Win-Affiliate-Contests - DIGITAL GLOBAL

Promote the Right Products

A lot of affiliates make the mistake of promoting every launch that comes along, or they’ll promote a product simply because it pays a huge commission. While that’s understandable, it’s not going to get you to the top of the affiliate leaderboards unless you just happen to hit it right.

See, you have your traffic source. It might be your list. It might be your blog, or your website, or social media. But your traffic source is unique. No single email list, no single blog, no single traffic source of any kind, is exactly like another. Your traffic follows you for a reason.

Let’s say you have a list you built selling products about self-publishing. There’s a huge new release coming up for an SEO product for bloggers. It pays a huge commission. You’ll get rich, right? Not necessarily.

Some of your users won’t be interested at all. They only use self-publishing to make money, and aren’t at all interested in SEO.

Others might be slightly curious, or maybe even fairly excited about the hype for this product, but they see the price and balk. Or maybe the sales page just doesn’t do it for them.

Others may be interested, and may even buy. But those people probably won’t be enough to help you win that affiliate contest.

It’s a lot more important to promote products that are a good fit for your traffic source than it is to chase those huge commissions. That’s not to say a product that isn’t tightly related to your main niche can’t do well, because it’s certainly possible if the creator has done a good job with the marketing. But generally it’s better to pick and choose only the best products that are most likely to fit with your audience.

Remember, if you’re really working your list right, you’ll be sending out more quality content than you are promotions. You’ll be offering your list value on a regular basis, so they’ll be opening your emails often, and even looking for your messages.

Same thing if you’re using other traffic sources like blogs or social media. You’ll be offering those people more value than promotions. Otherwise, they won’t come back, right?

This means it’s important to promote only those products that your audience will really find valuable, and those that you believe they will be happiest buying.


Before the Product is Live

If you want to win an affiliate contest, it’s important to start preparing before the product is live. You need to jump in before most other people in order to prepare your audience.

The pre-launch phase is a critical time, because it gets the hype going and gets people excited even before the price is revealed. This is important, because a lot of people will scroll past the sales page to find out the price of a product, and won’t even read the sales page if they think it’s too expensive.

When you start promoting a product before it’s officially released, people won’t yet know the price, and they will be able to get excited about the product first. Not only that, but you’ll be able to have your list prepared for the release—watching for it—before promotions officially begin.

So what are some methods of promoting a product before the product is live? Let’s take a look at a few ideas.


Webinars

Webinars are one of the most powerful selling methods, because you have the opportunity to give people a taste of what a product is all about without them having to pay for it.

Think of a webinar not as a selling tool, but as a free sample. Don’t just hold a webinar to sell, sell, sell. People will quickly leave that type of webinar, and you’ll have no chance at the sale.

Instead, try to offer a lot of quality information. You won’t want to give away everything, obviously, but you can give people enough of a taste that they think, Wow, if the webinar was this good, the product must be amazing!

The most effective type of webinar is one that includes the product creator/owner. You and the owner can create the webinar together, or you can create it and have the owner approve it, but it won’t be as effective without that person there.

People want to hear directly from the product owner, because they’re the one with the information they’re trying to sell. If you tried to hold one on your own, people aren’t as likely to show up. They’ll believe it’s nothing but a sales pitch.
Reviews

Yes, it is definitely possible to put up a product review before a product is released. If you have a decent source of traffic you can prove, most product owners will be happy to give you a review copy of their product so you can get a review up before the official launch.

The best way to get a review copy is to contact the product owner and let them know what you want to do. Tell them how much traffic you have, or

how many list subscribers. Tell them you want to do a review of the product before launch as part of your pre-selling strategy.

Some product owners won’t do this if they don’t know you, but many will. If you can get a review copy before launch, your review will be a great way to drum up hype before the launch.

Not only that, but you can get search engine traffic to your review, as well, if you post it on your blog. That way, as soon as people start hearing about the product and they search for information, you have an opportunity to get them onto your list.
 

 
Hype Emails

It’s important to start developing hype for the product before launch, and the best way to do this is to start mailing your list about it. If you don’t already have one, building it while promoting a launch is perfect. You can create a short report or video that goes along with the product and give that away free to start building your list. Once users are on your list, you can start promoting the launch by building hype.

A good way to build hype before launch is to start posting teasers about the product. (You’ll want to get the product owner’s permission to do this, of course. He or she may want to see what you post before you post it.)

Teasers are either excerpts from the actual content, or previews about the type of content included.

They don’t always have to include actual content. Sometimes just telling people some of the things they will learn, or perhaps some of the results of beta testers, is enough.

Let’s say the internet marketing product you want to promote had 50 beta testers, and 13 out of the 50 made over $50,000, and 45 out of the 50 made at least $5000. Those are great results! This is the kind of information people want to hear—actual results.

Sometimes there won’t be beta testers, and there won’t be any kind of proof from users before launch. In that case, you can publish (with permission) actually excerpts from the product, or the results the product creator had that led him or her to develop the product.

The more you build hype before launch, the more sales you’re like to get once the product officially goes on sale.

At Launch

Once the product has officially launched, it’s time to start pre-selling. Pre- selling is all the things you do before the user arrives at the sales page, and these things help increase conversions significantly.

You may ask why you need to do any pre-selling at all. After all, shouldn’t the product sell itself? Shouldn’t the sales page be enough?

Well, partially. Obviously the product you promote should be a great product, and it should have a sales page that will convert. But keep in mind that your audience may not know this product owner. They trust you. They may not trust this product owner yet.

By doing a little pre-selling, you’re helping pass the trust your audience has in you onto this product, and onto the product owner. (That’s why it’s so important to promote only those products you know are quality.)

Let’s look at some ways you can promote a product effectively at the time of its launch.


Be On The Ball

The moment the product goes live, you need to be ready to send out your first email. Don’t wait! If someone sees the product first via another

marketer’s email, they may buy it through that person’s affiliate link and you’ll lose the sale.

If you’re promoting a new launch, you have to be ready to send out your email the moment the product goes live. Even if you know exactly when it’s supposed to be live, don’t schedule the email. Things happen. Launches get delayed. Just be ready to send it out at a moment’s notice.


Bonuses

Bonuses have become the new big standard in affiliate marketing, especially in competitive markets like internet marketing. These days, some people actually “bonus shop” which is when they look to see which marketer is offering the best bonuses before they buy a new product.

So what if you don’t have anything good you can offer as a bonus? You can either buy PLR and included, or (ideally) create a bonus.


Creating a bonus has three distinct benefits over PLR:

1. Anything you can create will probably be better quality, and have higher perceived value than any PLR product you could buy.

2. You can later sell that bonus, or include it with something you sell, as an individual product. Or you could use it as a lead magnet to get people to opt-in to your email list

3. You can tailor the bonus very tightly to the product you’re promoting.

Let’s say you are promoting a product that teaches you how to make your own marketing graphics like headers and banners with Photoshop. A fantastic bonus would be a bunch of Photoshop resources like gradients, layer styles, and templates.

If you can’t find any that would work well and have PLR or resale rights that allow them to be used as a bonus, you could create them yourself. Which brings to mind a fourth benefit of creating your own bonus—it will be exclusive to you, and no one else could offer it as a bonus.

Pre-­‐Selling

You’ll probably want to do a fair bit of pre-selling in order to increase conversions. Pre-selling is relatively simple. If you’ve seen the product before you start selling it (and ideally you should to be sure you’re promoting only the best products) you will know where the sales page is lacking. Perhaps it focuses too little on a particular aspect of the product that you know would be important to your audience, or maybe you feel it doesn’t present information in the best order.

Pre-selling will let you present the features you think would be most important to your audience before they even visit the sales page, helping to increase conversions.

Be Consistent

Consistency is especially important when promoting products that have a higher price tag, which generally happen to be those with the best prizes for affiliates. You can’t expect to send out one message and win an affiliate contest. It’s about hammering that message in repeatedly.

This might sound counterproductive. You might think your audience will tire of hearing about the same product over and over. Some might. But it often takes seeing the same ad or product about three times before someone decides to purchase, especially for big-ticket items.

Consistency is also important when you’re participating in every stage of the launch. You need to keep up each step of the process, from doing pre- launch marketing such as webinars and reviews to post-launch marketing like sending out emails and offering bonuses.

You can even act like you’re doing your audience a favor by letting them know about the product in advance of the launch, and then reminded them about it once it has officially launched. Technically, if the product is good, you would be doing them a favor. Especially if the product is limited and likely to sell out quickly, or is being offered at a discount.

If you really want to win that affiliate contest, it’s vital that you keep hammering your list. Obviously you don’t want to promote too much. But you’ll want to send a minimum of three emails for each launch.

1. The pre-launch announcement about the coming product.

2. The announcement the product is live.

3. A follow-up to remind people to buy, and let them know if the product is close to selling out or the launch discount is almost over.

You can certainly send more than three emails, but those are the ones you should send at bare minimum.

If you’re like to send more than this, here’s a good schedule:

1. The pre-launch announcement about the coming product.

2. An announcement about your upcoming webinar for the product.

3. A reminder right before the webinar.

4. A reminder the day before the product goes live, with an announcement about your bonus or bonuses.

5. The announcement the product is live.

6. A follow-up to remind people to buy, and let them know if the product is close to selling out or the launch discount is almost over.

As long as these emails are spaced a day or two apart, people are most likely not going to be upset about the frequency of emails, and this will give you the best chance to win the contest.

Don’t give up just because you see a huge lead on the leaderboard. You may discover that the top two or three marketers on the leaderboard the first day or two later drop because they don’t send follow-up emails, giving you a chance to jump ahead of them if you are consistent and send out those follow-up messages.


No List? No Problem!

So what if you don’t have a list to use to promote the product? Perhaps you have only a blog, or maybe you’re using social media to promote products. No big deal. You can use the product launch to build your list!

Some product owners will actually provide you with a lead magnet and pre- written autoresponder messages to use to promote the product. You can use these to build your list, or you can create your own.

Let’s say you have a blog or Facebook fan page in a particular niche, such as internet marketing. You can start promoting the product on those pages, perhaps reaching people who would otherwise not know about the product at all. Then you can start pre-selling the product just as you would if you already had a list.

You can tell those people that if they want more information about this product, they can sign up for your email list to find out when it’s launched and what special bonus you’re offering to people who buy through your affiliate link.

Also, people who have already heard about the product may go to the search engines to find more information about it. You can use this as an opportunity to get more traffic by posting your review online and making it searchable.

Be sure to use this page as an opportunity to build your list. Put an opt-in box on the page that offers your free lead magnet that is related to the product, and let people know they can find out the minute the product is launched by signing up to your list.

Don’t forget to let them know you’re offering a bonus or bonuses, especially if your bonus is something exclusive they can’t get anywhere else!

Conclusion

If you’ve always wondered how those super affiliates seem to win affiliate contests time and time again, you don’t have to wonder anymore. You’re now equipped with the same tactics they use (and some they probably don’t!) You can do exactly what they do!

Remember, consistency is key. You’ll want to promote the product at every step of the launch, including before the launch, at launch, and after the launch. Follow-up promotion is vital, because you’ll keep people reminded about the product and give them more reasons to buy.

Even if you don’t have a list, you still have a chance to win an affiliate contest. It’s like the story about the tortoise and the hare. It’s not necessarily about being the first to promote the product, or having the biggest list. It’s about the methods you use, and how consistent you are. 

Maybe you won’t win every contest, and that’s okay. But the harder you try, the more often you’ll find yourself winning, and ultimately, it’s all about those sales, anyway!

Best of luck!