What are you selling and who are you selling it to? This isn’t a rhetorical question, I really want you to answer this.
In GREAT detail.
You need to spend your time talking to those who are legitimate buyers of your products. You need to spend your time and money talking with those that are looking for what you have. No one else. The only way to do this is… to know who those people are and why they want that product!
So, you’ve found a great product to promote. Maybe other affiliates are doing really well selling it and you’re jumping in, or maybe you’re promoting a promising product early on. Whatever your strategy is, you’ve done your research and you’re confident with your product. You have your campaign of choice ready to go. You just need to fire it up and get the traffic coming in.
How many times have you reached this point and then been disappointed with what happened next? Maybe a trickle, maybe nothing. Maybe a lot of traffic but no leads and no conversions. Maybe just a few but not consistently.
Or worse yet, maybe you make some changes that generate more traffic and some leads and conversions, but you don’t know why. To me, that’s the worst. To actually get results and not know how to duplicate it!
You have to take the time to research your product and your audience. What are the benefits of the product? What’s the problem it solves? Who are the competitors and how does your product compare to them? Who is currently buying it? Why?
Know your product inside and out. Then research who the buyer is. How old is he or she? What’s their income? What do they do for a living? What problem does this solve? What keeps them up at night? How can this help? Where do they live? Married, single, kids?
And those are just the basics.
Knowing these details allows you to craft a campaign clearly aimed at helping them out. People don’t respond to generic, cookie-cutter ads. They respond to the ads that speak to them directly. They respond to the ads that have them thinking ‘that’s me. They’re talking about me’ and ‘this could be what I’ve been looking for!’
You build Trust and Credibility. Enough to get that initial conversion, and even more importantly, to establish yourself as an expert in that niche. Which means return business and repeat customers.
To really get this down, I like to create an avatar. Instead of just researching demographics and turning my customers into statistics, I like to create a persona.
The stats are necessary, absolutely. But then you want them to come to life. You want to be able to imagine your prospect’s daily life. The good and the bad.
For example, an avatar for online marketing could be Rob, a 35 year old married father of one kid, a boy. He works a 9-5 in the finance department of a local company and has been there for 5 years.
For the past year, he’s been dabbling in online marketing in his free time. He doesn’t really enjoy his job anymore and doesn’t know if he wants to stay in that career, anyway. He’s hoping that he can build a decent side income doing online marketing part-time. Right now, he’s thinking of just saving the extra money he’d make. With his living expenses and kid, there’s not much left to save at the end of the month with his regular paycheck. They’re not struggling or poor, he knows that and he feels blessed. But still, living paycheck to paycheck for the most part, and not saving as much as he’d like makes him feel uneasy about the future.
If he could exceed his current salary doing online marketing, he thinks he would definitely quit his job and just work from home. Maybe find a partner and build a business out of it down the line.
But, right now he’s still getting his feet wet and learning. He’s spent a lot of time learning and trying different things online. He needs to learn how to create consistent, dependable income online., etc.
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And so it would go. You want to understand all aspects of your prospect. Make him well rounded. Make it personal. And when you create your campaign, you’ll have a ‘real’ person to personalize it for.
That’s how you’ll connect. That’s how you’ll the build trust and credibility that will set you free as an affiliate marketer.
To Your Success,
Adel
Adel (‘Oddle’) is a longtime internet marketer and online marketing coach. Far from perfect, he has spent many years (and many dollars) learning just about every mistake there is to know when it comes to online marketing… all just so you, dear reader, won’t have to suffer through that same agony.
He now works online full time, doing things the right way. You can visit his newest blog – www.RecruitingForMLM.com – for more helpful information, to contact him or to add his Facebook page and follow him there!
