Driving prospective leads to your business can manifest itself in many ways. The traffic may come as a direct result of their first interaction with your brand or advert. Alternatively, the traffic to your desired landing page or offer URL may come following several interactions later.
Regardless of the circumstances, online traffic to your affiliate business can be broken into three categories;
- Hot Leads – People that are ready to complete the conversion right there and then.
- Warm Leads – Consumers that are significantly interested but may need some encouragement.
- Cold Leads – Prospective customers who have only just become aware of the brand.
Your traffic can come from many sources. The list of potential interactions includes social media posts, search engine results, a Google My Business listing, PPC ads, outbound links, referrals from friends, scanning a QR code, and more.
While the knowledge and interest levels may vary from one prospect to the next, the best approach is to assume that the majority of leads will be cold leads at the time of taking the first steps onto either pathway within the funnel map. This ensures that you run zero risk of losing leads due to assuming they have a real understanding of features or USPs.
Creating the content and advertising elements needed to resonate with your target audience is a massive assignment in itself. Once you get it right, though, the next step is to establish your Lead Magnet.
Let’s face it; the online marketplace is a fierce playground. While the potential audience is undoubtedly greater than ever, the same can be said for the competition. The products you are hoping to promote and sell aren’t the only items of their kind on the market. Likewise, you probably aren’t the only affiliate marketer trying to put the goods in front of a customer’s eyes.
So, if you want to turn a cold lead into a hot lead (and subsequent conversion), you need to incentivize them! Lead magnets are the answer.
A lead magnet is essentially a tool that draws a prospective lead to your business. It provides the motivation for them to choose your advert over any other on the market and turns their awareness into interest. If you want the lead magnet to work, it’s vital to think about what the client actually cares about. In short, the answer is ‘themselves’.
As such, your lead magnet should promote a sense of getting extra value for money. The best value comes from getting something for free. It’s important that the content enriches their lives in some way, which could mean educating them on a subject or providing some form of entertainment.
Lead magnets can include content you’ve curated (legally) through Private Label Rights products, which can consist of eBooks, infographics, and more. Another option is to send them to videos or other public content. Given that you need to ensure that leads will follow your pathway instead of the road built by another affiliate, it’s probably best to create your own. Podcasts, PDFs, and visual content are all good examples.
An effective lead magnet might not directly convert a sale, but it is a crucial feature for turning cold leads into hot leads. This is because they can influence a prospect’s mindset in several ways, including but not limited to;
- Encouraging them to associate you with value for money.
- Showing that you are an authoritative voice in your field.
- Proving that you aren’t only interested in the sale, and want to help them.
- Helping them to discover the benefits for themselves rather than forcing them.
- Allowing them to digest info and make decisions in their own time.
A good lead magnet will help a customer transition from being aware of the product to being interested. It also encourages them to respect you as a seller. You won’t be ready to clinch the sale just yet, but you will be a whole lot closer.
Squeeze pages are a relatively easy concept to understand, and equally easy to build. They are the lead capture pages in which you ask a client to opt-in and provide their details. This could be in return for further information, private subscriber content, or special offers.
Before worrying about the content of your squeeze page, you must first decide what type of information you want to obtain from the lead. After all, most people are a (rightly) a little precious about their personal information. Good examples of contact details you should ask them to supply are;
- Name.
- Email address.
- Telephone number.
- Social media pages via ‘Likes’ or ‘Follows’.
- Postal address.
As an affiliate marketer, you’ll probably focus on their name, email address, and social media channels. This will provide you with all the details needed to move them along the path to conversion. It’ll also ensure that they will see future ads and content in relation to this product and any subsequent items that could be promoted.
The squeeze page itself, then, could appear on your website as a landing page or as a social media pop-up screen. Either way, simplicity is king. You do not need to give too much away at this stage. Instead, try to promote one key feature or celebrate one problem that the product can solve. When they are intrigued or ‘hooked’, they will be happy to provide their contact details in return for learning more.
Patience is a virtue in modern marketing, and bridge pages are the ultimate example.
Once you have captured a lead’s email address or social media contacts, it would be tempting to send them straight to the offer. However, the use of a bridge page is statistically shown to boost your hopes of converting the sale. The primary objective of the bridge page is to build an even stronger relationship with the lead. At this stage, they are already a warm lead, but the bridge page could turn them into a hot one that’s ready to convert.
The bridge page could include a range of media types such as videos and infographics to express your points. This is also the opportunity to go into far more detail about product USPs and how it can improve a client’s life. Examples of content that may appear on the bridge page include;
- Reviews and feature analysis,
- Training and ‘how-to’ guides,
- Unboxing videos,
- Product in action content,
- Customer testimonials.
All of the above concepts can be used to further cement the connection shared with the lead. In addition to sending interest levels through the roof, the bridge page is crucial for building further trust. Where possible, showcasing your personality is advised. People still buy from people, even in the absence of face-to-face interactions.
At this stage of pathway ‘A’, the prospect can be sent to the offer page.
When the traffic comes courtesy of pathway ‘B’, a Thank You page will be added to the equation. It comes after they have downloaded free content from your homepage’s email capture box or a designated landing page. This page can appear in pathway ‘A’ too, if the material presented from the squeeze page comes via a download.
The thank you page shows an added sense of professionalism and can, crucially, send them to the lead magnet or bridge page too. After downloading the free content, most clients need guidance as to what they should do next. The actions you suggest could include;
- Look at an affiliate offer.
- Follow your social media page.
- Sign-up to a membership.
- Discover more through blogs or video content.
- Contact you for more info.
The thank you page should be fairly straightforward, focusing on showing a little gratitude and clear instructions on what they should do next, even if it’s not buying the product just yet. A thank you page that transfers a prospect from pathway ‘B’ onto pathway ‘A’ is equally effective.
The offer page is where you will present the product to the hot leads with the ‘Buy Now’ instruction. The CTA can be worded differently, but your aim is to achieve the conversion at this stage. By now, the client should have more than enough info to make a decision – and the fact they have reached this far without abandoning the potential transaction suggests that you can get them over the line.
In many cases, the offer page URL is a link to a product page on the advertiser’s retail site. Therefore, the design and cart software is handled by them. Likewise, they will manage the order fulfillment procedures. Thanks to the use of the tracking URL, the sale will be attributed to your sales funnel, ensuring that you gain the commission.
