So you’ve decided to go ahead and pursue an online marketing approach to promote your products or services. Congrats! You’re marching to a better life.
But now what?
You have a wealth of choices when it comes to digital marketing. And just like with any new approach, experimentation is key.
What worked well for me may not work for you. And vice versa. So you need to find what’s right for your specific situation.
In this article, I will discuss six important questions to help you get started.
Is affiliate marketing right for me?
There are many ways to make money online. One of the most popular and effective approaches is through affiliate marketing.
The beauty of affiliate marketing is that you don’t need to have a huge audience to be effective. In fact, sometimes it’s better if you don’t. By focusing on a smaller audience, you can become more intimate with your audience and potentially have a greater impact. Remember, these are humans you’re interacting with, so being personal tends to be more effective.
If you’re looking for an easy way to make money from home, and you’re okay with experimenting, then you should give affiliate marketing a try.
What is the best affiliate marketing program?
In order to answer this question, we first need to define ‘best’. What do you consider to be the best in terms of affiliate marketing platforms?
The best in terms of user experience, commission rates, and ease of use are perhaps the affiliate marketing platforms Amigo, Click Funnels, and Google Affiliate Platform.
If you’re looking for an affiliate marketing platform that offers all the basic functionalities you need and doesn’t require a lot of expertise to make sure your campaigns are set up correctly, then these are the three you need to look at.
How much should I spend on marketing?
The first and most crucial question to ask yourself when getting started with any marketing approach, whether online or off, is ‘how much should I spend?’.
There are, of course, exceptions and outliers, but for the most part, you should expect to spend at least as much on marketing as you do on product development. If you’re looking for a straight-forward answer, then you should try to stick to the $1-$5k range.
If you’re looking for a more specific answer, you can consult cost-benefit analysis tools online, such as Quora’s Cost-Benefit Analysis Calculator, to estimate the amount of investment needed for a specific marketing plan.
What are my current marketing efforts proving?
Now that you’ve determined the optimal amount you should spend on marketing, how can you be sure that your current efforts are effective? The answer is you can’t!
Just like anything else you try, your current efforts may or may not produce the results you’re looking for. And that’s why experimentation is essential. You need to constantly be testing new approaches, analyzing the data, and changing what you’re doing based on what you learn.
What you need to do is establish a baseline of activity. Take a week, or a month, to track the number of visitors to your site, the amount of interest you’re generating, and the like. By doing this, you can prove to yourself and your investors that what you’re doing is working. This will also allow you to determine how much you actually need to spend in order to achieve your goals.
Take the time to measure the results of your experiments. If you did something different this month than you did last month and the results are proving to be effective, then great! You can continue to use this approach. Or, if not, then you need to switch gears and try something new.
Where do I go from here?
Once you’ve determined the optimal approach for your product and set up your affiliate marketing channels, the next step is to find your audience.
In order to do this, you need to engage with potential customers through social media channels. You can use platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. And don’t forget about YouTube.
By sharing valuable content and engaging with your audience, you’ll be able to establish credibility with your potential customers while also gaining valuable knowledge about what they want.
If you’re looking for an easy way to quickly gain credibility and make connections, try using free tools like Hootsuite or Buffer to manage your social media accounts. With these tools, you can take care of everything from scheduling posts to engaging with your audience through various social platforms. And while we’re on the subject, I should also mention that one of the most effective ways to gain credibility is through guest blogging. So, if you’re looking to expand your knowledge base, consider tackling some blogger outreach for inbound marketers.
When establishing credibility, you need to take the time to show that you’re a trusted source of information for your audience. This means that you’ll need to prove that you’re an expert in your field. One way to do this is through content sponsorship. With content sponsorship, you’ll be able to build credibility by sponsoring high-quality content creators who will produce content specifically for your product or service.
The beauty of content sponsorship is that you don’t have to invest a lot of money in expensive adverts or payloads to get noticed. In fact, sometimes it’s better if you don’t spend any money at all. Consider using free tools like Google Adsense to get started, or going the extra mile and investing in content creators’ individual networks.
Now that you have content creators producing content for your site, how do you gain traction and ensure that people are actually listening? You can try many things, from SEO to content marketing, but one of the most effective approaches is to try something new. If you’re looking for a proven method, then you can try using a tool like CrazyEgg to track click-through traffic and proven methods like Google Adwords or Facebook Ads to gain traction.
When it comes to gaining traction, you need to consider the various metrics you’ll need to focus on. For example, if you want to sell shoes online, you’ll want to track the number of clicks on your ‘shoes’ link, the number of visits to your website after clicking the link, and the amount of time people spend on your site. From there, you can use tools like Google Analytics to determine what’s working and what’s not.
While the preceding section was focused on online marketing, the same principles apply to any form of marketing.