It’s always great to generate new leads for your affiliate marketing program, but every experienced business owner knows that it’s never easy (or cheap) to attract new customers. Instead of fretting over new marketing methods to grow your customer base, you should look towards your affiliates’ existing visitors and focus on increasing conversions from that group.
One important element that you should improve upon for conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the landing page. Before you do get started, you should get in touch with your affiliates. Brief them about your plans so that they can take the necessary steps in making their content and affiliate links consistent with your enhanced landing pages.
Once you’ve communicated your intentions clearly to your affiliate network, you can begin implementing the tips you’ll read below.
Keep Visitors Focused
When people find their way onto your landing pages, you want their attention to be focused squarely on doing the one thing you want them to do on that page. If you want them to subscribe to a newsletter, don’t give them any links to other pages on your site or stuff a long article within the same page. Just place the form with easy-to-follow instructions.
By doing so, you place them in a mindset that has them concentrating on accomplishing one goal. They won’t be distracted by anything else that would lead them out of the page, thereby increasing your conversion rate.
Shoot Straight with Your Copy and Design
The very moment the page loads up, the visitors must know exactly what you can offer them. You have to capture their attention with a value proposition that’s both clear, useful, and of course, honest. There are many different ways of writing a compelling headline such as posing it as a question that your product/service can answer, and using the phrase “How to” in the beginning.
You can have a short summary of how your offer can help visitors. Include the biggest benefits to elaborate on your headline’s promise, keeping it to a concise bullet-points list of three to five items.
As for the overall design of the landing pages, it’s best to keep them as clutter-free as possible. Your layouts have to guide the visitor’s eyes in a way that directs them from reading the headline to the benefits and to the call-to-action button. Contrast your colors and the size of the copy with the button so that the latter stands out from the former. Make the copy on the button specific so they know what will happen once they click on it.
Simplify the Process
The forms that you require visitors to fill out should be as simple as possible. You don’t have to get all the information from those signing-up at once. In fact, you run the risk of people not completing the conversion if you ask for every single detail in one long form. The name, the email address, and probably one phone number should suffice.
Make the labels for the input boxes clear, and they have to be aligned correctly for no confusion. Provide an example for tricky data like phone and credit card numbers, or limit the characters that can be typed in. If you really need a lot of information from the visitors, break up the form into multiple pages with a progress bar indicating where they are in the form-filling process.
It also helps if you allow them to go to previous pages without having them start over an entire page if they leave it.
Include Real Recommendations
To help overcome any worries your prospects might have about the quality of your product, ask those who’ve already tried out your offer to vouch for you through testimonials. People are more likely to trust a human face than your own marketing, so make use of your happy customers to be your brand evangelists.
Just don’t settle for generic phrases that sound phony. Get them to write a more detailed testimonial that outlines how exactly your product benefited them, and include their business titles if possible. It would also greatly help if your business has been mentioned by mass media channels or if you’ve partnered with well-known companies. Request their permission to use their logos. Above all else, don’t be tempted to get fake reviews on your site, as that can lead to a PR disaster if you’re exposed.
Match the Message
Quite possibly the most important thing to keep in mind when updating your landing pages is that it has to make a connection with the page where the visitors came from. It’s only logical that when you click on a link that tells you how you can make money online, the page you end up on has to provide you the way. If you get anything other than what you’re expecting, you probably wouldn’t even bother sticking around to read anything on the page.
Talk to your affiliates about where they place the affiliate links. You have to know if the content on the page linking to your landing pages prepare visitors properly for what you’ll be selling them. If you want to target specific audiences to take specific actions, start creating more landing pages that are customized to their expectations.
Conclusion
Optimizing landing pages never quite ends, as you can always find one element of your landing pages that can be tweaked to bump up your conversions. Introduce changes bit by bit so you see which parts work and which don’t, and keep on testing.
Did I missed any points? Which method you’re using to boost your affiliate marketing sales?
