Your Affiliate Sales Depend on Content

Affiliate marketing and content marketing are inseparable. Good content is required for successful affiliate marketing. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for SEO Ranking or using paid ads, compelling content is a must. Content is everywhere: ad copy, emails, blog posts, advertorials, sales pages, and more.

Nobody goes to a website looking for a sales pitch. People search online for information or entertainment. Most of them don’t plan to buy, and they won’t be convinced to. From online courses or caskets to cars and cruises it’s all the same.

People go online to research first. They search for reviews, tips and tricks, or even alternatives. They don’t know what they need or want, not specifically anyhow. They have an idea and are looking for fulfillment on that idea, not a product or service.

A website that lists cruises with buy buttons isn’t going to help this person. Instead, give them information about the cruise. What amenities does one provider offer over another? Is the food on one cruise line generally spicier than on another? The entertainment more engaged with the audience? These questions can lead to engaging content, which can lead to more people seeking out your site.

Once they’re on your site getting this good content, a link at the end for the preferred cruise line, or links to each one in the review, has a much better chance of being clicked on. Your content lead to an affiliate commission where a generic banner with a price would’ve been ignored.

Here are 5 pointers for creating content. Prevent your content marketing from falling flat and boost affiliate sales by keeping these in mind when creating content.

* Relevance
Your content must be relevant to the product or service you’re promoting. If you’re generating leads for kitchen remodels focus on materials used in remodels, what the current trends are in kitchen design, or how new kitchens add value to homes. These are just ideas, the point is for the content to stay relevant.

* Interest
While it’s a whole post, course even, there are some tips to maintain interest. One of the best ways to make interesting content is to weave a story. Another option is to have a top ten list or compare the best and worst traits. However you do it, avoid content reminiscent of a university lecture. Dull content leads the reader to yawn and click off the page. There goes your sale.

In today’s age of metrics, everything can get worse. Search algorithms track when people don’t stick around on sites and they will stop serving those sites up. Avoid this with interesting content.

* Engagement
Today’s marketing currency is engagement. Volume just isn’t enough anymore. Social media rewards engagement. Youtube rewards engagement. Even entertainment platforms are all about increasing engagement. Watch for reactions and comments on your work. Better yet, encourage it. Get active in responding. (In a healthy way, ignore the trolls.) The more you do this the more your audience will get to know, like, and trust you.

* Age
Content is not like wine, it tends to get worse with age. Just as people change, so does everything else. Create new content to replace out-of-date info, or just rework old content with some new language if it’s still relevant. A good content publishing strategy will allow you to keep up with the times which increases your chances of earning from it.

* Reliability
Have you heard of “Fake News?” We all have. Skip hype and overblown statements. Keep to the facts in your content. Strive to make it trustworthy and useful. This not only allows you to sleep well at night, it builds a rapport with your audience which ultimately leads to more sales through that audience.

Keep these five pointers in mind as you create content. Not only will you stand out in a crowded market, but the traffic, conversions, and sales other marketers focus on will follow.