it. This is especially effective if you thus showcase the product’s use and features as the solution to a problem, to help your reader do something they want to get done.
4. Product Comparisons
A product comparison is like a mini-review of several products focusing on their similarities and differences in chosen aspects.
What to do: You can use a product comparison to highlight the advantages of certain products over others or to demonstrate the uniqueness of each.
A checklist is one common product comparison method.
An affiliate banner ad is a clickable image (ad) that contains your affiliate link.
Some affiliate programs provide you with premade banners. All you need to do is add the code to your website. If you use WordPress, you can do with the Custom Html block (or Shortcode).
III. Ways to promote your affiliate links that don’t require you to have a website
1. Email Affiliate Marketing
Your email list is your most valuable asset. Building an email list allows you to contact your audience directly and personally without depending on search engines and social media algorithms, hoping your audience will see your content. It’s one of the most profitable forms of marketing.
What to do: Create a landing page (you can do that with Aweber or Leadpages) offering some valuable freebie (like an ebook) that they can receive only by submitting their email address. This kind of landing page is called a squeeze page, and the offer is called a lead magnet.
If you’re a newbie and looking for an easy way to get started, Covert Commissions provides you with done-for-you squeeze pages and done-for-your automatic email campaigns promoting your affiliate links. All you need to do is add your Affiliate ID in your dashboard and connect your autoresponder (like Aweber).
If you have a website, you can use pop-ups as well as landing pages.
And yes, you can do email marketing even if you don’t have an email list of your own. No, I’m not talking about spamming. That will get you in plenty of trouble. I’m talking about running email solo ads and safelist marketing.
a. Solo ads
One of the best places to buy solo ads is Udimi. It gives many sellers to choose from, showing their average conversion rate and other ratings. It also gives you free live-time tracking for all clicks on your links. Even better, you can choose to have them write the solo ad for free if you don’t have your own.
b. Safelist Marketing
A safelist is a mutual mailing list for marketers. Since all the members have agreed to receive marketing emails, they can’t get marked as spam.
The major downsides of using safelists are that (1) you will receive a stream of emails in return that can quickly take up your time, and (2) with all the other marketing emails they receive each day, you’ll get a much lower conversion rate. But I guess you get what you pay for, and it’s usually free to join.
For the second reason, I would advise mostly advertising free products to generate leads for building your own email list.
You must go where the people are if you are to succeed. And nearly half the world’s population uses social media. If you’re not using social media to promote your business, you don’t know what you’re doing.
Two different methods of promoting your links on social media are available to you.
1. The Direct Method: This is where you directly share your affiliate links and pitch a sale.
2. The Indirect Method: Send them to a landing page (such as a blog post, or product review) to learn more, and this page contains your affiliate links.
What to do: Share posts on Facebook in groups, in your bio, and your regular posts. Some groups allow you to promote your affiliate links but be sure it’s ok so you don’t get banned from the community.
You’ll be more effective if you regularly share posts that provide value to your followers/readers, rather than just annoying them by spamming their feeds.
Tweets being as limited as they are, you may want to use the indirect method instead of sharing your links directly. You can also add your affiliate website to your bio.
3. Instagram
As popular as Instagram is, it’s a bit trickier to use for marketing than others. Only those with 10 thousand or more followers can share links in their feed, put links in your bio, and direct people to go there.
Reddit apparently does not allow for affiliate links, so use the indirect method on Reddit and link to your blog posts or landing pages that contain your affiliate links.
Try to be helpful when sharing links, as simply link-dropping will not be appreciated.
5. Medium
Medium allows affiliate links, but you must clearly disclose your affiliation on whatever page you share your affiliate links on. It’s not the most affiliate-friendly platform, but it’s popular enough to give you a good chance at making sales.
3. Video Platforms
a. YouTube
YouTube being the second largest search engine in the world, you don’t want to miss out on using it. In fact, for many YouTube is their primary way of making a living.
What to do: You can promote your affiliate links as resources in your video descriptions, or with popups during the video. Use YouTube to create product reviews or tutorials.
b. Rumble, Vimeo
Vimeo and Rumble are YouTube alternatives and Rumble allows you to monetize your videos.
c. Webinars (or live videos on social media)
Webinars have the highest conversion rate of any marketing method. If you’re trying to sell a high-priced product, your best bet is to do a webinar on it.
You don’t have to go live if you don’t want to. Many webinars are pre-recorded and replayed multiple times.
d. Never forget to share your videos on other platforms as well.
4. Advertising (besides Solo ads and safelists)
a. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
With Search Engine Marketing, you’ll pay for ads that will appear at the top of the search results when people search for certain keywords.
You must verify that it is allowed in the terms of the affiliate agreement since some affiliate programs strictly prohibit you from using keyword bidding to promote your affiliate links.
b. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
In addition to SEM, you can pay for other ads for your affiliate links. You can purchase PPC ads from Google and social media platforms.
c. Free Advertising methods
In addition to safelists, you can get free advertising for your affiliate ads or banners.
You can either get a set amount of credits per month or earn ad credits for viewing other’s ads.
d. Traffic exchanges
What to do: For every site you visit, you get that many guaranteed visits to your site.
To do this, you’ll need to join a network like Traffic Splash.
5. Ebook
A clever way to promote your affiliate links is through an ebook. If you offer the ebook for free, it will serve double-purpose as a lead magnet as well as a marketing tool.
If you’re looking for an easy way to make and design ebooks (including some DFY), I recommend using Sqribble.
Not a writer? No problem. Affordably hire someone on Fiverr to write an ebook for you.
6 & 7. Comment on blogs and forums
Only provide your affiliate links in blog comments if they are relevant and helpful, else you likely won’t get past moderation or spam filters. Even then they may not allow it, so it’s better not to link directly.
The same applies to commenting on forums.
8. Referral link sites
Some websites allow you to share your referral and affiliate links directly on their platform. In fact, that’s the whole purpose of their platform.
With Invitation, you can easily share your affiliate links and get free traffic automatically. It’s like a social media site for link offers. Sign up here.
Conclusion
Have any other ideas? Let us know in the comment section below! And don’t forget to subscribe and share this post onsocial media!
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