The Affiliate Marketing model was first introduced in the mid-1990s by an online flower shop called “PC Flowers and Gifts” and produced millions in sales yearly, with over 2,500 affiliates marketers around the web by 1995. Soon after, Amazon introduced its Amazon Affiliates program in 1996, which is still very active today, and as of 2022, over 80% of brands have affiliate programs.
Think of Affiliate Marketing as a sales representative or promoter working on a commission model – they promote your brand online and receive a specific sum of money upon making a sale. This form of marketing drives awareness and aims at converting a potential visitor into a customer. An affiliate could be any third-party organisation or individual. Moreover, affiliate marketing results in approximately 16% of global eCommerce sales, with standard conversion rates averaging between 0.5% to 1%, which means that for every 100 viewers, it generates one customer. However, the conversion rate for expert affiliates could even go up to 10% or higher.
Page Contents
Breaking down the Funnel Builder
The most basic marketing theories talk about a ‘Sales Funnel’, which shows the various stages of a customer’s digital journey – Awareness of the product, Interest in the development, Decision to purchase the product, Action to buy the product, and helps track the customer’s progress from a prospect to a buyer. The steps may vary according to books, research papers and websites, but these four comprise the primary foundation. To build a successful sales funnel, marketers use various methods:
- Creating a landing page for customers to learn more about your business and the products
- Making a valuable offering such as an early discount, referral code, free shipping, etc. to obtain the potential customer’s email address
- Engaging the potential customer further by staying in touch through newsletters and targeted content without being intrusive
- Offering special deals, product demonstrations and free trials to help close the purchase
- Continuing the process of relationship building with the prospective customer
Why is Sales Funnel Important?
Many customers don’t even know that customer service exists until they have a terrible experience with the product or service. The good part is that with the advent of social media platforms, it has become easier to shout out their dissatisfaction.
The major benefit of a sales funnel is that it enables businesses to plan out a seamless and repeatable buying experience for potential and existing customers. A good sales experience makes the customer’s more inclined towards your product.
Let us understand this with the help of an example if the customer receives your product and is very happy with it but has a confusing and lengthy buying process. It increases the chances of your customer moving or trying your competitor’s product. Thus, sales funnel software helps prevent errors and practices that create dissatisfied customers.
Pro Tip: Funnel Builder for Affiliate Marketing
As an Affiliate Marketer, leading viewers down the right path to turn them into customers is essential. Now that we know what a sales funnel is and the various steps for building one, we can apply this learning to affiliate marketing.
- Optimising your website to rank higher on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
It is essential to have an effective keyword strategy to ensure a high ranking on Google Search (or any other search engine) – this can be done by identifying the keywords your target customers are constantly searching for and including these in your website content.
- Creating quality content for the brand that you are promoting
Your content has to be unique and engaging for your viewer – information about the product, guides, tutorials, images and videos should be created to encourage a purchase.
- Creating a good landing page
What does a ‘good’ landing page comprise? Since this page is essentially designed to encourage visitors to purchase, it must be user-friendly and compelling. Using high-quality and relevant images and videos with a clear call to action results in an effective landing page.
To help you further build an effective sales funnel, various software automates the process from start to finish and gives you the desired results. Some of these include Builderall’s Funnel Builder, ClickFunnels and Classic Builder by Unbounce, amongst others.
P.S. – Did you notice the Affiliate Marketing examples in this article so far? I have embedded links to Amazon Affiliates and the funnel builder software mentioned above, one of the many ways to implement AM.
Example of Funnel Building in Affiliate Marketing
Let’s say Anushka is a digital marketing blogger. Sprinklr, a digital marketing tool, identifies Anushka as a potential affiliate and reaches out to her, seeking her expertise to increase the number of Sprinklr subscriptions.
To build the sales funnel, Anushka researches the primary keywords which will enable her Sprinklr blog post to appear higher on the Google Search pages. Her goal is to drive traffic to her blog post using the right keywords. Next, on her landing page, she includes the video demo of the Sprinklr tool to give her audience a detailed insight into the platform. The critical thing to note here is that this video demo is created by her, explaining how Sprinklr works instead of just using a readymade demo given by Sprinklr. It is how Anushka makes unique content and gains the trust of her audience, a critical step in the funnel-building process.
At the end of the page, after the video demo, Anushka includes a sign-up form requesting the viewer’s email address, after which she shares a link to the Sprinklr subscription page as a call to action. If a customer subscribes via Anushka’s blog, she will receive the agreed-upon commission from Sprinklr (currently, affiliates earn anything between 5% to 30% commission on a sale). She has also built an email database via the sign-up form, with whom she can stay in touch to promote other products.
Why is a Funnel Builder Important in Affiliate Marketing?
The sales funnel helps define the customer journey and allows affiliates to narrow down their focus on the critical factors influencing the customer’s purchase decision. The objective goes beyond brand awareness and focuses primarily on conversions and sales. With the help of a sales funnel, businesses and affiliates can generate a higher return on investment (ROI), which might not apply to other promotional activities that only help in brand awareness. The goal of funnel building is not to make quick money but to build a loyal database of people so that they turn into repeat customers.
Moreover, it is also essential to measure the funnel’s effectiveness – this can be done by monitoring the site traffic, duration of site sessions (how long the viewer stayed on the page), number of email addresses received from the sign-up form and the final conversion rate (how many viewers converted into customers).