Another Powerful Tool in Affiliate Marketing is Content Marketing. Content Marketing Essentially Means Creating A Website Or Blog, rising in prominence and then using that, in order to sell your product.
The great thing about Content Marketing is that it works so well; in tandem with numerous other Sales Techniques. Content Marketing is Highly Compatible with Having a Landing Page and in fact; often the objective of Content Marketing will be to send people to your Landing Page.
Content Marketing’s Broader Objective; Is To Turn You Into A Trusted Expert In Your Niche. In the business, this is referred to as being a “Thought Leader” or an “Authority”.
This way, when you recommend a product; people will be more likely to listen to what you have to say and buy the product/s you suggest to them. So how do you go about using Content Marketing?
Let’s dig in a bit deeper shall we?
How To Get Started With Content Marketing
To Start; You Need A Blog, Where You’ll Publish Your Posts And Let People Know About Your Business.
At the same time, you can Combine This With A Strong Social Media Presence, heavy branding and maybe even a YouTube Channel; such that your audience can get to know you.
Being Successful At This, Is Largely About Posting Regularly; while Offering Real Value To Your Readers. Don’t try and sell right away; instead Spend Your Time Building Up Trust And Respect In Your Niche.
Every time you publish a blog post, you should ask yourself:
- Is this something you would read?
- Is it comprehensive, engaging and unique enough to stand out from all the other posts in this niche?
- Does it make you look, like you really know your stuff?
Spend Time Designing Your Logo And Website and then work to ensure you are creating a consistent vision; establishing yourself on the net.
This might all sound like a lot of work and you might find the idea of becoming a “Thought Leader” to be nerve-wracking. However, it is very much worth it!
The main reason for this, is that When You Become An Authority In Your Niche, you will not only be able to sell the one product – but really any product that you subsequently want to sell.
You’ll have a direct “Route To Market”; letting you directly reach thousands of buyers who will always be happy and willing to take your advice.
This Is The Strategy That Most Affiliate Marketers Use To Become Truly Wealthy; but it does take a little longer. You do need to think carefully about the quality of the products you recommend.
If you promote a very substandard product too forcefully; you will lose the respect of your buyers and ultimately; they’ll be less likely to consider your future recommendations.
Promoting Your Blog
Running A Highly Successful Blog Is Essentially A License To Print Money; but getting there, takes a lot of hard work and dedication.
This is not a case of “build it and they will come” – but rather something you need to work hard at; if you want to be successful at it.
Even if you post the best quality content to your blog on a regular basis; if no one knows it’s there; then it’s not going to generate as much revenue as expected. So how do you get the word out?
Let’s dig in a bit deeper shall we?
Social Media
One Option Is To Use Social Media And Social Bookmarking Sites. Over time, you can use Social Media Synergy in order to build up a large following and in the future; you’ll be able to use that to instantly reach a huge selection of people.
In the short term though; to get those initial viewers, it makes a lot of sense to use Social Bookmarking Sites. These are sites like Reddit and Digg; where people share their favorite sites. You can also try posting to Groups and Communities.
The Reason This Is So Effective, Is That It Allows You To Communicate To A Captive Audience; all of whom have a shared interest in your specific subject.
Thus, you can gain a massive amount of shares and reads almost immediately; as long as the title of your blog post is enticing enough.
Head to the Reddit Fitness Page, and post an article on “How To Get Great Abs” and you’ll get “downvoted” to a bad extent!
On the other hand, if you post something that sounds more unique and more interesting, like: “New Study On The Best Training, To Gain Superhuman Strength”; you can potentially get thousands of views overnight!
If You’ve Incorporated Your Social Media Into Your Site; this can in turn, help you Build A Large Amount Of Twitter Followers, Facebook “Likes”, YouTube Subscribers, etc..
Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing is another form of Social Media Marketing that is Incredibly Effective, when used correctly.
Essentially, This Type of Marketing allows you to leapfrog the competition; get more quickly to the point where you’re reaching a much larger audience and influencing them more.
How does this work? Simply by Taking Advantage of The Ground Work that other Marketers have already done!
Influencer Marketing means finding someone in your Niche; who already has a lot of Influence (An Influencer), then contacting them and requesting that they broadcast a message on your behalf.
You might have to pay them to do this, or you might have to create content specifically designed for them to share; or you might have to agree to do each other the same favor, thereby sharing your existing audiences. This Technique can be Immensely Powerful when used correctly.
S.E.O.
At the same time, You Should Be Using SEO; to try and further your efforts in promoting yourself online. S.E.O. stands for “Search Engine Optimization” and It Essentially Means Managing Your Content, Your Website and Your Marketing; in such a way that It Will Enhance Your Site’s Visibility on Search Engines.
In the past, SEO was very simple and all it really entailed was creating lots of content with your “Keywords” (The Search Terms) in it; generating as many links to your website as possible (With The Keywords As Your Anchor Text).
Over time though, Search Engines have evolved and have become much smarter.
A lot of Internet Marketers were using SEO to manipulate their position on Search Engines; and this resulted in them having to update their algorithms.
Now, Search Engines have become more sensitive to anything that looks like Obvious SEO; and instead, the only way to reliably climb the ranks on Search Engines, is to Update Your Site Regularly With High Quality Content and using natural language to do so.
At the same time, you still want to gather inbound links; but they should be a wide range of varied, different links, from different sources and that are written differently.
As such, Content Marketing and SEO are largely inseparable these days. Good Content Marketing and Good SEO involve populating your site with lots of very high quality posts.
At the same time, if you do this well, it will encourage people to share your content and link to it; out of their own free will. Great quality content that encourages sharing is what’s called “Link Bait”.
Guest Posting
One More Strategy That Works Well For SEO – as long as you don’t overdo it – is Guest Posting.
Guest Posting essentially means that you are writing a post for a blog, other than your own and offering them to publish it free of charge.
As a result, they get more content for their site and this helps them to provide their visitors with more value.
But of course you aren’t just doing this out of the kindness of your heart; in exchange you should ask them to include a link back to your website, along with some description about who you are (this is called: An Author Box).
This way, they get free content and You Get A Link From A Well-Known Blog And An Authority!
E-Mail Marketing
E-Mail Marketing Can Be Used As A Supplement To Content Marketing; as a separate endeavor, or a bit of both.
Of course The Whole Idea Behind E-Mail Marketing is to Create A Mailing List of people; who have shared their e-mail with you, because they want to hear about your products, services and deals.
From there, you can provide them with Newsletters and Value; directly to their inboxes, or you can sell to them, by Promoting Your Best Products & Services As An Affiliate.
The links will work the exact same way; directly through e-mails. The process either way, is a very personal and direct way to influence your audience.
The First Step In E-Mail Marketing, is to Build An Audience. Interestingly enough, you can do this in the very same ways you might Generate Sales For An Affiliate Product.
For Instance, A Landing Page Can Be Geared Up To Generate E-Mails And Leads; this is when it’s normally called a “Squeeze Page” or “Opt-In Page”.
You can also aid this process by incentivizing your audience to sign up. You Can Do This, By Giving Away A Free E-Book, or A Discount On Your Product.
Either way, this means that they get more value; simply by providing their e-mail address, which many people will view as a good deal!
Here’s To Your Success!
The GWC Team
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