Affiliate Marketing Tools Overview
You’re probably aware of the term affiliate marketing and odds are, you may have considered it at one point. There are a lot of programs available for it as well, especially things like Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.
What you probably didn’t know is probably the sheer amount of tools available for this practice. A lot of them are really useful, but some of them are difficult and not worth the investment. It’s good to note that with great tools, you’ll be well on your way to earning great revenue as an affiliate marketer. Below, we’ll look at some of the tools available around the web and for various computing systems.
Viral Marketing
This has become especially useful in the past few years. Viral marketing is a technique that uses pre-existing platforms and technologies to accomplish awareness of a said product. Just you need quality marketing tools.
For example, viral YouTube videos are a good way to start. Usually, something that has little to do with the product is created a clip, generating a lot of buzz and hype which, with further investigation, leads to the reveal of a certain product being involved. A lot of companies use this tactic because it works and works well. It does not stop at videos, though.
Viral articles or audio can be created as a way to market a product. These types of affiliate marketing tools are a good choice for affiliate marketers to use. A marketer can take advantage of already existing viral campaigns as well, compounding what they are already working on. Viral Video Monetizer is one of the best affiliate marketing tools for viral video marketing.
Social Networking tools
Social networking and media have not become a huge part of our lives. Things like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and Google+ are becoming commonplace and a huge way to interact with the Internet. Affiliate marketing can easily take advantage of this by the use of easy marketing tools that are risk-free. With things like Facebook and other similar sites, groups, and communities exist that can be honed and fine-tuned for marketing purposes.
It gives a whole new meaning to use niche communities as a way to promote a product or service. Something can also trend, allowing an affiliate marketer to make use of the trend and attach their product or service to the rising interests. If you are interested a risk free automation for Traffic by any marketing tool, Social Lead Freak is one of the great affiliate marketing tools.
Landing Page Tools
A landing page is pretty simple: it is a page that appears as a direct result of clicking a hyperlink, usually being a website’s main homepage. These are extremely important because it’s the first thing a potential buyer is going to see.
There are lots of affiliate marketing tools that exist to create a great landing page as well, some better than others. You can easily search the web for the best of these affiliate marketing tools or simply make your own landing page with the landing page design tool Instabuilder 2.0 or the Landing page builder plugin FunnelKit. When considering an affiliate marketing tool to do the job, make sure it has a good reputation and excellent reviews.
You don’t want to waste money on important affiliate marketing tools that won’t get the job done. An example of a good landing page tool would be something like LaunchRock or Ubounce. Take a look at either of them and don’t forget to do a Google search on other results.
Forums
Forums are another great affiliate marketing tool. There are lots of them around on the web as well, each curtailed for a specific purpose or need. A simple search will reveal them more times than not, meaning you won’t have to look very far.
This is a good way to show off your product of affiliate skills, network, and get to know more people in the trade. Forums have been around for a long time too, their early conception akin to the BBS boards of the pre-dial-up era. Make use of them for awesome results. The best forum can be blackhatworld.com or warriorforum.com.
Word of Mouth
Word of mouth is important for anything, but it can make or break the success of a product or marketing campaign. Movies are a good example of word-of-mouth. Avatar, for example, raked in the highest gross in history for a film, a lot of it because of the buzz surrounding the impressive 3d effects.
Make sure that the reputation of the product you have chosen to market has the buzz to back it up.
Optimized Search Results
This is probably one of the most important factors in anything relating to online marketing or online promotion. When Google, Yahoo, Bing, or Ask search for something on the web, they look for certain keywords. Having the right keywords will put an article higher or lower on the search results.
Users typically only click the top few links, especially the first one, when they are searching for something. You will want your campaign or product information to be on the top results and doing that means making sure your keywords are search engine optimized.
There are a few ways to do this, but the best is to simply know what you are talking about in the given article or product placement. Long Tail Pro can help to you research your optimized keywords.
Product Research Tools
A big component of a successful campaign is having the right information on any given product. There are many affiliate marketing tools available to do this, often referred to as product research tools. The marketing tools will find reviews, input, and information relating to the product and culminate it together into one place, allowing you easy access and scrutiny.
Without the right information, disaster can follow and kill a marketing task before it even starts. An example of a product research tool would be HammerTap, one that curtails eBay products and sellers. There are webinars and other affiliate marketing tools provided to get the best experience for your purposes as well such as Easy Webinar.
You can also research yourself, using keywords and product specifications, and Long Tail Pro can be the perfect example. Google and Yahoo are great places to begin and will offer a solid insight into your product and its campaign. Collect the information and cross-reference it with what you do know and sort out any misleading bits. Armed with the best knowledge, you’ll be sure to make killer sales.
Email List Building
This is sometimes referred to as list building and is one of the oldest practices for affiliate marketing around. It requires a couple things at its core: an email list and a squeeze page. The e-mail is exactly as it sounds a list of e-mails that are stored for your use later on in a secure way. Keeping contacts close is handy, especially when you are marketing something through any affiliate marketing tool.
A squeeze page is something that will ask you for your e-mail and some other credentials and once again, these bits of information can be pooled together to create a sturdy e-mail list.
With these two things, you can count on keeping in touch with potential buyers and customers in a one-stop database. For email list building there are some quality affiliate marketing tools or email marketing tools some are used for bulk email and others use various quality tools such as Aweber, MailChimp, GetResponse, iContact, etc.
Notes On Traffic
Traffic is important, but you want to know just what kind of traffic you are getting and the quality behind it. If bots are clicking referral links and whatnot, it is not necessarily useful. You want the traffic on your product page or landing site to be natural and organic.
That will require you to monitor the amount of clicks and views and where they are coming from. If you spot something that seems synthetic and manufactured, it is probably because it is. Interact with your page to promote more organic traffic and results.
Keep your traffic monitored as well as mentioned earlier, taking note of anything that seems out of the ordinary or things that are responding well. At present, people do not waste their time. So, they use various technical policies like traffic generation tools. In the huge affiliate marketing tools; some good traffic generation tools are Social Lead Freak, Auto Mass Traffic generation software, Trafficomnibus, etc.
Review Writing Tools
These are a bit sketchier, but there are good tools out there for writing reviews and articles. A good place to check would be places like freelancing websites, where you can hire a writer to accomplish a task for you. If that’s not really an option, there are software applications that allow for the writing of reviews and more.
Make sure to heavily research the tool you will be using as not all of them are built equally. Compatibility is also an important issue to consider. If you’re running a PC and the application only works on a Mac, you’re going to have a problem. Also, consider breaking down the review writing process for yourself as well. This can save you a lot of time and money. If not, search the web for proper results and go from there.
Targeting The Right Audience
Targeting the right audience is one of the most important things you can do. If a horror author markets their novel to romance readers, they can easily expect things not to sell very well and worse, have awful reviews simply because it was not targeted correctly. When you research your product, get a good idea of who is going to be using it and how they are going to be using it.
Target when the customers and buyers will likely run into the product placement or interact with your affiliate marketing campaign. Put time aside to also ask yourself what you would want from the product you are marketing as well. You can even do test runs to see how people react and collect the information from there. Having the right demographics means higher sales and income.
Content Aggregation
This is somewhat debatable but in the right circumstances, it can be extremely useful. Content aggregation means pulling in different bits of information and content around the web into one centralized place for reuse or resale.
The part you’d need to consider and worry about is whether it is okay to reuse said content. A lot of times, you will need to ask the author or entity in charge of the material for reuse. Some things do not require this, like work under the Creative Commons, but a lot of times, it will. If you can aggregate content about your marketing campaign and its product, you should be good to go; consider sticking it on your landing page for the best results.
Video Creation Tools
Videos are very helpful in selling a product. The most effective ones are either a great, thorough review or a video that explains exactly how the product works. As an affiliate marketer, you should consider creating both of these and placing them on sites like Vimeo or YouTube for people to watch. A detailed, full-featured explainer video will do the best and even better, you will know most of your viewers are totally interested in the subject matter.
A few affiliate marketing tools that come to mind are Masher (mashing contents of different videos together), which is free, and Photo Peach (think a slideshow presentation). Either of them will work well and tons more are free or for purchase only. Some of them are paid affiliate marketing tools or video-making tools such as Explaindio, viral video monetizing, etc. Explaindio is an easy video editor and Video Creator.
Blog Comments
Blog comments are important; a lot of people read them. If they seem mechanical or resemble spam, they will be promptly ignored. People want to see that the comment has been written by a person who legitimately understands the content of the post or article. Anything else will drive away potential buyers and kill word of mouth. Do not make the mistake as an affiliate marketer by redundantly reposting ads over and over you will lose business faster than you can imagine that way.
Guest Blogs
Guest blog posts are a great way to spread awareness of a product or its product family. When affiliate marketing, you want the word to get out about the thing you are trying to sell to customers and consumers. Guest blog posts are one of the best ways to do this; contact blog writers and see if they will allow you to write a guest post for your product. Make sure the blog has something to do with your marketing campaign (remember, target your audience!). This alone should easily boost the power and potency of your affiliation.
Conclusion
There are a lot of ways to market something, especially in the world of affiliate marketing. Having the right affiliate marketing tools and knowledge will put you further along than a lot of people out there and result in higher incomes. Go through this list of tips and affiliate marketing tools write down what you think would work best for you and head to the nearest search engine for even more information. No one marketing tool is going to do the entire job, rather, a combination of all methods and techniques will yield the best results. With this list, you should be ready to enter the world of affiliate marketing with confidence.
