Do you know that you can start making money online without owning your own product? We call this the affiliate marketing business. An affiliate marketing business is a good business for anyone to start online. This is because you don’t need to create your own product and handle customer service issues. All you need to do is to create a landing page for affiliate marketing and send traffic to the affiliate product page.
Once they complete the purchase, you will be credited for the sales and get paid commissions.
Sounds good?
The business idea might sound simple, but not the execution part. See how much I mention the word business here. Affiliate marketing is a real business. Sending traffic and getting sales are one. However, the business part is the most important for a long-term sustainable affiliate marketing business.
When you only focus on directing the traffic to the affiliate page directly, you are not controlling anything in the entire sales process. You don’t know who are the potential customers, who are interested and who still needs time to decide. You only know the number of traffic sent and the purchase rate, if any.
Instead, the importance of the business is to own your customer. You are not growing by sending them over directly to the product owner. You are building their business only. In fact, you need to know who clicked on your link and whether they bought the product or not. And if they didn’t, why didn’t and can you follow up with them to get them to complete the purchase?
This is all-important to increase your revenue.
You don’t need to double your number of leads to earn more. You can do it by merely increasing your closing rate and average cart value.
This is why, most affiliates create a bridge between their traffic source with the affiliate product page to capture their contact details. It can be a bridge page, squeeze page or a sales funnel. And you can have some pre-sell on the affiliate products before sending them to the product page.
Today, we will be sharing what you need to know on how to build a high-converting landing page for affiliate marketing.
What is an Affiliate Marketing Landing Page?
A landing page is a web page that is designed for new visitors to land and take a specific action. Each landing page should only have one goal to either make a purchase, subscribe to a newsletter or sign up for a service.
If you have a different goal that you need to achieve, you can create a series of landing pages and link it up to a sales funnel. This is to ensure your potential customer is taking a small decision on each page which leads to a bigger purchase at the end of the sales process.
For affiliate marketing, the goal of the landing page is to collect their contact information and pre-sell them the product before sending them to the affiliate product page. This is to ensure that if anything happens, whether they make a purchase or not, you still can follow up with them to build relationships and nurture them to be your loyal and then, recurring customers.
So, when you are running a traffic campaign for your affiliate marketing business, instead of directing them to the affiliate product page, you are sending them to the landing page. And in the landing page, you are going to offer them a free or low-ticket offer to incentivize them for giving you their contact details.
If you are able to break even for your customer acquisition cost with this front-end offer, that’s great. You now can run more traffic campaigns to collect leads as there is no budget required anymore.
Why Do You Need an Affiliate Marketing Landing Page?
Most new affiliate marketers will just sign up with the affiliate program and send traffic to the affiliate product page. While this does work to get sales, it’s not sustainable and not effective.
When you are sending traffic directly to the affiliate product page, there is no controlling point for you. You are just another traffic source for them and they pay you the commission for the sales. You are growing their business, but not yours. They own the customers but not you.
This is why, the affiliate marketers come out with the landing page to collect leads and pre-sell the product before sending them to the affiliate product page. Then, from here you will have visibility that how many people landed on your landing page from your traffic source, and what is the successful sales rate for your marketing campaign.
And then, if they click on your ad and registered but do not complete the purchase, you can now follow up with them and persuade them to complete the purchase.
Besides, you can have a second page on your landing page to pre-sell them your unique offer. This can help to differentiate you from other affiliates. As an affiliate marketer, you are fighting with other affiliate marketers selling the same products. Hence, you need to give a reason for your potential customers to buy from you but not another affiliate.
Not only that, there are some social media platforms that will block direct linking to an affiliate product page from their platform. By building a bridge in between, you can avoid violating their user guidelines for running an affiliate marketing campaign.
How Affiliate Marketing Landing Page Works?
Normally we will be using a two-page sales funnel for the affiliate marketing landing page. The first page will be the lead generation page where we will sell the low ticket or free offer in exchange for their contact details. And on the second page, we will be sharing a bit about what they can expect from the affiliate product in the next step and what we are providing them exclusively if they buy from our link.
You can see here why we have a two-page funnel we want to simplify the action taken on each page, limiting it to only one per page.
Two-Page Funnel for Affiliate Marketing
This is how the two-page funnel or the squeeze page funnel look.
On the first page, you will have a compelling headline to hook them to look further, then a subheading to further explain the offer. Next, you can have a short video or image to illustrate what you are offering them. And finally, an opt-in form for them to enter their contact details and submit to you.
For some cases, if you want to persuade them further to take the free offer, you can add other sections like testimonials, and explanations for the products offered if required.
For the free or low-ticket offer, it can be an ebook, report, cheat sheet, guide, webinar, or online course. No matter what you offer, it should be something that they can act on and get fast results.
And on the second page, normally it will have only three things. The video, the CTA button and a list of free gifts you are bundling with the offer if they buy from you.
So, if they are interested, they can click on the CTA button to get to the affiliate product page. If they like the product and offer, they can then order directly. And if not, you can start sending them follow-up emails to persuade them to complete the purchase.
Tips for Successful Affiliate Marketing Landing Page
The different landing pages will work for different goals and target markets. Depending on your industry, and target customers, the product you are promoting, your landing page will be different.
In basic, your landing page shall consist of an eye-catching headline, a subheadline, an image or video sales letter, an opt-in form and a CTA button. At this point, you don’t need to add too many things on your first page as your goal here is getting leads, not selling them the actual product.
Below are some tips for successful affiliate marketing landing pages:
1. Keep it Simple
The key to a successful landing page is to keep it simple. You don’t need lots of things on the page for it to look fancy. People will get distracted by the complex design and get confused.
When they don’t know what to do, they will normally just leave.
This is why you need to keep it simple and get your visitors to click on the CTA button and submit their contact details.
First of all, it should be a mobile responsive design that can adjust and fit different screen sizes, like laptops, tablets and phones. People will visit your page from different devices, and you want to make sure they are able to view your content perfectly.
Next, the typography. This includes your font size and font colour. Depending on your branding colour and background colour, you need to make sure your words are easy to read. This means the font size is big enough to be viewed and the colour of the font is obvious when you have background colour for your page.
For example, if your background is a dark colour like grey or dark brown, a white font should work well.
2. Follow the AIDA principle
In your landing page, you should follow the AIDA principle to convert them as well. AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action.
It starts with your headline. The headline should be attention-grabbing with a strong hook to grab your visitor’s attention. The hook is to get them to continue reading your message.
There is only a couple of seconds for you to grab their attention and decide whether continue reading or not. If your headline is not working, they will just leave without ready your page.
Headline Formula for Your Landing Page
In your headline, you can use the headline formula to write an attention-grabbing headline like How to [Achieve X Goal] without [the pain].
Under the headline, you can have a short paragraph to further explain the headline and tell them why they are at the right place and you have the exact solution they need for them.
Their pain point can be anything they want to solve in life. This is why for creating an effective marketing campaign, you need to first understand your target audiences. Focus on studying as many details as you can for them and use that in your copy.
Next, after they go to the next section, it’s time for you to show the solution you have for them. The last solution they need to solve their problem. And of course, the solution should be a compelling offer that they really need.
This means, on your first page, only explain your free lead generation offer to collect leads. And only on your second page, do you explain the affiliate offer.
Show them what the solution can do, but most importantly, present them with the hidden benefits that they will get with the solution. And also, the additional offer or value that you provide to them if they purchase from your link.
And finally, the most important is the call to action button to get them to click and submit their contact details or direct them to the affiliate link. Never assume your visitor knows what to do. Even they know, you should always guide them to do what you want to do. It doesn’t matter if you make it obvious. Your goal here is to get them to click and reach the affiliate page.
3. High Converting Sales Copy
Since you are promoting the product, but not selling it, you don’t need a long sales copy explaining everything about the product. It will be on the affiliate product page.
Your task here is to tell what is the problem you are going to solve for them and why this is the best solution for their problem. And most important, your key differentiation from other affiliates.
Why should they buy from you if it’s the same product and the same price they are paying?
The additional value that you provide.
Something that they won’t be getting if they are buying from another’s link. And in general, your offer should be so good that no one can beat it. Hence, the focus of your landing page should be precisely sharing the benefit of buying from you but not a long sales copy that they don’t need to know here.
They will get all the product sales copies on the affiliate product page. You just want to inform what to expect on the next page. What’s on the affiliate product page and the benefit of buying from you?
4. Engaging image(s)
People don’t like to read long words. And a picture is worth a thousand words. By having relevant images to your sales copy and the product that you are promoting, you can attract your potential customer’s eyeballs to continue reading.
Not only that, it is more attractive to have an image or video instead of a landing page full of text.
5. Affiliate Marketing Link
Depending on the affiliate marketing platform that you use, there will be different formats for the affiliate link that sometimes look weird. However, the reason for the affiliate link to be long is that it needs to include your tracking code inside.
You can use the link directly or mask it with your branding so it will look more natural with your personal branding. However, it is not advisable to use a link shortener to mask your link. By using a link shortener, it is harder for your audiences to know what you are selling.
No matter what link you are going to use, make sure that you test all your links before sending traffic to them. You want to make sure they are 100% working before sending traffic to them to avoid wasting your money on something that doesn’t work.
6. Affiliate disclaimer
No matter whether you want it or not, you need to disclose that you are promoting an affiliate product. This is legally required by the Federal Trade Commission. If you are sharing about a product, how well it works and recommend someone to buy it, you need to disclose it because it might influence their decision to buy that product.
Always disclose your relationship with the product owner when you are promoting to avoid any legal issues. You can embed the affiliate disclaimer on your posts, sidebar or at the bottom of the page where people can see it easily.
7. Split Test Your Landing Page
No matter how good you are at crafting the landing and offer, you still want to test different variations to find the best working one. You are now facing a big group of customers worldwide. Based on your experience and understanding of your customer preference, you can craft something good. But you don’t know how they will react to your new landing page.
Hence, it is always a favourite to split-test your landing page to ensure everything is optimized.
Final Thought – Creating Successful Affiliate Marketing Landing Page
Affiliate marketing is not something that will get you rich overnight if you are just starting out. There are many false perceptions by some gurus that want to sell courses only. With a good mentor, you can shorten the learning curve but it’s not an overnight success. You need to build your skill and experience to get a huge success.
You can start building your first landing page for affiliate marketing today with ClickFunnels or other landing page builders. It is important to have a squeeze funnel to capture your leads to get success in your affiliate marketing business.
