5 Tips for Successful Pre-Selling

While reviewing Opportunity.com this week, John Reese got my attention with his comment that there is "no selling" to Affiliate Marketing. My initial reaction was to disagree, but he's right - there is no selling. Only pre-selling.

The merchant sells the product or service. All you have to do is get qualified prospects to the merchant's website - via your affiliate link, of course. And let's be honest: that's not always easy. Ever tried to post affiliate links all over the web, even in the most targeted places, and still have a hard time getting clicks & sales?

The great thing about a pre-sell strategy is that not only does it dramatically increase your conversion rate, but it also adds content and community on your blog or website. Instead of driving traffic straight to the merchant's site directly through your affiliate link, pre-selling gets traffic to your site first.

You're actually achieving several things at once: You are pre-selling the visitors, which results in a higher conversion rate. You're creating content that will get indexed by the major search engines, giving you more exposure over a longer period of time. This means your affiliate promotion will keep making sales for you month after month, long after you've stopped actively promoting it. And if you are using a blog, you're giving visitors an opportunity to interact with you and with each other, asking questions about or sharing their own experiences with the product - which also helps to increase conversions.

And yes, you really do need your own website to be a successful Affiliate Marketer. If you are stuck trying to create your affiliate sites, check out AffiliateTheme by Unique Blog Designs.

How to effectively pre-sell products as an affiliate:

• Publish a product review. This will include details about the product, who it is ideal for, your thoughts on it, your personal recommendation, and showing them where to get that product. A great product review usually includes a personal story about why you chose to purchase it and why you are glad you did.

• Demonstrate Personal Results. This method is incredibly powerful and will definitely increase your conversion rate. People don't buy products - they buy results. You can share these personal results in your product review, or expand your review into a case study. A case study is a great way to build a readership, build momentum, and allow your readers to see results unfold.

• If you havent used the product personally, you can always leverage other people's results. You might find these in newspapers, blog posts, etc. Tip: Ask people for feedback or user experience on products you want to promote. You can ask on Twitter, Yahoo Answers, Askville, MyLot.com, etc. Just be sure you quote the source.

• Use Supporting Data. That might include: bestseller list, top 10 things, 5 star reviews, as seen on TV (or Oprah) etc. Any type of widely accepted support or recognition will increase your conversion rate.

• Offer Incentives. Be sure to check the terms of your affiliate program before using incentives or bonuses of any kind - some merchants do not allow this. You're probably familiar with this method as used by affiliates in Internet Marketing product launches. You can also do this very effectively outside of the IM niche. One example would be to offer an exclusive report you wrote, or to do an audio interview with the developer or other expert.

Note: There's a handy little tool to help you achieve #5 very easily if you're promoting ClickBank products. It's called CB List Automator and allows you to easily build a list of buyers and send your bonuses out automatically!

These 5 tips came from Training Video #2 in the Getting Started section of Opportunity.com - with some personal elaboration from yours truly 😉

These are the exact methods that set Super Affiliates apart from the rest of the affiliates. You really want to engage your target market with your affiliate promotions, get them involved in imagining the results, show them that other people are already enjoying those results, and if possible - make them an offer they can't refuse! Yes, it's a little extra work, but it's well worth it.

Also see: 7 Proven Ways to Increase Affiliate Sales

Best,

p.s. When I chose the topic for today, I did a quick search on Google. I happened across a great little report by Jonathan Leger - the same author who wrote the popular "Write That Report" guide. It's only $7 and a very easy read. If you're interested in really mastering the pre-sell method, download a copy of Preselling Secrets: Take your affiliate profits to the next level!. It's a 21-page report and Jonathan shares 2 methods: the one-shot presell, and a full-scale promotion. It's a pretty basic report, but he does share the exact details - including screenshots of the emails he sent out for two different promotions (one of each type). Definitely worth 7 bucks & 7 minutes if you'd like to see a visual example of how preselling works.