Every affiliate marketer is searching for a higher number of conversions and more money in the bank, but not every affiliate marketer is working smart. If you are looking for tips to optimize your campaigns then you’ve come to the right place. We’ll show you some of the most important things you need to be doing to help your affiliate campaigns make conversions.
Read on to find out how to increase your affiliate marketing sales and skyrocket your commission.
How can keyword research increase affiliate marketing sales?
The first thing you need to do when starting any affiliate marketing campaign is keyword research, and that’s why it’s the first thing we are focusing on here.
Keyword research might be the difference between a high-converting campaign and one with a negative ROI. When you are doing your research focus on your target audience and their search intent. One place to start is with navigational, informational, transactional, and commercial keywords.
Keep in mind that these keywords are being used to find the answer to a specific search query. So if you answer your visitors’ questions you are more likely to get the affiliate sale or other conversion in the case of lead gen. This will put you above your competitors that opt for a broad strategy of focusing on generic keywords in your niche.
The more specific you are with answering your audience’s questions via search engines the more likely you will get your desired conversion.
We have some intent keyword examples here:
- Navigational: sports shoes amazon, men’s shoes Nike.
- Informational: men’s sports shoes Zalando, sports shoes for women, best sports shoes 2021, indoor sports shoes.
- Transactional: cheap sports shoes for girls, sports shoe deals, men’s sports shoes sale.
- Commercial: buy sports shoes, sport shoes 24h delivery.
Each of these allows you to target your marketing message to the audience on the(search engine results page) SERP. Each of your users may be at a different knowledge stage of the product that you are advertising so it is good to include enough information about the product on your landing page.
If you keep the keywords at the heart of your affiliate marketing strategy, you are already on your way to boosting your affiliate sales, as you are giving your audience exactly what they are searching for.
Find keyword campaigns that convert!
Why should every affiliate marketer conduct experiments?
In order to maximize the chances of success of your campaigns, various experiments need to be conducted. By this, we don’t mean you need to make a Frankenstein’s monster of a campaign.
Instead, you need to test everything; whether that’s your traffic source, copy, images, or affiliate marketing tools.
This is made easier via automation these days, as you can set up split tests automatically within your campaign to see which of your landing pages, for example, leads to the most conversions.
To be clear it would be best to experiment with the following aspects of your campaigns:
- Copy and design of your landing pages
- Different affiliate products within your niche
- Every affiliate marketing tool e.g. Landing page builders, Spy tools, Ad Trackers, etc.
- Affiliate programs
- Affiliate Networks
- Traffic Sources
After you have found what works best for your campaigns, you can go to the affiliate forums and share what you have learned, and compare it with other affiliate marketers in the industry. You might learn about a new affiliate marketing tool or other optimization technique that you can experiment with, and hone your craft.
Learn about which Affiliate Marketing Tools to experiment with next!
Can automation help you make money while you sleep?
Another way to increase affiliate sales, or at least decrease the amount of money being spent on campaigns that don’t convert, is automation. Automation helps you with that passive income you’ve heard so much about. By allowing you to make money while you sleep while targeting GEOs that you do not live in.
It also helps save your campaigns from burning your entire budget before you get back to your computer if you walk away for a moment.
Another thing that can make your life easier is rule-based optimization (RBO). This is available on every Zeropark campaign and allows your campaigns to be auto-optimized based on the rules you choose to set. You can have up to six instructions that suit your needs for each particular campaign.
These instructions are IF-THEN which means if a certain criterion occurs within the campaign then an action is performed automatically.
For example:
IF a target has more than $2 spend and ROI is less than -15% within the last five days THEN pause.
This is RBO in its simplest form and is helpful whether you are a beginner new to the affiliate world, or an affiliate expert. That’s why Zeropark has it offered in all campaigns. All you need to do is set the payout amount of your offer and tailor-made rules will be created for you.
If you have any doubts, you can always contact Zeropark’s support team, and don’t forget about our dedicated blog post on Rule-Based optimization.
Optimization isn’t just about automation though, you will need to analyze your campaigns properly if you are going to find where you are making most of your money in your campaigns.
Read about making money while you sleep with automation optimization!
Why do you need to analyze everything?
Analyzing everything that goes into your campaigns will likely seem like a monumental task, but if you start when you are a beginner it will help you learn where, and why a campaign succeeds or fails.
Campaign analysis really will save you in the long run, as you should treat every campaign, as an opportunity to learn how to increase your affiliate sales. One thing that will help you to analyze your campaigns is an affiliate ad tracker (like Voluum, BeMob, Binom, LandingTrack).
These affiliate ad trackers will help you track the referral made by you to the customer that purchases your affiliate products/services from the company selling said products/services. And once this is tracked and attributed to you they will get working on sending over that sweet commission you are owed for the referral.
Voluum will help you out with analyzing which traffic is converting and which is not and it integrates perfectly with your Zeropark campaigns.
If you want to get really technical with your campaign analysis you can use a site like Crazy Egg to give you a heat map of your landing page and see where your visitors are clicking. This gives you the opportunity to make adjustments as you learn more from your mistakes than successes. Having said that though you can compare a successfully converting landing page heat map with your new test landing page and see where to improve.
The more data you analyze the more time it will take you to find a converting campaign but once you do you can keep up with the winning formula and boost your affiliate conversions.
For a list of the best affiliate ad trackers in 2021 click here!
Why should you base your actions on conversions?
This may seem obvious after being told to analyze every aspect of your campaigns but the most important thing you need to focus on is the conversion rate. This is why having an affiliate ad tracker is important, it can show you how your conversions increase or decrease when you make a minor change to your campaigns.
If for example, you have 400 visitors to your offer page and only 4 clicks on your link to your product, then this means you have to change something.
Keep the customer in mind and put yourself in their shoes. What makes them want to click on your product offer? Then spring off of that need you are fulfilling. Again think if there is something that would dissuade a customer from clicking on your affiliate link. Then take action to remove anything that might not help increase your conversion rate. Seems simple, right?
This is why you should base your actions on conversions and learn when to pause and change something, or simply kill your campaign. This comes with practice and you will get used to which things affect your conversion rate in no time. If you can get the hang of this then you will be one step closer to increasing your affiliate earnings and seeing those green results in your campaigns.
Avoid making these 7 common mistakes Affiliates make by clicking here!
Stay within your niche but diversify your products
We’ve said it once, twice, we’ll say it a thousand times, sticking to your niche is the golden rule of affiliate marketing. Here’s a list of the most popular affiliate marketing niches to get you started on picking which one is right for you.
Once you’ve chosen one that you believe you can become an expert in then, focus all of your attention on it and what works best for the audience in this niche. Landing pages that work for the nutra vertical aren’t necessarily going to work for a crypto offer. That’s because the format for both and the needs of the target audience in terms of information before purchase are completely different.
Do you see now why sticking to one niche might make your life easier? Well, we do.
Trust us it will increase your sales in the long run.
Learn the difference between
Affiliate Networks & Affiliate Programs!
Keep records of your images and copy
Being organized will be a shortcut to success in the long run. This comes from keeping records of images relating to your niche categorized, so you can find them quickly and update your campaigns with relevant pictures when needed. Having a bank of frequently used calls to action (CTAs) will also help you create catchy landing pages in minutes. Focussing on copy that converts, will be key to your success, there are a couple of ways you can learn which phrases convert best though.
One way is to use a spy tool like Adplexity which will give you a sneak peek at your competitor’s offer and landing pages to see what they are running and what is likely to be converting best. The problem with this is that the market quickly gets saturated with similar ads which can get repetitive for the target audience quickly.
So, we suggest you take a course on catchy ad copy and stick to your keyword research in order to create something original.
Failing that, there are always people that can help you out for a small fee on websites like Fiverr, where you can ask for custom images, or copy, that will be original and more creative than you might have been able to achieve on your own. This also gives you time to focus on your affiliate marketing campaigns.
If you want to learn more about landing page builders click here!
Is there more to learn in affiliate marketing?
In short, yes. There is always more to learn in the world of affiliate marketing, whether you are a beginner, or you are a seasoned affiliate veteran.
You will learn the most from your own experience, but there are plenty of ways to learn from other people’s mistakes too, in the form of courses offered by other affiliate marketers.
Super affiliates like Colin Dijs offer comprehensive step-by-step courses on how to make money from your affiliate marketing campaigns. So, if you are looking to increase your affiliate marketing sales then these courses are a great place to start.
You can of course always stay up to date with what you need to learn by following your favorite affiliate marketing blog posts too.
For example, you can learn how to read data and which metrics you need to focus on to see your campaigns make you more money. And that’s just a 10-minute read, and you’ll no doubt have learned something new, that you can use in one of your future campaigns.
Want a refresher on affiliate marketing?
Get a better understanding here!
Why should you reinvest your affiliate income in yourself?
As we have already said, you need to learn as much as you can about affiliate marketing, in order to understand which niche is right for you, and which will be the most profitable. This comes at a cost though, which is considered as a learning budget. This learning budget can be compared to the start-up costs for a business or getting yourself a college education. But don’t forget, a return on investment is still the aim of the game.
As well as using your profits to be reinvested in your next campaign you can use it to be spent on learning materials such as lessons from one of the super affiliates. As we have already said, many of the most successful players in affiliate marketing offer courses that share their secrets of success, so signing up for one of these is the next best thing to having your personal affiliate marketing mentor to guide you to sky-high profits.
You’ll no doubt learn something that can be applied to your next campaigns and in doing so increase your sales, even if it is to be more confident in yourself, as a lot about succeeding in this industry is having the right characteristics to succeed.
Another way to potentially meet one of these super affiliates is by reinvesting your affiliate income in affiliate marketing conferences. These conferences are a great way to meet other like-minded affiliates with whom you can connect and share tips.
Invest in yourself is by attending affiliate marketing conferences!
Why should you follow the trends in the market?
Some trends stick around and some are gone in a matter of weeks. You need to know which products are hot for your target audience and which aren’t worth your time.
But you have to be careful as some products in particular affiliate marketing verticals come back stronger than a 90’s trend. So, you need to make sure you keep up with affiliate marketing news on any of the popular affiliate blogs like Mobidea Academy AffLIFT’s articles. Or, you know? This one.
Failing that check Google Trends, or spend some time on the affiliate forums to keep your ear to the ground, and find out what people are really making money on.
If you stay with Zeropark we will show you how to boost your sales during each peak during the affiliate marketing calendar, including some exclusive deals which you won’t see anywhere else.
Are you hungry for more of 2021’s top trends? Read here!
Do you need to sign up for an affiliate marketing community?
Another thing that will help you with keeping up with the trends in affiliate marketing is joining an affiliate forum or community. There are also pages on all of the important social networking sites dedicated to affiliate marketing, so, you might find your community on your favorite one too.
For example Facebook groups like Do You Even Affiliate. And these FB groups can be viewed as a limited free trial of their forums which often have a subscription cost attached to them.
We recommend that you check out some of our favorites, like affiliatefix, Dijs Forum, or i Am Affiliate, affLIFT, STM which are worth their weight in gold when you find tips on optimizing your campaigns.
So to answer the question above, yes, you do need to sign up for an affiliate marketing community as you might just find some tips to increase affiliate sales in your business.
Learn more about Affiliate Communities here!
Conclusions:
If you make sure you have done even one of the things mentioned in this article, you should be on your way to increasing your affiliate marketing sales.
Hopefully, you have found a pearl of wisdom that will lead to gaining more conversions and wonderfully optimized affiliate marketing campaigns. If you have let us know on the affiliate forums, or by clicking on the leave a reply button at the bottom of the blog.
Are you ready to boost your sales?
Start with traffic that converts now!
