Affiliate marketing is an Internet marketing technique where a seller delegates marketing activities to multiple independent affiliates who are paid on a per-performance basis.
The partner places the affiliate link in the content on his information channel. These are special links that redirect users from the partner to the merchant's website and indicate that the user was referred by that partner.
The key factor that introduces users to a product and motivates them to make a purchase in this marketing scheme is content. Not only the profit of the partner, but also the profit and reputation of the merchant depend on what content will be like whether it will convince the user to click on the affiliate link. Therefore, it is important to approach this issue with all seriousness.
Creating engaging content for affiliate marketing means creating content that has:
1. Correct title
Whatever the format of the material is, the title is the first thing the user sees before clicking on the publication — whether it is text, video, or audio. No matter how informative your content is, readers won't bother with a boring title that doesn't relate to a keyword or topic of discussion. It's best to create a title that includes a keyword, adds a bit of intrigue, and clearly explains the value that readers can expect from the material.
2. Optimal size
Texts are considered the main tool of affiliate marketing, but in recent years users often choose visual content. Sometimes it's easier to watch a video or listen to a podcast than to spend 10-20 minutes reading an article. And when creating content to promote a product, such things are very important to consider. For example, 93% of buyers in the B2B market of English-speaking countries prefer short formats: videos — up to 1 minute, texts — up to 5,000 characters or small slide shows. And this trend will continue, given the incredible information noise, the speed of life of modern people and the popularity of new multimedia platforms.
3. Good visuals
In many cases, it's easier to make affiliate sales with video content because users can see the benefits of certain products or services first-hand. For the same reason, any text content should be supported by high-quality visuals. It is no wonder they say that it is better to see once than to hear a hundred times.
4. Personalized
We all like to be treated special, don't we? When messages or any content are addressed solely to us. Isn't that an amazing feeling? This is what is called personalized content. Personalization starts with understanding your audience. What you need to know is what products customers are buying, what brands they are interacting with, and usage rates for certain platforms or devices. One way to use this data is to segment based on audience preferences. Over time, you can create relevant content for each segment.
For the same purpose, there is a need to conduct A/B testing of content and product positioning. You can educate yourself and your advertising partners about what really works for your audience by using different messages.
5. Relevant
Regardless of campaign or brand goals, content must be meaningful, relevant to the real moment, current and actual for the audience. And now — the secret for those who are looking for content topics. Look for them on forums like Quora, they often ask questions that have not yet been sufficiently discussed on the Internet. And also analyze what your competitors are talking about or not talking about. If your content will answer the relevant questions of the audience that no one else is answering, this will have a very positive effect on the traffic.
6. Structured
The way you structure your content makes a big difference to your audience. Users close the text before reading paragraphs that take forever. Therefore, it is necessary to divide the material into blocks and sections, each of which reveals its own subtopic. It will not only help to keep a person's attention, but also simplify the visual search of the text. By the way, logical structure is important not only for texts, but also for videos and podcasts.
A captivating introduction acts as a hook to capture the audience and prepare them for what follows. However, the introduction should be short so that the audience won't lose interest halfway through. The sole purpose of every sentence in the introduction is to get people to continue reading the material.
The main information should refer only to what may interest the target user: product features, benefit, advantages of ordering from the merchant.
And any video or text should end with a short summary. Make the conclusion as accurate and complete as possible. Repeat the main points to remind the audience what they need to take away from your material.
7. Interactive
Most of the information presented on Internet resources does not represent the value for the consumers that would make them use the material and use it a second time. The passivity of such content is also worth mentioning — its perception does not require additional actions from the user, as a result of which attention is distracted and the content is almost not absorbed.
The productivity of interactive content consists in actively inviting the user to take specific actions — for example, write a comment, save the material in bookmarks, share it with friends. Tests, surveys, contests, interactive infographics, calculators, etc. can also make the material interactive. Interactive methods help users not only better understand the service/product, but also psychologically make them motivated to make purchases.
8. SEO-friendly
It means carefully crafted and optimized using various SEO techniques to attract and retain the attention of readers and search engines. The content should benefit both site visitors by answering their questions and search engines by helping them understand the content and give it a high ranking. This includes the use of keywords, references to authoritative sources, and the uniqueness of the text. This is especially true for blogs and landing pages that users usually find using search engines.
9. Personal experience
This is how the human brain works — we trust personal experience more. So using a first-person point of view about a product is a great way to talk about it. Affiliates have the right to point out the pros and cons of an affiliate product and create honest reviews about why they like or dislike certain products. You can use most of the review to describe the advantages of the product, to mute any flaws, but you can't be dishonest about the product — the truth will come out sooner or later, but then its consequences will be impossible to predict.
The more the content meets the given characteristics, the more effective the affiliate campaign will be. And Transaction Cloud with its special feature for partner networks management is always ready to convert the effect of quality content into real money for both SaaS product merchants and marketers. Each click on the affiliate link in the affiliate material will be taken into account, each purchase — documented, all commissions — deducted on time. Affiliate marketing with Transaction Cloud is the best way to promote software and digital products in the modern Internet space.
