If you’re not preselling, you’re losing money
If you want to make more money as an affiliate, you must presell.
Before we begin, we need to first define what preselling is. Preselling is both an art and a science. It’s a process of taking your reader and getting them ready to buy. Then when they’re ready, refer them to the product website so they can buy it. And if it’s done properly, the process is completely sub-conscious.
The gist is that you give your reader some useful information. And then refer them to the product website. In a second we’ll talk about how to do actually it. First, it’s important to understand why we do it. Here are a few benefits of preselling:
- It builds trust – Once you have your readers’ trust, they will click your links more readily. Which obviously means you’ll make more sales.
- Preselling is disarming – When you’re preselling vs. pitching, you’re reader doesn’t feel the need to be guarded. And in turn they read to understand what you’re saying. And your intention is conveyed more easily.
- It creates buying readiness – Now they’re open to hearing what you’re telling them. Being open means, they are open to everything you give them. This includes the sales website you send them to! Sending them to the sales page in this state makes them more receptive to the actual pitch.
- It increases your sales – They arrive at the product website prepped to buy. Open to the sales message and feeling safe. This dramatically boosts your sales rate!
- It increases customer satisfaction – Your referral now feels like they decided to buy. Instead of feeling pressured or “sold”. And this leads to greater satisfaction with the product.
- Your profits go up – Satisfied customers are less like to refund. Which means you keep more of your affiliate commissions.
Clearly preselling makes sense. You increase your profits. And produce happier customers. Everybody wins!
How does it work?
Now you know whey preselling is critical. So, hopefully you’ve decided to start preselling. So, let’s talk about how to make it work. Remember, there are two components – art and science.
The art of preselling
The first step is in getting your readers to trust you and open up. And the only method of doing this is to give exceptional value to your readers. Now, providing enough info to be useful, but still making them want more – that’s the art of it. The idea is that they want more and the sales page you send them to gives them more. And since they’re more open, they are more likely to make a purchase.
Scientific preselling
There’s also a specific formula you need to follow.
One of these key elements is the presentation of the information. You need to know where you’re going before you begin. In the end, you want to sell a specific product. How can providing information accomplish this goal? The first method is to provide enough info to get them started, but not enough to finish. The other method is to explain all the details and expose how difficult it is to do what you’re explaining. Whichever method, you send them to a product website that solves the problem you just created.
But you can’t link to your affiliate link. Instead, you use a direct link to the product website. When you do this, you’re click-throughs go way up. But how are you going to get credit for the sale, if you don’t include your affiliate link? This is all part of the science of preselling. You use an image tag to cookie your reader before they leave your site.
The next trick is to hyperlink specific words and phrases inside the content of the article you’re providing. People are used to clicking on hyperlinked words to get information they’re looking for. And when the words are in context like this, it makes perfect sense for your reader to click them.
Using this system, you’re virtually guaranteed to increase your affiliate business success.
Now for the bad news…
This process is not easy – at all! Let’s look at the skills required to pull it off: Good content. First of all, you actually have to write great articles and give value to your readers. Which means you need to be both knowledgable on the subject and capable of writing a high-quality article. Writing to presell. Yes, you must providing useful content. And you have to make the content accessible in order to provide value. While at the same time making them want more. Or make the information so overwhelming they realize they can’t do it on their own.
Choosing your products. You also need to determine what products you’ll be preselling. If you can manage to get the article written well. You’ve wasted all your effort if the product doesn’t sell well.
The technical know-how To be most effective you have to use the “covert cookie” method. This is actually pretty simple – just embed a 1 pixel X 1 pixel image and set your affiliate link as the “source” of the image. (But if you do it wrong, you won’t get paid for the traffic you send.)
Summary:
Now you’re armed with the information needed to effectively presell. Preselling properly will boost your affiliate profits up to 500%! It’s absolutely critical to do this every time – and to do it correctly. Take action now. The effort it takes is well worth the benefits…
Mail this post
Technorati Tags: affiliate business, affiliate commissions, Internet Marketing
Recent Comments