General Affiliate Marketing | Finch Sells

Are You Telling Or Are You Selling?

Oct 25 2010

Because there’s a big difference.

Good sales copy is an art that’s slowly being forgotten. Lost under the piles of misinformation about traffic sources, how to get the best CTR and whatever else is the current flavour of the month on Affbuzz. I get the distinct impression that affiliates are forgetting the method in their madness. The fact that wherever they buy traffic from, however many eyeballs they drag to a page, you still have to sell the god damn product you’re promoting.

A successful affiliate campaign is like a jigsaw puzzle. You can have all the traffic sources, all the hottest products and all the best ad ideas. But if you don’t piece them together correctly, you’ve got precisely jack shit. And in my opinion, the piece that keeps getting confined to the affiliate’s peripheral vision is the sales copy.

I don’t think many affiliates are actually that competent when it comes to selling what’s in front of them. And it makes perfect sense because, well you know, not many of us went to marketing school. I sure as hell don’t have a degree in the art (or any other art for that matter), but I have taught myself to appreciate the importance of creating a sales funnel.

And so should you.

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in the UK we’re currently facing a spending crisis where you’ll often hear the term “we need to do more with less”. In a slightly different way, I think affiliates are going to soon hijack that quote and apply it to their own businesses. Prices are rising on traffic sources and it’s no longer as easy to get the same CTRs as you were scoring twelve months ago. So you’re going to have to make the most of your advertising outlay. And the best way to do so, in my opinion, is to stop publishing such shitty amateur landing pages.

Stop assuming that x amount of clicks will equal a sale, no matter how good or bad your landing page happens to be. Start working with the mindset of “How can I maximize the likelihood of a conversion with every single click?”

Good sales copy isn’t only noticeable in it’s ability to turn features in to benefits. I won’t waste my time explaining why that’s important. I’m sure most of you already know. But good sales copy is also adept at highlighting the potential stumbling blocks that could prevent a sale – and then eradicating them from the reader’s thoughts.

This is even more important than selling the benefits of a product. You have to be aware that before you make a sale, or a lead, the reader is weighing up two sides of an argument in his head. “Do I stand to gain more by using this product/service than I stand to lose by not using it?”

Unfortunately for you, nearly every potential customer is more inclined to find reasons NOT to buy a product than he is to find reasons why he should. We’re a generation that’s so trained to the monotone world of advertising that it takes a significantly greater number of incentives to outweigh the modern day consumer concerns.

Now you could argue that the acai berry craze proves the argument to be wrong. There was no shortage of buyers there, right? But I’d attribute the acai boom to some incredibly misleading advertising which sufficiently weighted the argument – for those dumb enough – in to making the risk worthwhile.

Look at three of the biggest concerns to the potential customer, and how affiliates neutralized them to eventually force the sale:

Customer thinks: Well, it sounds like it costs a lot of money to buy these wonder supplements and they might not work.
Affiliate says: Not at all! You can have a FREE trial to see for yourself.

Customer thinks: Well, they sound amazing. But has anybody actually tried them and seen results? Where can I find a review?
Affiliates says: I’ve got a dirty great flog with your name on, baby.

Customer thinks: Okay, it’s cheap to try and people are seeing good results. Why is this the first I’ve heard of it?
Affiliates says: Have you not SEEN my “breaking news” YouTube video? What about my box of copy and pasted “As seen on” TV channel logos?! Pretty sure you’ve just had your eyes closed all this time, fatty.

The way to nail that conversion isn’t to explain extreme weight loss in four weeks, list a bunch of exotic ingredients and hope for the best. But to ANTICIPATE what concerns the reader is reacting to as he/she reads through your copy. And if you can pinpoint the source, you can blast those concerns out of the water.

Before I promote any new product, I like to brainstorm as many questions as possible that a potential customer would have. And sometimes you have to dig a little deeper to really understand what’s going through your target market’s mind when you sell to them.

For example, I was doing a little background research to see what would stop a Facebook user from installing a dating application. I learnt more from that research than I ever learnt from posing the question “what do you look for in a dating application?”

One of the things I discovered was that a large percentage of younger users didn’t want to install a dating application in case their friends found out on their profiles. They didn’t want to be seen as virtual dating sad-acts of the twenty first century. It’s something I would never have worked in to my ad creatives before, but armed with the information, you can probably imagine some of the aggressive sales copies I came up with to combat the fears.

When you’re creating your sales funnel, it’s important to place yourself in the reader’s shoes. And don’t be afraid to ask questions that shoot holes in your existing sales copy. Your sales funnel is effectively a corridor heading towards the conversion. The reader normally can’t be bothered to play along and is looking for the first exit out of there. Poor sales copy leaves doors wide open for the reader to justify leaving at any time. It’s your job to keep those doors bolted shut and direct them towards the end of the corridor where your money is made.

The Batshit Crazy World Of Fiverr

Oct 01 2010

Just a few weeks ago, I received a message about the merits of Fiverr.com as an option for outsourcing the shit that I’d normally be too embarrassed to outsource.

The Fiverr concept is simple. What would you do for five dollars? Given that my blog readership, according to Alexa, is stay-at-home males earning over $100,000/year, my guess is probably not a lot. I could hand you five dollars and you’d probably wipe your ass with it, buy a Justin Dupre LP, burn a month’s worth of traffic on Friendster…or whatever.

Five dollars is nothing to an affiliate. But unsurprisingly in the climate we live in, there are a lot of college students out there who will do some crazy ass shit for five bucks. They won’t even think twice about it. And after spending just five minutes browsing through the weird and wonderful listings on Fiverr, your little affiliate nostrils should be standing on end from the waft of opportunity.

Fiverr is a wet dream for cheap monkey labour.

I have no idea how we reached the subject, but just last night over dinner, my girlfriend was telling me how she’d used Fiverr to send some poor bastard to college with the link to her fashion blog pasted on his head. Literally, scribbled across his forehead. It only cost her $5 for the cranium-based plug, but how many eyeballs would it reach? There can’t be too many college kids going to class with a website scribbled across their face.

Now upon inspection, you’re going to find that a lot of Fiverr is somewhat retarded. There are freeloaders looking to make a fast buck by selling you things like “A poem for your sweetheart, just $5!”. Well, I’m sorry, but if this is the sort of thing you’d buy, I pray that you be scammed until the cows come home.

Dig a little deeper and you’ll see a few interesting proposals like this:

Offline marketing

This dude is willing to get off his ass and deliver your fliers across a city in the name of five bucks. How much do you get paid for the average dating lead?

I was linked to a very interesting article by Phillian on Twitter about a company that built an entire empire with lawn signs. If you haven’t read the story, you really need to. It’s a classic example of how offline marketing can be executed quietly and effectively for insane riches. I haven’t delved too deeply in to these possibilities on a personal level, but one look at Fiverr and it gets the mind racing.

I see countless opportunities every day to advertise across campus sites and reach hundreds of eyeballs. One particular member is happy to pin your flyer to twenty different noticeboards across a university site. And for just five dollars? Well, you don’t need me to do the maths for you.

It’s not just cheap plugging that Fiverr is good for. Take a look through the category listings and you’ll see plenty of opportunities for grabbing cheap audio soundbytes, professional looking videos and christ knows what else.

I was particularly interested in the audio voiceover offers. Pay $5 and you can have some raspy sounding stud muffin spit out your acai berry transcript with the audio eloquence of Michael Buffer in his youth. Anybody who does PPV should be able to relate to the trend that landing pages with audio tracks are MUCH more effective at capturing the user’s attention. Unfortunately my accent is far too English to get away with recording homemade soundbytes. I resemble a sort of lobotomized robot from outer space to the average American ears. It would capture their attention for all the wrong reasons.

For other affiliates, there are opportunities on Fiverr to snap up legal and customized dating images. Some women are happy to accept $5 to take a picture of themselves holding a sign in front of some low budget webcam.

I doubt it’ll be too long before some poor bitch is forced to smile at her reflection of “Looking For 25-30 Year Old Guys”.

I guess all you need to know about Fiverr is that it’s a mixed bag. You will find money stealing scammers, no doubt. But you’ll also find some creative souls without a penny to their names who will do some good work for five bucks. And failing that, you’ll find some willing slaves ideal for the donkey work you’d normally have signed, sealed and delivered straight to a hut in Venezuela.

Check it out and see what you can find.

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Racial Stereotyping: It Ain’t Cool But It’s Profitable

Sep 13 2010

I was recently asked to troubleshoot the problems of a dating campaign where an affiliate had chosen to target single men in London. This was, to his reckoning, a “niche market”. But despite having very targeted London ad texts (“Meet Up In London”, “Looking For A Girlfriend In The Capital?” etc), he was still busting out with a low CTR and a mediocre conversion rate.

It’s not hard to diagnose why this would be the case. Anybody who’s ever lived in London, or traveled here, should be able to recognize that it’s one of the most culturally diverse and ethnically divided cities in the world. In fact, I’d have to say it’s probably one of the worst choices imaginable for a “niche city market”.

The whole point of segregating your market – or pinpointing a niche – is to find a common denominator in who you’re trying to sell to. It could be the fact that you’re marketing directly to single mums, black people, Japanese people…whatever.

If you choose to market to single men in London, you might think that you have a unique slant on your dating site. But it’s not enough. The composition of London’s single population is incredibly diverse. There are some regions in London – like Hayes – where I’ll get on a bus and feel like an alien from outer space for being white and speaking English.

Despite the ethnic diversity, many affiliates choose to use ad texts and images that represent their own demographic. Have you ever wondered why so many affiliates choose to promote dating offers to single men aged 25-35? It’s because that’s what they can relate to. It’s what they know. If you commit this error by stereotyping London as a white city, full of 25-35 year old single men who all share your personal taste in the fairer sex, well…have fun scraping the barrel for a profitable CTR.

White men are likely to click on ads with liberally dressed white women. Black men, surprise surprise, are more drawn to black women. You don’t need me to stress the importance that Muslim singles place in finding a partner from the same religion. You’re blowing an insane number of impressions on people who will never click your ads if you fail to filter the uninterested parties out of your campaigns.

You’re simply never going to get the most bang for your buck if you ignore these racial stereotypes. It’s just not going to happen, homes. And most affiliates don’t even get as far as to consider the stereotypes to begin with.

I’d strongly advise you check out this recent post on OKCupid about The Real Stuff Racial Classes Like. This is dynamite information that should set your mind racing for ways to target various races.

If you’re going to launch a Facebook campaign marketing to London singles, you should really be looking at the ethnic breakdown of each borough in the city. And even how rich each borough is. We have an instinctive attraction to those of our own class. You can then choose to run your “White blonde chick” creatives in only the boroughs where there’s a White Caucasian majority.

You can also avoid spunking money up the wall by filtering out the boroughs where Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities dominate the ethnic makeup. Or better yet, why not make some money by targeting them separately? This is where the low hanging fruit is waiting to be snatched.

I’m talking in UK examples, but every country in the world has variation in it’s ethnic makeup. Too many marketers have a “one size fits all” mindset. And while it can still be profitable, you’ll never know how much money you’re wasting.

Consider even a highly successful dating campaign with a 0.25% CTR on broad targeted America. When was the last time you took that campaign and divided it in to 50 smaller campaigns targeting each state? I would wrap my tail between my legs and fuck off never to blog again if you didn’t find at least 5 states where the ROI was dramatically different to your overall figure. These can be culled for more profit. Or you can research deeper in to the makeup of the state and produce creatives that more accurately portray the class of the peoples you’re marketing to. You know, whatever you want, whatever makes you money.

Geotargeting a campaign is a flimsy, wasted and overdone technique. It used to be like steroids for your CTR. But we’ve all been on RedTube enough times to realize that, actually, there aren’t THAT many slutty singles queuing up to chat to me from [insert your town here].

I can tell you now that 90% of affiliates out there won’t even bother to target deeper than the country of the user. If you’re slinging a “Work At Home” opportunity to the whole of America, do you REALLY think a housewife on some southern Texas ranch is going to respond in the same way as a city-savvy New York socialite?

Back when I was promoting bizopp rebills, the easiest way to improve my CTR and conversion rate was simply to target individual race classes.

A flog is essentially a marketing tool devised to make the reader think “Hold on, I can be like this”. Well, the flog is a lot more effective if the reader can relate to the social class and background of the person giving the testimonial. It’s logic that can be applied to any niche, anywhere, anytime.

Stereotypes exist for a reason, and for the most part it’s because they’re fucking true. Don’t be too politically correct to dare to exploit them. There’s plenty of us out there who already do just that and reap the rewards from them.

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